FM Reception
 

I have found that Zeniths perform much better on FM than RCA - just my personal experience.

I seem to be drawn to my old radios especially during the time frame from thanksgiving to christmas. The closer to christmas the more likely you will find music, especially christmas music. Listened to my 1931 Crosley for several hours last nite on WTAD 930 AM,, one of the oldest radio stations in the USA. Just like my great grandparents did so many years ago. Tonite (christmas eve) we had the console Motorola 75F21 playing the christmas songs, sounded splendid. But I do listen to them all year when I take the time.

I'm about to put a Philco 37-610 tombstone radio into dailey service. I finally finished it and I am impressed at how good a 69 year old radio performs. It is going in the living room so it will get plenty of use and look great too.

:music: I use my Truetone D-724 from 1937 daily.it's also a great radio to listen to short-wave broadcasts at night on. My 1962 Delmonico (JVC) hi-fi consolette sees a lot of use as well, since most of my really good music is on vinyl.

With every tube radio or TV whose electronics have been restored, it's a good idea to slide it off the shelf and play it for a while every month or two. Warm everything up to operating temperature, keep the controls lubed up and movable, etc.

These things were designed to be used, not shelved.

I'm not as systematic about this as I should be, but everything that I listen to daily, in the office, family room, and bedroom, is hollow-state.

No music or entertainment on AM-dead medium
 

AM Music stations are a thing in the past for here in Northern CA despite big company sponsors that used to support programming. Just political blog stations now.

:blah:



Only use my 1930 Zenith to listen to news station. AM is a dead and obsolete entertainment medium out here. Sold many a good radio, just can't keep them all to listen to news for 1/2 an hour, sometimes during day. Someone must have their ears glued to listen for this crap, big corporations taking over programming.

:thumbsdn: :tears:

Yeah-I've heard tales of R-390As being on 24/7 for years, until a tube went kerflooey. Turning 'em on & off was harder on 'em than just leaving 'em on-R-390s also used a peculiar kind of multi-position microswitch that would arc & "weld" itself "on" after years of wear-I had one do that. Thankfully, I have Terry DeWick 75 miles down the road...<grin>-Sandy G.

I know exactly what you mean. I live some 35 miles east of Cleveland; most of the city's AM stations are talk or news-talk these days. However, I did find one Canadian music station, AM 740 CHWO in Toronto, so music is not entirely a forgotten format on AM--you just have to know where to look. I am not familiar with what is on radio anywhere in California (never been there or anywhere west of Ohio in my life), so don't know what your AM situation is like except from what you tell us in your post. I would think, however, that there might be one or more music stations in small towns in your part of the state, even if most stations in San Francisco, et al. have switched to talk or news-talk. Don't know what you are using for an antenna on your 1930 Zenith, but if you have a reasonably good outdoor antenna hooked up you should be able to hear smaller stations in northern California or even Oregon. It wouldn't surprise me if Portland has one or more music stations; if you look around your AM dial at night, you might even hear the more powerful stations in Seattle or even north of the border in Vancouver, British Columbia. There are still many good music stations in Canada--CHWO 740 in Toronto, the one I listen to a lot, is one, but I doubt if it will reach the West Coast, as its signal pattern is configured to cover greater Toronto and much of the northeastern United States.

My point is that AM music radio is not dead yet, nor will it be any time soon. If worse comes to worst and you actually cannot find any music stations on your AM dial, look around on the Internet. There is a service called Live365 that plays 24-hour music, any kind of music you like, with no commercials if you subscribe to the paid version ($5.95 per month); there is a free ad-supported version of the same service. Log on to www.live365.com to get more information and the free player you need to listen to their music. Also, if you have digital cable or satellite television service, you almost certainly will have access to several digital music channels. I have both Comcast digital cable and Live365 service, and like them both so well that I have all but abandoned standard radio (which isn't all that great here either, even on FM). The commercial-free nature of digital cable music and Live365 are well worth the monthly subscription fees. The Live365 player is free, and as I said, the basic service is free as well, so you really have nothing to lose.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot. Public radio stations often have very good music; the San Francisco area (and most major metropolitan areas) have at least one NPR affiliate. If your area's local NPR station is on AM or simulcasts AM and FM, you can tune in the AM station on your Zenith and it will very likely sound as good as FM--those old Zeniths have great sound (I have five such radios, one of which has a very good audio system for a table model, so I can vouch for the sound quality of the earlier Zeniths). If you want to hear the local NPR station on FM through your old Zenith AM radio, all you need is an FM-to-AM converter such as was used with car radios in the '60s and '70s. Set your Zenith to the output frequency of the adapter (usually 800-900 kHz or 1400-1500 kHz) and tune in your NPR station on the adapter. Just a thought.

