Mastodawn

This is a project for @mediaarchaeologylab consisting of a Webster model 2501 intercom system made in 1946. The remotes are just a speaker, that serves as a microphone if you close a PTT switch. The main system has a rectifier tube, a cooked ripple capacitor, and some amp tubes. I've figured out how to rewire the remotes so they match and hopefully work, and blown and picked massive wads of fluff out of them. One remote needs a new backplate fabricated.

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smells of bikes 1d ago

To make this more fun, there are two different Webster companies active in 1946 that made intercoms, one based in Chicago, IL, and the other in Racine, WI. This is probably the former as they were much larger.

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NilaJones 1d ago

@smellsofbikes

How on earth did you figure that out?

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smells of bikes 1d ago

@NilaJones I've been looking everywhere I can think of to try to find any info on the base station wiring. One base station has something weird off to the far right, where the other one just has a blank space. The only photo I've found online of another similar model has something entirely different in that location. So I guess I have to take it apart and look inside. It's not a vacuum tube. Maybe a ballast resistor?

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NilaJones 1d ago

@smellsofbikes

Well you know I'm not going to have any idea! 😂

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smells of bikes 1d ago

@NilaJones it's all guesswork on 80 year old undocumented stuff. I hope I'm a good guesser.

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NilaJones 1d ago

@smellsofbikes

It's too bad the RV forum died and everyone went to Facebook. Because I would definitely send you over there, to find somebody who had worked on these things before they retired

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smells of bikes

@NilaJones the places I have found things are old radio repair fora. I pulled one tube and said to myself wait this has GOT to be a rectifier (four pins, no central pin at all) and sure enough I found another model from the same company that has the same tube, identified as a rectifier (purely for safety, because this was before plugs were polarized and they needed to make sure the whole thing didn't vaporize if it was plugged in backwards.)