lafayette: FS47 (FS 47) Tube count scandal?

Obviously this model has unnecessarily three ballasts and two rectifiers. The filaments for the lineup including one rectifier are adding up to 80 volts, so one ballast would have done.
But another three cheap tubes were added to increase the necessary number of eight to the better selling eleven tubes!
This kind of business started from 1935/36 and became public in 1937, when this tube count scandal was revealed. In 1939 the trouble was over.

Ref.: Mark V.Stein, Pre-War Consoles.

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I find it ironic that during this same period, many European radio manufacturers were making vacuum tubes that performed more than one function in the attempt to make radios that used less vacuum tubes/valves  so that the owners would pay less state taxes for their radios.
 
One intriguing vacuum tube is the EBL 1, from the late thirties.  I am sure North American manufacturers didn't see the relevance or the need at the time, but in their need to sell more  tubes and make inexpensive radios, they came out with the transformerless five vacuum tube radio that was manufactured in many forms until the 1960's.  It is hard to believe that these radios were manufactured with no fuses and nonpolarized plugs..........OUCH!

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Thanks for the very interesting remark! I see that marketing strategies were very aggressive even in those days...

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I found two more models of that kind:   Freed-Eisemann 27D and 30D.

While the 30D had 6 active tubes, as an AC/DC set it could have used one ballast but it received 4 ballasts, making a 10 tube radio out of a 6 tuber.

Even worse the 27D: not less than 5 ballasts plus an unnecessarily doubled  rectifier (just in parallel) made a 12 tube receiver out of 6 active tubes.

 

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