Any fans of high fidelity/good sounding table or portable old transistor radios?

[catman]

G'day all, I admit that I have a 'thing' about hi fi/good sounding AM receivers/tuners, but my Henry Kloss/Tivoli AM/FM table radio is something that I never want to part with. I love it to pieces, and it sounds great!

I know that the various KLH's of the past are also great sounding radios amongst many others.

I use an old National Panasonic AM/SW portable transistor radio quite frequently particularly as it has very good sound quality, indeed it is marked as 'high fidelity'.

Any other fans of great sounding old transistor radios out there? Regards, Felix (vk4fuq).

[Celt]

I have a KLH 21 FM table radio that gets daily use....with a thread here: http://videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=255103

[egrand]

Motorola made some very good solid state table radios in the late 60's. Very nice sounding in wood cabinets and very sensitive. RCA had some nice ones too.

My dad bought my mom a Bose Wave radio for Christmas a few years ago. It sounds very nice but not terribly sensitive.

[Username1]

I have a Majestic tube am/fm table radio some one threw out decades ago, it has
a 6" speaker, the cabinet has a chunk missing, its been in my parents garage for
when I use to work on stuff. WOW That radio R O C K S ! ! ! Great sound ! ! Very Loud
and Very clear ! ! Great radio..... Wish I had a picture.... I think it may even have a tuning
eye, but not sure.... Its been a while.... Black plastic, gold chrome across the front,
white plastic, front with long horizontal tuning.... 4 black knobs lower left.. I think...

Holey crap I found it!.... http://radioattic.com/item.htm?radio=1230546

I guess it was sold under a few names. And it looks like it just had a pilot light not a tuning eye....
Somehow I don't think its from 1955.......


Got one of these too, http://radioattic.com/item.htm?radio=0380424 Not a R O C K E R by
any means but its my favorite style of that era table radios.... I really like the design....


.

[Kamakiri]

Loved my GE Superadio ever since I got it for Christmas in 1986

[Sandy G]

Felix, if you can find a German tube table set from the Fifties/Sixties, all the ones I've ever experience with, sound very good. They might not have sent as many of them to Oz as they did to The States, though.

[rca2000]

Those wooden Sylvania radios RM-90 and RM-300, from 1967-68 are VERY nice sounding---and quite powerful for their size too. They have a sealed speaker and TO-3 P-P germanium outs to drive it, on a fairly large sink. I have about 3 of them, and th FM-only model. I thought it had been stolen . but I still have it--found it when I moved the garage.

[WISCOJIM]

Originally Posted by egrand

My dad bought my mom a Bose Wave radio for Christmas a few years ago. It sounds very nice but not terribly sensitive.

I've got a Bose Wave also. Sounds fantastic at medium to loud volume settings, especially in a larger room.

But for use as a radio in the sleep setting, or anytime you want to listen with low volume, all the high notes seem to disappear and all you get is unintelligible bass. No matter what Bose claims, these radios need a tone control, or a redesign to cut the bass and boost the treble at lower volumes.

.

[catman]

G'day all, thanks for all comments. Kamakiri which model(s) GE Superadio do you have please? I've had a few over the years but only I have my MK2 and an 'operational' but slightly sick MK3 now.

I've always considered the MK2 as the best of the series with both great audio quality and superb RF performance too. A truly great radio! Regards, Felix (vk4fuq) aka catman.

[Kamakiri]

Mine's a MK2 as well

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Username1

I have a Majestic tube am/fm table radio some one threw out decades ago, it has
a 6" speaker, the cabinet has a chunk missing, its been in my parents garage for
when I use to work on stuff. WOW That radio R O C K S ! ! ! Great sound ! ! Very Loud
and Very clear ! ! Great radio..... Wish I had a picture.... I think it may even have a tuning
eye, but not sure.... Its been a while.... Black plastic, gold chrome across the front,
white plastic, front with long horizontal tuning.... 4 black knobs lower left.. I think...

Holey crap I found it!.... http://radioattic.com/item.htm?radio=1230546

I guess it was sold under a few names. And it looks like it just had a pilot light not a tuning eye....
Somehow I don't think its from 1955.......


Got one of these too, http://radioattic.com/item.htm?radio=0380424 Not a R O C K E R by
any means but its my favorite style of that era table radios.... I really like the design....


.

I have the newer issues of that model badged "National Panasonic".
Your radio is from 1961/62. IIRC, Matsushita electric started using the name "Panasonic" for the American market.
At the time, they were using, the name "National", but in the U.S., "National" was a registered trademark of the National Company, that made Ham equipment. They were probably using the "National" name in Canada.

[loopstick]

Hey catman good to see you. Don't mind the Wo Fat, part of a fun post in a Chinese gear thread. At the moment it's not working but I'll fix it. It's a Nordmende Tannhauser 56US3D my mom got at a garage sale back in the Eighties for $10.



More portable my fave is the Panasonlc RF-2200 (the SR3 is good too, but no dial light that I've noticed). The Sangean I used as a receiver when I first got my ham ticket. Back then I transmitted with an old EICO 720 tube and needed to make sure I was legal so the digital display on the Sangean was important.

[catman]

G'day all, this is another of my AM/FM table radios, a Sangean WR-11. It's essentially a cheaper version of the Tivoli Radio, but also an excellent sounding radio although the AM section sounds more like a typical 'narrow' superhet but still clean and nice sounding.

The FM section is slightly better sounding than my Tivoli IMHO. Regards, Felix aka catman.

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by catman

G'day all, I admit that I have a 'thing' about hi fi/good sounding AM receivers/tuners, but my Henry Kloss/Tivoli AM/FM table radio is something that I never want to part with. I love it to pieces, and it sounds great!
.

I picked up a Trivoli AM/FM set a couple weeks ago at a garage sale. Worked nice, and modified the AM with a wider IF ceramic filter I salvaged from an old analog (first generation) cell car phone. A MuRata CFL455AG2 about 18KHz wide, meant for narrow band FM work, but it doesn't know nor care that it's passing AM at 455KHz.

There's a 1.5K resistor between pins 2 and 5, to make the load impedance 1K (the chip presents 3K). Also used a 330K resistor across L5, the 2nd 455KHz filter, to make it wide.

Got it working nicely, then was about to button it up, fumbled the board, and shorted the 1.4V RF ground line (pin 5) of the TEA5710 chip to something on the adjacent board that holds the band switch and the volume control, and the chip died... Went on ebay and ordered some TEA5710 chips from some outfit in China, expect them to arrive around July 15th...

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by catman

G'day all, thanks for all comments. Kamakiri which model(s) GE Superadio do you have please? I've had a few over the years but only I have my MK2 and an 'operational' but slightly sick MK3 now.

I've always considered the MK2 as the best of the series with both great audio quality and superb RF performance too. A truly great radio! Regards, Felix (vk4fuq) aka catman.

I think the newer generation Superadio, the one with the more streamlined cabinet, uses a frequency synthesizer, instead of the old time tuning gang and oscillator-mixer type design. It's possible, that the analog tuning knob and indicator, just drives a voltage control pot.
The problem with mine, when tuned to a station, has a whistle and tunes extremely broad, even when the selectivity switch is set to sharp. It started doing it by itself, not since new. It seems, like a decoupling cap problem.
FM seems alright.