How a 1927-1931 radio will behave today in use?

[Telecolor 3007]

I'm curios, how a 1927-1931 will behave when used today to listen. You probably can connect a better speraker, but since some of them where not superhetoridine type, how they will handle the reciving. And today you do have a lot of things that don't existed back then and they are producing interference.

[zeno]

If its a super-het probably better than almost anything new.
We had a late 30's Zenith console at work. Had a BIG "Wave Magnet" box antenna built in. You could turn it & get all sorts of stations nothing
else in the shop would. The average radio could only get 2 or 3.
Back then there was only AM so things were built very Good & had
to sound & recieve good.

73 Zeno
LFOD !

[Electronic M]

I've owned 3-4 working AC powered TRF sets from that era. They were all meant for a ~100' outdoor long wire antenna, and are totally deaf without an external antenna. 10' of lamp cord will bring in the strong local stations. To get much else you either need a long wire or to get creative... I've found that the loop antennas out of 40s era sets often have 50-100' of wire and behave somewhat like a long wire without the hastle of a real one.

[old_coot88]

Had a really nice 1931 Silvertone floor-stander on legs. Superhet with 175kc IF. RF stage, mixer, and IF were 24A tetrodes. Volume control worked by varying screen grid voltage on the 24As. Great DXer but no AVC, obviously. Lots of fun "riding the gain". Image rejection was less than stellar despite the RF stage. The local station on 1240 appeared again down at 890, though attenuated. Local osc. was a #27 triode. Push-pull 71A triodes for output.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by old_coot88

Had a really nice 1931 Silvertone floor-stander on legs. Superhet with 175kc IF. RF stage, mixer, and IF were 24A tetrodes. Volume control worked by varying screen grid voltage on the 24As. Great DXer but no AVC, obviously. Lots of fun "riding the gain". Image rejection was less than stellar despite the RF stage. The local station on 1240 appeared again down at 890, though attenuated. Local osc. was a #27 triode.

I'm sure one of the reasons the old 1920s-30s radios worked as well as they did was there were not nearly as many radio stations in operation then, plus not every city or town had a local station. These radios had to be built for DX (reception of radio stations from long distances) for that reason; they are still excellent in that regard today, if they are working as well as they should. The audio stages were much better than those found in today's gutless-wonder transistor portables, and could be used with an external phonograph turntable as well.

BTW, Sears Roebuck's Silvertone line of radios (later TVs) were very good quality and sounded good to boot. My grandmother had a small Silvertone AM table radio which she used in a cottage she owned near Akron, Ohio; this radio worked quite well, except for overloading badly on a radio station near the cottage. The station came in very well on its assigned frequency (1220 kHz), but, since it was a 50kW flamethrower located only a few miles (!) away, the station could also be heard at the lower end of the dial (around 600 kHz, IIRC).

That Silvertone radio, unfortunately, was unceremoniously thrown out with a lot of other stuff when the cottage it was in was torn down some years ago. That was too darn bad, since that radio was built (and sounded/operated) much better than today's sets, but I had (and still have to this day) a feeling the people who tore down the cottage and threw out nearly everything, including that Silvertone radio, didn't give a tinker's darn about the value of older stuff like radios; they just wanted all that junk out of the cottage, and to heck with antique value or anything else. Believe me, if I had been in a position to grab that Silvertone radio before the cottage was demolished, I would have (unfortunately, however, I was some 60 miles away, near Cleveland, while all this stuff was going on).

[Dude111]

I would LOVE having a 20s/30s radio!!!

Probably recieves like crazy!!

[zeno]

And remember in the 30's you had AM & that was it. So an AM radio
was built to the highest quality as a rule. Today AM is mostly drive time
and talk radio. The Zenith Stratosphere is an example of an all out
radio & worth more than a small house today.

73 Zeno
LFOD !

[dtvmcdonald]

I have an Atwater Kent model 44 and a Grebe Synchrodyne, both multitube TRFs.

Both work just fine. I get good reception on both using just a 30 foot wire out the window to a tree.
Well, they work fine when the local noise if off.

When using a 37 foot antenna at a height of 1/16 inch and a (power gain only) at the antenna
antenna preamp they work well, local noise or not.

At any time of day or night there are always many stations. Selectivity is quite adequate.

They both need period speakers.

[DavGoodlin]

I have an Atwater Kent 30, made in 1926 which is two years before a power supply for 120 VAC was offered on any set.

This AK set is a single-knob TRF and will not get much daytime reception without a 120 foot outdoor antenna. But, that was almost the best you could get then. Not a house rocker at all, volume and sensitivity were both limited by the B battery's 90 volts, type 01 output tube and horn speaker.

