Show us your portable AC/DC multiband radios!

Beautiful collection of multi-band radios! I have the T/O 7000 and I also have a similar Grundig radio but mine is called an Ocean Boy and has a vertical row of pushbuttons for changing bands. It looks about the same size as your Grundig and you're right about the sound quality. I really like the Zenith, but honestly I thing the Grundig sounds better.

[Paula]

Thanks, Doug, for sharing all those nice photos and comments with us! It's a very impressive collection!

[Charlie]

Doug,

Those are some slick lookin radios! We are going to start calling you "Mr. Zenith"!

[drh4683]

Thanks for the compliments. I love transoceanics, and you can get them relatively cheap on ebay now. Ive wanted a TO for ever, and never found one before ebay. I always took ads out of the old NG magazines. Went to many garage sales as a kid and never any luck. At that Time finding a TO was more important than a TV. Still never found one around here to this day!
When the ebay demand of the R7000 goes way way down, Id love to have one of those. Those darn things go for $500 which is crazy.
The only other models Id like to get are the 2000 AM FM portable and a 1000-D.

I like the nickname charlie! We can probably all agree that zenith was the best. Too bad they are gone

[Charlie]

That's a groovy lookin Airline! In fact, it looks like the same model Doug has... or at least damn close to it.

[Bogframe]

I have a 1956 Telefunken Bajazzo that's in the process of being repaired that I picked up curbside a month or so ago. Tubes, huge batteries and a plug...what's not to love?

[kx250rider]

Here's my daily-use radio... Zenith Royal 2000. I read somewhere that this was Zenith's first AM-FM transistor set. Weighs a ton, has color TV type rabbit ears antenna for FM, and has a metal chassis with transistor sockets. Uses 8 D batteries, and no AC provisions. This radio is the only one I have that will receive AM up here in the canyon. We can't get ANY FM or TV, and most AM radios will only pick up one or two fuzzy stations. This one pulls in Bakersfield, CA, and a few Los Angeles stations fairly well.

Charles

[stereofisher]

Would not mind having one of those, but I am over my self imposed limit fo 5 portable radios. Got six sets and I am moving. The "wife factor" is kicking in. Dont really want to part with any of them The GE's and both Zeniths are all working sets. As is the Montgomery Ward..Too well I might add. Eric

[superdeez]

I don't know much about this set, except that it comes from the London area in the UK. It's a really good set, has all four European bands, LW/MW/SW/FM, and it works good.

Has dual cassette deck with dubbing, 5 bang EQ, 5 position memory, and scans for active stations.

Naturally, FM and MW (AM) are programmed for European frequencies 9KHz increments for AM, .05MHz increments for FM/SW (which is better than the .2MHz increments for FCC-spec FM radios!) I'm not at all surprised by the very fine tuning of FM, because in Europe, about 80-90% of broadcast radio is FM. I have been in some large metropolitain areas on the Contenent, and up in Scandanavia, where I could only pick up ONE AM station (and even then only at night!) but I could pick up eaisly 20 FM stations over the 88-108MHz FM band.

I really like the autoscan feature, because it's perfect for SW DXing, on a regular basis I pick up SW broadcasts from Mexico and Cuba, and probably even farther south, and occationally from contental Europe. Just a few minutes ago I got a Call in show from Bremen where the topic was how the East still lagged behind the West all these years after the fall of the iron curtain.

Eaisly, it's the best portable radio I've ever used since my old Mallory. It was an AM/FM/Cass. unit that has given me the most "professional" ability to record on tapes of any cassette player I've ever used. My Dad got it in 1970, gave it to me assuming it was junk in 1995, and it worked great until 2001, when it blew an outpit transistor (although that could have been due to my careless use of an ohmmeter to test my solder-job when the speaker wires crumbled. Even the tape deck still worked great after 31 years! I still have the manual. Anyone else have a Mallory like this? It had the knob tape control instead of buttons?

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Kaye-Halbert TV

Here's my daily-use radio... Zenith Royal 2000. I read somewhere that this was Zenith's first AM-FM transistor set. Weighs a ton, has color TV type rabbit ears antenna for FM, and has a metal chassis with transistor sockets. Uses 8 D batteries, and no AC provisions. This radio is the only one I have that will receive AM up here in the canyon. We can't get ANY FM or TV, and most AM radios will only pick up one or two fuzzy stations. This one pulls in Bakersfield, CA, and a few Los Angeles stations fairly well.

