[en] Electrical characteristics of a Faraday-type MHD generator with a transversally shaped field configuration (SFC) of magnetic induction were investigated experimentally by using shock heated plasma. The magnetic induction was sharply reduced near electrodes in order to minimize the electrical losses caused by the Hall effect and the conductivity nonuniformity in the boundary layer. The performance of the proposed generator was experimentally compared with that of the conventional type with a uniform field configuration. It was shown that the apparent conductivity, the output power, and the internal resistance were markedly improved in the SFC design, namely, by a factor of from about 1.5 to 2.0. The experimental characteristics agreed qualitatively with results of three-dimensional computer simulations. A possible arrangement of the superconducting coil for the generation of the SFC for a full-scale MHD generator channel was also proposed