Radiophile.com - Meck RC-5C5-D-PB12

Meck RC-5C5-D-PB12, 1946
(I don't make these model numbers up!)

Tube complement: 12BE6 mixer/oscillator, 12BA6 IF, 12AT6 detector, 50B5 audio output, 35W4 rectifier.

Approximately 8-1/8 inches / 206 mm wide.

Meck, as far as I can determine, was a manufacturer of ultra-cheap radios under its and other brand names. It had a habit of using leftover cabinet molds that were used to make some of the nicest prewar plastic radios.

The radio's schematic is pasted to the bottom of the Bakelite cabinet. A nice touch, except that it's the wrong schematic. It's mostly accurate, but it shows a phono input with switch. The diagram belongs to a cheap radio/phono unit, based on the All American Five circuit, also made by Meck. It doesn't really matter that the schematic's wrong—it gets the general idea; if you've seen one AA5 schematic, you've pretty much seen 'em all. By the late 1940s, if a radio like this developed a problem and it couldn't be solved by simple tube replacement, the radio was probably discarded anyway.

This radio's chassis was designed so that it could use the octal, loktal, and miniature tube versions of the AA5 tube set. For example, the mixer/oscillator in this radio is a 12BE6 pentagrid converter tube. Equally usable in this position would be the 12SA7, taking an octal socket, or the 14Q7 which would use a loktal socket. No matter which, you'd get the same radio with the same performance. During production, just install sockets for whichever tubes you have on hand, or are cheapest at the moment.