The 1928-29 early power supply sets from Philco used a triode tube for every stage but upped B+ by using a transformer to increase DC to 150-250 volts. Model 87 from Philco used type 26 triodes in the RF section but featured increased audio power thanks to type 45, a popular push-pull output tube - specifically for audio.

It was not until the type 24 tubes were used, which included a screen grid, that AM performance took a huge leap forward. By October 1929, Philco model 95 was advertised as "screen grid plus" yet still sold less expensive triode models for a while. Philco can be credited with much of this early development but Zenith was going to catch up by the end of the 30s, when built-in antennas were developed (not sure who to credit there) also known as the "wave magnet".

If anyone has the need for an amazing old radio like these at a give-away price, then I strongly suggest a trip to Kutztown, PA next month or September 16-17. There are so freakin' many radios there, some get left behind if not given away. The resources to repair them are almost endless, now with the internet. Take the plunge!!!

http://www.tuberadioland.com/philco95_main.html

BTW - The 26 tube was used in the neutrodyne model 87, which is vague reference to old technology.

[Telecolor 3007]

Beats me, how in U.S.A., a country that was leading electrification (in 1926 probably there where no less the 10,000,000 = ten million electricty users in U.S.A.), radios with power supply taken from the electricity mains camed only so late. I could understeand this if we where talking about Romania, which in 1926 probably had no more then 1% procent of electricity users in U.S.A. (and in 1926 a lot of people in U.S.A. dind't had electricity), but U.S.A. ...
It is true that around 1930 a lot of people in U.S.A. prefferd console radios or it was an exageration about U.S.A. Found the info in an Romanian almanach. I will translate the article if you want.
So only after the pentode camed, radio perfromance started to improve.
I think U.S.A. radio where better designed for reciving more stations.
Radios that used batteries had one advantage: better reciving, because there wheren't mains induced parasites.

[Electronic M]

Electrolytic capacitors weren't really a thing until the late 20s. Even a low value for a filter 4uF paper cap (2-4 with some LARGE chokes could work as a filter) was a MASSIVE expensive part back before AC powered sets came into vogue. Batteries may have been smaller and definitely were cheaper.

We adopted AC sets as soon as the technology was there for them to exist....
America so wanted AC radios that when they came out many towns literally had battery radio bonfires to celebrate switching to AC radios...Part of the reason 20s sets are rare today.

[Titan1a]

A well-built radio is a thing of wonder! I have four pre-war radios and other than the switches and the pots work nicely and can really catch a faraway signal. They take a mediocre sound and make it almost like FM. The radios really need a good antenna for best results except the 1940 Zenith with wavemagnet loop antenna (good for local only). I spent a bucket of money on them and have no regrets!

[Kevin Kuehn]

The early radio's grid leak detectors don't sound so great with today's over modulated bass heavy content. They simply can't respond fast enough to the signal dynamics.

[ARC Tech-109]

I have a 1939 vintage United Motor R1160 that sees daily use be it overseas SW, WWV or the local news/talk on the b'cast. It's still running the original field coil speaker giving it a nice fat sound, the cabinet shows it's age however being in a higher humidity area of lower lake Mille Lacs the veneer is peeling off. I'm running a 50-some foot long wire between the pines and it picks up quite well despite the digital noise, some of the modern audio processing is difficult for the AVC to digest but that's the world we live in.

The old radios are just as capable as the modern junk and definitely have the sound like no other. It's been said before but worth the mention; all the tube radios should have a full recap of the supply and the stages, I recommend Sprague orange drops and silver micas at the very least and if so inclined a full resistor replacement to bring everything back to spec.

[maxhifi]

1. No AVC means you constantly have to crank the volume up and down as you tune weak and strong stations.
2. Audio quality is poor compared to newer sets, by the mid 30s things were WAY better. Speakers and audio transformers improved massively.
3. Easily overloaded by strong local stations.

All in all, those sets made before approximately 1935 are much more primitive than those produced later.

Some of the major improvements include:
AVC
VARIABLE MU RF tubes
Beam power output tubes
Dynamic speakers with accordian spiders instead of the terrible phenolic spider
Better power supply filtering via inexpensive electrolytic capacitors
The pentagrid converter

Also, by the late 1930s, components such as resistors and capacitors started to take on the physical appearance which we know them by today. The really old stuff looks very weird when you're working on it

Finally, the art deco movement of the 1930s dramatically improved the styling of radios, modernizing them substantially compared with earlier offerings.
And on and on.