Charles

Those older Zeniths are indeed sensitive, which is why the company used the phrase "Long Distance" on their older tube radios until, IIRC, the '70s or so. I have a Zenith Royal 1000-1 TransOceanic that also has a metal chassis, socketed transistors, sounds great (like all Zeniths) and which picks up AM/SW stations like a magnet. The dial cord broke a few months ago, though, so I'll have to go in and restring it one of these days. My other Zeniths do a great job of pulling in distant stations; even my small R-70 portable (1980 vintage) gets stations 80-90 miles away on AM (in the daytime) regularly, and the dial just lights up with stations at night on every one of my sets. Now, if only the noise level in my apartment weren't so high, I'd have a few AM music stations to listen to. The one station I can hear halfway decently is about 80 miles from here (no AM music stations in Cleveland anymore), but the noise is often so high it comes close to drowning it out.

Man, you must be in a canyon if you cannot receive FM or TV where you are. I don't know a heck of a lot about the Royal 2000, but it must have a very sensitive AM section if you get stations from Bakersfield and Los Angeles.

I don't know just where in the Los Angeles area you are, but it obviously must not be in the immediate metropolitan area or even in a suburb if you are blocked from receiving any FM or TV at all. I know this happens in places like West Virginia and up in the mountains in other parts of the country, but even most of those areas get at least one FM station. Even if you were able to pull in one NPR station it would be better than nothing.

What on earth do you guys do for TV reception in that canyon? If antennas don't work, the only other thing I can think of is that you have cable or satellite. If you have either you can get 24-hour music with their digital music channels; even if you cannot get any FM in your area you can still hook up the audio from your cable box or satellite receiver (or the audio output of your computer's sound card) to your stereo system and still get all the music you could ever want. I did that here a long time ago and have never regretted it. Internet radio and digital cable music channels offer much more variety than regular FM radio does today, or probably ever did. No reception problems or commercials either. I still listen to one oldies station and a classic rock station on FM occasionally, but these days most of my music comes from digital cable and Internet radio, not to mention my own music collection stored on my computer. I have never enjoyed listening to radio or music more; I often wonder why I didn't discover Internet radio sooner than I did.

[tomwil]

It is a shame that most of the pictures on this thread do not show up ... It would have been nice to have seen all of your radios!

When a little kid, Santa brought me a Sears Wayfarer for Christmas (1972). It has serviced me well through the years, as I went DXing and recorded my finds on tape. And, it worked wonderful as an amplifier (with RCA input) for testing various equipment through the years. It still is in my arsenal, and works well to this day.

While hamfesting one day, I found another rather cheap, and will hold on to that one for parts, if mine ever needs them.

Saw one go on eBay the other day ... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=5876622352

[Charlie]

Originally Posted by tomwil

It is a shame that most of the pictures on this thread do not show up ... It would have been nice to have seen all of your radios!

Tom, I've been given an opportunity to go back into some archives and dig out old photos one by one from some of the previous posts that were lost last year. There are still a few missing, but most of them are now in place. You can now go back and have a look... they're really cool looking radios! I also did the same in the Pocket Transistor thread and a few of the others.

[tomwil]

Originally Posted by Charlie

I've been given an opportunity to go back into some archives and dig out old photos one by one from some of the previous posts that were lost last year.

Charlie, thanks for restoring the pics! They are a sure pleasure to view!

[Charlie]

Interesting... I've never seen a boom-box styled radio with shortwave!

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Charlie

Interesting... I've never seen a boom-box styled radio with shortwave!

I seem to remember a few Aiwa and Panasonic boom boxes with at least one SW band, though they are rare. Most garden-variety boom boxes/ghetto blasters were AM/FM/cassette only, though some of them were huge--they must have weighed 20 pounds (less batteries) if they weighed an ounce. It always amazed me how anyone could carry one of those on their shoulder while walking down a city street for any length of time. I bet a lot of kids all but cheered (and got rid of their large systems) when Sony came out with their Walkman headphone stereos.