Murphy A72 Receiver

 I grew up with this radio. Not this exact example but one that looked identical to it. For some reason, never explained, my father decided to buy this make and model. Maybe he decided to buy the best he could afford before war broke out. I know that he certainly had anticipated it because he used to tell us he'd volunteered to bump off Hitler, but was told not to be silly. Then again he was always telling us stories. The set lasted without being serviced until the early 1960s before being supplanted by a transistor model that worked just as well and was 20 times lighter. The set was finally canibalised to supplement my growing junk box from which I made super-regen receivers and 807 valved transmitters. The set had a special add-on unit that fitted in the space between the front legs that enabled electric pre-selection of stations. That was way out of reach of our family budget.

 
 A rear view with the back removed shows the usual high quality Murphy offering. A painted chassis, enclosed transformer, additional smoothing chokes and a nice symmetrical layout. I've added new wiring to replace perished rubber insulated wiring as you can see. A nice touch is the octal plug and socket for the loudspeaker, a mains energised type. I also had to replace the wiring to the dial lamps as this also had perished rubber insulation. This example has some tarnishing to its aluminium parts probably from having languished in a damp garage.

 

The set uses Mazda valves with Mazda Octal bases and 4 volt heaters, left to right the RF amp/mixer/oscillator, TH41, IF amp VP41, detector/audio amp/AVC HL42DD, Output PEN45, magic eye ME41 and rectifier UU6.

A good quality loudspeaker carrying the manufacturing date of 9th July 1939. Not long after this date the war effort diverted the products of the radio factories to defence equipment.

 

 The set has a drum dial driven by a Bowden cable and to the right a magic eye.

 

 
 Here's the only label, printed on the rear panel although I can see a serial number on the rear of the chassis, 58049893 and on the aerial panel the number 51127.  

 Here's a circuit diagram. Click it to see the service manual.

 

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