Telefunken 332WLK, 1934

Description: First a bit of history. Although German manufacturers had made superheterodynes before, the conglomerate formed by Telefunken, AEG and Siemens did not offer the first superhet until 1933. I understand that having to pay royalties to RCA was avoided until there was no better choice. That first superhet, the 330/331 series, named "Nauen" for a very powerful transmitter of Telefunken's, was a reasonable disaster. It was designed with a low cost in mind, so that it could break into the "two tuned circuit TRF" market that was of great volume at the time in Germany. As such, it had one pentode as oscillator-mixer, followed by another pentode as detector and providing reaction to enhance the IF amplification, followed by a nice indirectly heated output pentode, plus rectifier. From several accounts I understand that once the tubes aged a bit and the circuit tuning was not perfect, the radio would whistle at all stations. It did not help that the frequency of the IF in the earlier Nauens was quite low and coincided with the operating frequency of a very powerful european Long Wave station... So, back to the drawing board, the conglomerate came out in 1934 with the Telefunken 334WLK and the Siemens 37 WLK that shared the same

chassis and remedied the situation very nicely. The radio presented here is the Telefunken and it is indeed a very nice set. The first tube is the ACH1, the first triode-exode in the industry, working as oscillator and mixer. This is followed by an exode (RENS 1234) that works in reflex to amplify both the IF (465 khz), as plate detector and as audio preamplifier. Its circuit is somewhat baffling at first, as the 4th grid acts as a plate for both the IF and audio amplification, while the true anode is left floating with an RC pair to ground (0.5 Megohm, 50 pfd) as the detector. Evidently, after a short time, the plate climbs up in voltage to above grid 4 voltage, so that it can detect signals. The final tube is an indirectly heated pentode, with the screen grid connection sticking out on the side of the socket. The rectifier is full wave. Circuit: 4 tube Superheterodyne, Medium, Long and Short waves, reflex Tubes: ACH1, RENS1234, RENS 1374d, RGN1064 Source: Lutz-D. Schmidt of Berlin, Germany Date acquired: May 2002 Initial Price: DM400 plus approximately $40 for shipping. Schematic: I have a complete set of schematics and details of coil construction, etc. Condition: The cabinet is totally original, in very good-to-excellent condition. It has a number of scratches and other marks that have been hidden reasonably well by a polish. A rebuilding of the electronics was started about 6 years ago by a Professor friend of Lutz Schmidt who, unfortunately, died in New York City having been run over by a car at a traffic light. The rebuilding had been quite advanced, with many capacitors already changed, some circuit modifications corrected and good tubes in place. I had to secure the contact between the painted-on shield of the ACH1 and its cathode connection, as it was rather unstable and made adjustment of the input antenna circuits virtually impossible. The capacitance of the shield was needed for the circuits to tune properly. I also had to open the antenna coil can because there was some apparently unstable connection there. Once that was attended to, it was possible to adjust both the Middle and Short Waves quite well and the radio is playing now very well. Sensitivity and selectivity are remarkably good in MW, and a bit weak for a 1934 receiver in SW.