1962 Admiral AM FM transistor portable
 

I've had this radio for a number of years, its always been a favorite in my collection of 60's portable radios. This is an early AM FM, its from 1962 as indicated by early 62 date codes on all the caps. Its all original yet even though Im sure it could be improved with a recap. Its powered exclusively by 6 C cells. What I like about it is that its another Admiral that strongly reflects construction quality to that of a Zenith. Its all point to point with plug in transistors and built very solid. Its a heavy little set with a chromed die cast front frame. Its got a plastic back cover that clips on and is secured with a single coin screw on the bottom. The back cover is either vinyl or PVC as its quite flexible making it ideal for use on a portable. Its a good performing little radio and has a nice sound to it. Its compact too measuring at about 10X6X3.5". Like Zenith, Admiral also put the AM ferrite antenna inside the carry handle. I enjoy observing the obvious competetion between these two brands. I think Zenith was the innovators though, Admiral wanted to catch up and proove to Zenith that they weren't the only game in town who knew how to build a good radio.

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Sweet radio-looks mint!

Very nice! I can almost smell that '60's transistor radio smell from here!

Indeed! I know exactly what you mean, I love that smell! Its pretty potent on this radio too...

Beautiful, hunky radio, and hand-wired!

What does that use for the fm tuner? Some of the Zeniths had separate cores that moved inside tuning coils like a car radio.

I think that Admiral radio used a tuning capacitor, with two or possibly three gangs -- three if the set has an RF amp stage on AM.

Some of Zenith's better AM/FM radios of the '50s-'60s, such as the 845 series and the MJ-1035, had permeability-tuned FM tuners which moved powdered-iron cores into and out of coil forms to perform the same functions tuning capacitors do today. I read somewhere that this type of tuner is actually better for FM in certain respects than a tuning capacitor, but I'd have to go back and look at the article (which may well have been a post to this forum a while ago) to find out just what the differences, advantages, and disadvantages of the two tuning systems actually are.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Admiral was in fact trying to compete against Zenith when the latter came out with its solid state TransOceanic line of multi-band radios. One obvious difference between these sets is that the Admiral radio Doug owns has FM (he also mentions that Admiral had a version of this set that just tuned AM and shortwave), whereas the Zenith Royal 1000 and 1000-D models (the latter including a longwave band) did not. The first Trans-Oceanic solid-state portable to include FM was, IIRC, the Royal 3000. These were excellent radios, according to reports I've read on them, but the cabinets were just a tad too small to accomodate the FM tuner chassis; the back cover bulges out about one inch because of that. I think Zenith may have corrected this problem, however, when the Royal 7000 series was introduced.

That's a Sarkes- Tarzian FM tuning unit. Really an excellent radio. Too bad it doesn't have a three gang AM variable condenser. I like those fat RCA transistors.

Super nice! That'd look really good sitting next to my Y-909's.
Kevin