I'm an antique radio collector, and I can tell you that during the golden age of radio, in the 1930's, far more than a few companies put extra tubes in their designs that did absolutely nothing (other than to allow the marketing people to claim a higher tube count than the competition). :)
On the other hand, giving them the benefit of the doubt, there are other possible explanations. Perhaps they wanted to use a solid state rectifier circuit, but wanted to utilize a common chassis with some other model, perhaps a predecessor model, which had tube rectification. And they didn't think it would look right to have either a hole or an empty tube socket.
Or perhaps they just made a dumb design mistake, and thought a single rectifier tube would be adequate, and didn't realize the mistake until a large quantity of chassis had been fabricated. Or they wanted to keep its configuration consistent with what was described in manuals that had already been printed.
There are undoubtedly other possible explanations as well, that would be less egregious than intentional deception. We can't really say at this point.
Regards,
-- Al
On the other hand, giving them the benefit of the doubt, there are other possible explanations. Perhaps they wanted to use a solid state rectifier circuit, but wanted to utilize a common chassis with some other model, perhaps a predecessor model, which had tube rectification. And they didn't think it would look right to have either a hole or an empty tube socket.
Or perhaps they just made a dumb design mistake, and thought a single rectifier tube would be adequate, and didn't realize the mistake until a large quantity of chassis had been fabricated. Or they wanted to keep its configuration consistent with what was described in manuals that had already been printed.
There are undoubtedly other possible explanations as well, that would be less egregious than intentional deception. We can't really say at this point.
Regards,
-- Al