John Scott-Taggart was a radio expert that designed sets for the home constructor. It was said that his designs gave the very best performance for the parts used in them. Certainly he included lots of adjusting controls so that peak performance could be achieved by twiddling the various knobs.
This example is an ST300, which includes an integral loudspeaker (the designation is said to relate to the number of valves.. times 100 of course!) Many people stretched their funds to the utmost to buy the basic kit and made do with their crystal-set headphones. The constructor of this one clearly planned his to include an early moving coil speaker. I'm not sure at this stage whether the case was bought ready-made, or perhaps as a set of parts or whether it was constructed by the builder of the set, who, if he did design and make the case must have obviously been a dab hand at woodwork.
The finish of the plywood surface is utilitarian and he didn't bother to french polish it. The stain finish is now peeling off and the grain of the wood is very pronounced. The radio front panel is made from plywood, rather than ebonite, which may have been going out of fashion when this set was made. The front end of the set uses a screen grid valve, an SG215 and to help with stability, and screening, a copper sheet has been tacked onto the plywood baseboard. The vertical panel is steel rather than brass so is now rather rusty.
The grid-bias battery was usually clamped onto the baseboard and is now missing, together with its leads.
The back end of the set has an RF stage with reaction so that with its pair of RF stages, the user would have to keep the pair of tuning condensers in track. The coils used are commercial types so would have been reasonably well matched, resulting in the dial readings being about the same for any given station. Two sets of windings are provided, giving reception on medium and long waves. With all these types of sets, usually constructed between about 1928 and 1932, a record needed to be kept showing dial settings for ones favourite stations.
Later sets were deignated ST400, 500, 600 etc.
return to new acquisitions page