Best Vintage German Tube Radio?
 

Well from what I have seen on auction sites, the most valuable ones are the Saba Freudenstadt radios. I own a Grundig 2220 , Phillips B5x94a and a Nordmende Parsifal 59.
My favorite for sound is the Nordmende, but for build quality i like the Phillips.It's hard to compare as not many German radios show up in these parts. I would like to find a Tannhauser to see how it compares to the Parsifal. Maybe one day I'll find a nice Saba too. Logan

I am no expert but have been reading into these radios lately myself and Grundig made some good ones too. Like the 5050 & 5040. Those had tremendous bass actually. Seems the earlier (mid fifties) ones were better. The all time TOP TOP TOP I think I recall was the Saba 410 Continental Automatic(thats the export version) AKA as the Vollautomatic 14. Anyway that was an early 60's Stereo model. The trouble with those are the looks. No where near as nice looking as the mid 50's Sabas or the mid 50's Grundigs and Telefunkens for that matter. The Telefunken Opus 7 is supposed to be a very fine radio and seems to hold its value on the bay very well. The only other models that come to mind are the Graetz Sinfonia and Lowe Opta Hellas models. Personally I would love to own any of these in restored condition. I think I do recall though certain models were noted as having twice the output power than others when looking at specs on radio museum. If I had to chose I would really like to get an Automatic six speaker SABA but that is a pretty serious investment in fully restored condition. The bay seller em85 always has some nice radios with most selling for 500-1800 usually.

Let us know what you decide to get and post some pics!

RCA 9-INT-1. Made in Germany with excellent sound and great FM reception or an RCA 9-INT-2 which is the console version (with record changer) of the 9-INT-1. I have the RCA 9-INT-1 and it blows me away with the quality of the sound. Has excellent highs and lows also.

Hi,

my favourite German tube radio is the SABA Freiburg W3. I got it for nothing before two weeks from a neighbour who wanted to put it on the dump. It does not look quite good, but it has the best sound I ever heard from a tube radio. Another good SABA tube radio is the Meersburg 7 automatic. But it has not such a good sound as the Freiburg.

- Eckhard

Saba Permadyn 25 - 260H 1674 U 15.

The loudspeakers have a treble calotte in front of, unvisible from the back. Diameter of one loudspeaker is 10 inch.

- Eckhard

Very cool radio that W3 Eckhard thank you for sharing the photos! I bet it has nice solid bass with those 10 inch woofers.

I had a Grundig, I want to say a 940 or 970, that worked rather well. I think it was a victim of the move last year. I had it at the old house playing as I was packing stuff up. Either I neglected to grab it, or someone decided it was trash and packed it up for me. SOunded darn decent considering it had a random 6x9 speaker from a Monte Carlo in there replacing the original dead speaker. Tuner worked rather well too.

Grundig made a 941 and a 960 that I am aware of but had not heard of the 970. The 960 has a remake that is commonly listed on the bay but I haven't heard anything good about the remake. The 941 is a pretty basic model no tuning eye and has AM FM LW no shortwave. I have one and it uses an EL41 output tube. It seems to have a very good sound for a basic radio and as you say just has the one speaker about that size.

Back around 1975 or so, I had a Grundig model 2168 that I got from an old friend. The radio worked, but the cabinet was in bad shape; a corner was broken off the speaker mounting board, the dial scale and knobs were missing, the EM84 tuning eye was flopping around loose in the cabinet, and I think two of the three speakers were missing as well (there were two speaker grilles at either end of the cabinet). I replaced the missing knobs with two matching knobs I had in my junk box and made a wooden replacement for the glass dial scale, as well as replacing the FM dial drive with a length of plastic tubing attached to the tuner shaft, extending from a hole in the lower right side of the cabinet.

The condition of the cabinet and speaker mounting panel notwithstanding, however, I hooked up an old Webcor mono reel-to-reel tape deck to the 5-pin DIN connector at the rear of the chassis and wound up with a nice, albeit oldish, mono audio system (the Webcor RtoR tape recorder was from the 1950s and was a thrift-store find). Worked and sounded great as long as it lasted. I finally got rid of the Grundig in the early 1980s when the FM tuner quit. :no: I should have kept it. That set probably would be a classic today; it was an example of fine German workmanship not seen in today's American electronics and appliances since the '50s-'60s or so.

BTW, is Grundig still around in Germany, making their own electronics under their own name, or did they outsource their manufacturing to some other country, so that the Grundig radios and such available today are simply rebadged Japanese or Korean-made junk that won't last more than a year or two, if that long?

I've been a fan of German audio for a long time, and can understand the attraction.

Most any of the big, multi-speaker, high tube-count table sets from Grundig, Saba, Telefunken, -even Blaupunkt- should return a nice tone if properly serviced. Aim for the US import models, designed to run on 115v. Some have output transformer switches for US and Euro use. I found my EMUD in Germany and it was a US import! Someday, I'll see what it's all about but life is the stuff that happens when you're making other plans...

For me, the main attraction has always been those glossy, hardwood cabinets. Probably even more than the audio fidelity, and while I'm admitting, those push-button switches the Germans were so fond of can be a real PITA. That said, I haven't seen any of them that sounded better than say, a Kloss Model Two or a proper 8-tube Zenith. I like 'em and want more, and that includes some of the very fine solid state stereos that came out of Europe in the 1970s. Still, for pure listening enjoyment, its hard to beat the tubies that came from the good old USA-

Just checking things out on this thread. My aunt which is full german and 72 years of age has a very beautiful and i mean beautiful damn near perfect console stereo . I was over her place the other day and asked her did it work and she says no, that it needed these tubes replaced . So i would assume its all tube? I dont have the name of the console but i did look at it for a minute . Its about 4 ft long and 3 ft tall. Has very skinny legs about 4 inches tall and is a very nice dark walnut finish. The 2 glass doors are at the top of the front panel and slide side to side to gain access to the turntable on the left and the tuner on the right which has all german lettering on it. The 2 glass doors have a diamond pattern (gold) enlay on them .There is storage under the TT and Tuner with there own doors ( very solid and heavy). This is a very beautiful piece. Can anyone point me in the right direction to where i might be able to find something on this . She thinks it could be as old as 80+ years. She did say when it played it sounds so warm and beautiful. I would like to get this up and going for her . Plus she says one day it will be mine. Thanks for any help

There are several common German consoles but if I were to guess I would say it is probably a Grundig. You will need to get the make and model to get more information on servicing it. Often it is not the tubes that have failed though. If you can get the make and model you can search www.radiomuseum.org for more info. Another option might be to peruse ebay germany and look at some consoles and see if you can identify it visually.