odd hudson radio find

hoggyrubber

found this at the springfield antique auto swap meeton friday. it looks to be a old hudson radio hooked up to be plugged into 110 outlet. i tried it and it didn't come on, but the good news is it didn't cost much, $15, and it didn't set the place on fire. just wondering several things: did it have the rectifier/ magnito on top originally? it looks to be same color paint but it is real heavy to lug around like 20 or 30 lbs. the wiring has been spliced, is there any way to test this thing with a 6v battery?
also i wonder if this thing ever worked like it was wired? i will include a couple of pictures if i can. saw what looks to be fused power supply. alll the wires except speaker, lights, and antenna run to magnito on top, nothing looks like it goes to radio itself. thanks for any info.

SuperDave

I'm sure Marconi will step in here soon! But in the mean time.. It looks to me that someone used a stepdown transformer 120 VAC to +-6VAC, Connected it internally to the output of the vibrator , which has been removed. . The function of the old vibrators was to convert the DC voltage from the battery to a sorta "square " wave to go into a step-up transformer to make the Higher Voltage that would then be rectified to a high voltage DC needed by the plate circuit of the vacuum tubes. It should work. Have fun.. I have a similar setup in my Barn so i can listen to talk radio and keep my blood pressure up. LOL:ohmy:

Marconi

Someone's converted this radio to run off the 110 volt house current. If they just usd 6 volts off the transformer to replace the vibrator , it would only be 2 or 3 wires leading from the transformer into the radio case, it woudn't be too hard to re rig it to operate off a 6 volt battery. We are not talking about the transformer leads hooked directly to the 100 volt cord. If however they replaced the entire power supply then it would be a little more involved, this would have at least 5 wires coming from the transformer and going into the radio. Years ago I did several of these conversions for 'Garage Radios' for several of my friends, they worked fine. I usually used one piece radios, Buicks and the like, because the speaker and everything else was inside the case.