philips: 930A (930 A); Philips

I have in my collection two different versions of this radio that puzzels me a bit. The normal case seem to be that this radio has a Bakelite/Philite-base mounted at it´s bottom. Now I have found out that one of the radios has a base entirely made of black painted wood instead.

A fellow collector in Sweden claims that this is sometimes the case and that it is original and factory made. There is of course still the possibility that this base does not belong to the radio from the beginning but has been used to repair it when the original base was damaged, however it looks like it should be there and that no fiddling has been done.

Assuming that this base would be factoryassembled original gives room for at least three different explanations:

1: Either of the two bases was used in early series production, but later abandoned due to costs or other practical reasons.

2: The normal production of Bakelite/Philite bases was for some reason interrupted - be it a shortage of material, a strike among workers or whatever - forcing ahead an alternative solution for the base manufacturing, so that they still could produce the radiomodel.

3. The different bases were used in two or more different production facilities in different countries but radios from both factories may have been sold in any country.

There must be many Philips 930 A among the members in RMorg so now to my questions:

Is there anyone else who own a model 930 A (or 930 C, for that matter) with wooden base?

Does anybody know in which countries the Philips 930 A (also 930 C) was produced? When searching for the model several countries appear in the list, but not exactly same for 930 A respectively 930 C, and this puzzles me a bit.

I try to attach pictures with the two different bases below:

 

Attachments:

• Normal base (71 KB)
• wooden base (79 KB)

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Hello Anders,

The 930 was also made with a wooden case and was labelled the 930B. It is probable that this model had a wooden base and is perhaps the same base fitted to your model for some reason. If any member has a 930B, perhaps they could answer this.

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See also:==> Photos of name plates are very essential!

Regards WB.

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Thank You mr Blanchflower for Your suggestion. The 930 B is unknown to me and has never been a part of the Swedish salesprogram for Philips, but it is of course possible that a base from such a model could have been used to make a complete radio of one with a brooken base.

Sadly I know almoust nothing about the radios history. It´s been in my collection for some years and I didn´t realize there would be anything special with it until a fellow collector mentioned that there should be Philips 930´s (In Sweden nicknamed "strykjärnet") around with wooden bases as well as Bakelite ones. That´s why I checked the ones in my collection and one out of the three i own showed out to have a wooden base.

There seem to be very little information about the 930 B in RMorg and no pictures at all so I hope some member will have one to show. If they look similar it might have been a 930 B my friend was referring to.

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Thank You mr Bauer for Your remark about nameplates. It may indeed help to identify differences such as country of origin, early or late manufacturing and such things. For this to work there must, of course be enough examples to compare with to find out what stands for what.

One of the 930´s I have was in such a bad state so that I scrapped it. The chassis is still around but it is very rusty and there is no nameplate to be seen on it.

The other ones does have good readable nameplates. They do both state the type as 930 A with no additional figures in that field but the factorynumbers read: 56665 G for the one with Bakelite base and: 51065 D for the one with wooden base.

Could perhaps the letters G respektively D reveal something about origin and differences.

I attach pictures of the plates below:

 

Attachments:

• philips 930A (51062 D) wood plate (59 KB)
• philips 930A (56665 G) bakelit plate (82 KB)

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Best regards to all.

I have some more pictures of 930A.

It has wooden base, but it is with no doubt 930A (see pictures). Serial number ends with N

Attachments:

• Philips 930A BASE (72 KB)
• PHILIPS 930A nameplate (60 KB)

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Thank you mr Tkalec for your interesting contribution. It does at least proove that my 930 A with wooden base is not the only one around. It does, however, not absolutely proove that this is factory assembled since both radios might have been repaired with parts from some other model. Still, I would say, that it has become a lot more likely that the 930 A was also made with a wooden base in some cases.

The importance of the nameplates are yet to be discovered. A question of interest aimed at every owner of a Philips 930 A is what the last letter in the factory number is:

Does anybody else have a 930 with the letter N or D that also has a wooden base? But this question might of course also be inverted: Are there 930´s around with the letters N or D with the usual Bakelite base?

Nameplate picture contributions plus info about the base of any 930 radio from members would be much appreciated.

Best regards from Anders "soda" Söderström, Sweden

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Hello again fellow collectors

Sometimes an answer to a question might be far closer than one expects. I have been doing some research on RMorg itself about the Philips 930 A and I think I dare to say that there is no longer any doubt that the 930 was made with both Bakelite or wooden base.

There are pictures of the 930 A under Philips from several countries. Under Philips Czechoslovakia there is a picture from Alois Steiner that clearly shows a wooden base. (Look at the picture of the rear of the radio. One can see wood where the paint has come off) The same radio are also present under Philips Switzerland as well. Unfortunately there are no picture of the nameplate in this case.

If checking under Philips Netherlands there are several 930´s with wooden bases. Peter Breu, Marc Couque and Wolfgang Winkler all seem to own such radios. Wolfgang Winkler shows us also a picture of the nameplate. The letter "N" is to be seen on it as well as on the nameplate of the radio showed here by Danko Tkalec.

From my point of view I now consider it prooved that there are factory made 930´s with wooden base. Question is of course still: Why? And also: Can this be tied to any specific country, production period or the like. 

More pictures of nameplates for Philips radios might help us to understand more in the future, but my own knowledge of Philips manufacturing in the early thirties is sadly very limited. 

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Hi Collectors,

The answer to this question probably is that not every Philips factory had the equipment to make bakelite so they had to order it with the mother factory, or they could use the wooden base witch they could constuct by themsels if they had the extra factory capacity. Another thing in 1930 there was an economical crisis and Philips had to make all kind of things in bakelite to make there installations valuable so they probably forced there daughter factories to use the bakelite base they produced in some kind of quantity to have enough production of bakelite.

Greetings 

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