I've noticed that many small towns have good AM stations to listen to, but they are usually very low power. There's one near my cabin broadcasting from Woodville, TX (population 2000) that I enjoy. My cabin is roughly 15 miles south of Woodville, so I can just barely pick it up. They play a good mix of older country songs.

I've encountered many AM stations during my travels on board ship. My favorite is from New Jersey... WMTR 1250. They play the best oldies from the 50's and 60's. It's like stepping back in time.

I use my tube radios every day. I'm partial to Zenith though. I have a nice original AM/FM High Fidelity(c845)that I use in the kitchen, wonderful sound.
http://images.google.com/images?q=tb...enith_H845.jpg

I also have a 600 series Transoceanic shortwave that is just amazing, she pulls in stations from all over the planet (a few satilites too).....
http://www.transoceanic.nostalgiaair...ics/Y600TO.jpg

The small stations in small towns are good, IMO, as long as they are playing music, but all too often these stations are sold and switched to talk or other formats after so many years, especially in this day and age of takeovers by conglomerates. I can give you two examples. One is the local station located some three miles from my hometown. This one is a 500-watt station that used to play all oldies, using a format modeled after CKLW in Detroit in the '60s-'70s. Two years ago, the local station near my hometown dropped that format like a hot potato and replaced it with syndicated talk. The local station five miles or so from where I live now used to be top-40, but about three or four years ago or so it dropped that format and began retransmitting the programming from a classical music station some 50 miles west of here, when the classical station was sold and switched to a frequency right next to a powerful country station in the next town, 35 miles east of here. So, Charlie, I'd enjoy that oldies station in Jersey while it's playing oldies, as the next time your ship passes through the town where the station is located the format may be entirely different. A former program director at the local station near my hometown told me about 25 years ago that the radio business is anything but stable; in fact, he said that a person working in radio today will be lucky if he or she is at the same station six months from now. This was the situation 25 years ago. Given that many small AM stations are switching from live DJs to talk or satellite music programming almost at the drop of a hat these days (a small station some 35 miles from here went to satellite from live programming last year), however, I don't doubt what that program director told me one bit. Also, some small-town stations are going off the air altogether when they find themselves unable to compete with stations in larger cities. A 1kW station about 20 miles south of me went silent about three years ago for just that reason, after having had three formats (the last one being satellite sports talk from the Sporting News Radio Network) since it first signed on in 1969; it was located in Geauga County, Ohio, a rural area some 30-40 miles from Cleveland, and found itself completely unable to compete with the larger stations in the city, especially since the station that went silent was in the impossible situation of being unable to get authorization for either full-time operation at lower night power or to switch frequencies to another (it tried to get authorization to move to 870 kHz from its original 1560) that would allow for full-time operation at either lower night power or full daytime power. The FCC said no, perhaps because of 870's proximity to a local 50kW Cleveland station on 850. The Geauga County station finally threw in the towel the day after Memorial Day three years ago and has not been heard from since.

It's been nearly two years since I've actually been there on the ship, but since finding that station, I still continue to listen on the internet. They play live streaming except when ball games are going on. I really do wish there were more stations like this. Have a listen if you like...

http://www.wmtram.com/

Their streaming audio plays great. I'm listening right now, and I'm using my cel phone to connect to the internet.

I found this station when we were in Bayonne and I had to go ashore to the doctor's office to have a body of foreign matter removed from my eye (yeah that was a real treat). As I was sitting waiting to see the doc, they had and old 70's looking radio playing this station. I was hooked at that point. After that, I'd always listen while we were in port.

While I'm at home, I'll play my old tube sets on a variety of stations from other areas. In the evenings, the "trucker" stations play older country tunes. In the mornings, KROF 960 in Abbeville, LA plays cajun tunes till noon. I also find some country tunes on KWKH 1130 in Shreveport, LA in the evenings.

Our AM stations here in the Beaumont / Port Arthur area are all news, talk, and Christian stations. Years ago, KOLE used to play Big Band, but now it's news and talk. That was the last of our good music to hear on AM.

Austin, where I live has gone all talk, sports, etc. I have to listen to a San Antonio station to get any AM music that I like. In fact, in the last year, the FM radio band selection seems to be getting more limited. They(The FM stations) keep trying to complete with IPODs and satallite radio, forgetting that their local content is what makes them unique.

@Midnight Blues: your "Zenith" radio is an World-wide reciver?

Yes, it has:
2-4mc
4-9mc
16m,19m,25m,31m and am
It has a 5' whip antena and another antena called a wave magnet.
Transoceanic