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Old 03-19-2016, 06:01 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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1960s Sears Silvertone Solid State Clock Radio

Hello everyone today I visited one of the many antique malls in the area near me and I found in one of the booths a 1960s vintage Sears Silvertone clock radio with a Telechron rotor-dial (as opposed to a flip-dial) movement installed. The unit just needed some cleaning and that was it. Interestingly enough this unit I think may have been made for Sears by GE because it just screams GE the way its made, from the type of power cord used right down to the Telechron movement (which yes I realize that other independent manufacturers used Telechron movements in their clocks as well but not as recently as the mid 1960s). The clock is mounted in a seperate assembly on top of the radio and the clock assembly rotates 45 degrees to the right or left, and it has AM and FM both with switchable AFC on the FM band.
I have some pictures posted below of the aforementioned clock for you to take a look at. The clock radio had on the inside of the radio on the circuit boards an EIA Code of 248 stamped on them, and then the model number of the radio is Model 132.20890000, which is kind of confusing because I know that the first 3 digits of any Sears/Silvertone model number was usually a code for who made the unit for Sears and then the unit actually has an actual EIA Code stamped inside the unit on the circuit boards also reflecting who made the unit for them, another interesting thing about this radio is the fact that even though it was made here in America by an American firm it has Japanese Made Elna Caps in the unit.
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File Type: jpg DSCN2745.jpg (76.6 KB, 50 views)
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File Type: jpg DSCN2747.jpg (64.8 KB, 25 views)
File Type: jpg DSCN2748.jpg (132.6 KB, 21 views)
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Old 03-19-2016, 06:22 PM
tom.j.fla tom.j.fla is offline
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Well the radio my scream G.E. but the first three numbers indicate that the radio was made by ARVIN. Sears model numbers indicate builder by the three numbers in front of the decimal point(132.xxx) etc. EIAcode 248 is code for ARVIN . All the best,Tom

Last edited by tom.j.fla; 03-19-2016 at 06:29 PM. Reason: add info
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Old 03-19-2016, 06:42 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tom.j.fla View Post
Well the radio my scream G.E. but the first three numbers indicate that the radio was made by ARVIN. Sears model numbers indicate builder by the three numbers in front of the decimal point(132.xxx) etc. All the best,Tom
Hmm, Arvin huh? I'm surprised that Arvin Industries was making anything that late, I looked up the EIA Code and interestingly enough the code traced back to Arvin Industries as well, which really surprises me because the power cord on the set is a power cord typically seen on GE Radios from the 1960s (tube and solid state) and even the style of the unit screams GE because it seems like I've seen a GE clock radio that looked similar to this unit before.

But I guess now that you mention it, it also does kind of scream Arvin as well because I know Arvin did make a lot of funky designs for their units towards the end. What's weird though is that the reception on this unit is pretty crappy for what it is, that was kind of shocking to me because from my previous experiences with Arvin radios they had pretty decent tuners in their radios that picked up a lot of stations but this clock radio is pretty bad at picking up station surprisingly enough (it actually uses the same type of tuner capacitor assmembly that you saw in a lot of the later handheld transistor radios which probably doesn't help matters any) and also it seems to lack a proper FM Antenna (built-in or external) which is also something I wasn't expecting on a unit this old, most radios, including clock radios from this time period either had a halfway decent built-in antenna or even a set of external FM Antenna connectors at 300 Ohms but this unit seems to not have either (or if it does have a built-in FM antenna its not a very good one.)
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Old 03-19-2016, 10:42 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Well Apparently after a little GIS searching I found a picture of the Arvin version of this clock radio, which is a little bit fancier than this one (and also has an analog clock dial as opposed to a "digital" clock dial like the sears version has), the Arvin version also seems to have external FM Antenna terminals wheras the Sears version doesn't which seems to say a bit about the quality of the Arvin version vs. Sears version. The Arvin version also has a sleep and snooze feature and a backlit clock dial whereas the Sears version doesn't have a lighted clock or a snooze or a sleep feature. So it seems that Arvin took their model and "dumbed it down" for Sears trying to keep it with as few features as possible so as to keep the price point down.
My guess is that the Arvin version was a TOTL model and would of cost the equivalent in today's money of about $50 back in the mid 1960s whereas the Sears version was probably only about the equivalent in today's money of about $20 back in the mid 1960s, so quite a price point difference between the two.
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Old 03-20-2016, 01:10 AM
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I've seen that cord on Heathkit equipment too.
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Old 03-20-2016, 07:33 AM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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I've seen that cord on Heathkit equipment too.
I'm guessing it must of just been a very popular cordset for companies to use back then.
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Old 03-20-2016, 02:45 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Captainclock View Post
the Arvin version also seems to have external FM Antenna terminals wheras the Sears version doesn't which seems to say a bit about the quality of the Arvin version vs. Sears version.
The picture of the back, showing the antenna terminals appears to be a different radio with no clock and with a brown power cord, so IMHO, you have not proven your point.

jr
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Old 03-20-2016, 03:38 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Originally Posted by jr_tech View Post
The picture of the back, showing the antenna terminals appears to be a different radio with no clock and with a brown power cord, so IMHO, you have not proven your point.

jr
I found these pictures of this Arvin Unit on Etsy where they had it for sale on there, I don't think the person would be able to take a picture of the back of a different radio and stick it in with the rest of the photos of the actual radio being sold and photographed otherwise it would be considered fraudulant. I'm guessing that the clock part didn't get into the photograph because as you can see the photograph isn't of the whole radio back, there's a little section of it missing yet which is probably the section with the clock.
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Old 03-22-2016, 01:09 AM
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Even though Arvin pretty much got out of the consumer electronics business by the mid '70's, they continued to supply Sears with consumer electronics until the mid '80's. Several years ago, I had an Arvin-sourced Sears stereo from about '84, or so. Everything in it was imported and I'm sure it was only assembled in the USA. Concerning your radio, it might be from the early '70's. The first digit of the four digit model number (in your case, the underlined portion of the number) is usually the year. In this case, it would be 1972. '72 Sounds about right, since it uses "KHz", instead of "KC" for frequency designation.
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Old 03-23-2016, 06:59 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Originally Posted by radiotvnut View Post
Even though Arvin pretty much got out of the consumer electronics business by the mid '70's, they continued to supply Sears with consumer electronics until the mid '80's. Several years ago, I had an Arvin-sourced Sears stereo from about '84, or so. Everything in it was imported and I'm sure it was only assembled in the USA. Concerning your radio, it might be from the early '70's. The first digit of the four digit model number (in your case, the underlined portion of the number) is usually the year. In this case, it would be 1972. '72 Sounds about right, since it uses "KHz", instead of "KC" for frequency designation.
Thanks, that was pretty helpful information, I had no idea it was that late, I was assuming it was from the late 1960s because of the fact that the style of the unit seems to scream "Jetsons", or "Brady Bunch" which was from the 1960s.
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