Siemens Schatulle M 47 Tabletop w/ odd Markings
 

I'm new to tube radios and I've looked all over the internet for information about this Seimens radio I recently purchased, but I can't seem to find anything. "O-UK", "M-UK". Wozzat? I've never heard of anything like this before! Does anyone know anything about this?

Everything's in German and instead of having real shortwave frequencies it just has location names and general bands (19m, 31m, 49m etc). The sound reminds me a lot of an AR speaker. It has three speakers of the same size and there are about 10 tubes inside. It has connections for crystal and magnetic phono. http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k1...t/DSCN1161.jpg

"UKW"-"Ultra Kurz Weil" I think is FM in German. It prolly only goes to 100 or 104 MhZ, the European FM band. If you could get a closer shot of the dial and or band selector pushbuttons, maybe we could tell you more. In any case, the German tabletop radios like this one tended to give very good performance & sound. Ya done good...(grin)

Yeah, the FM frequencies seem to only go from 88 to 100.7 Mhz or so. One of the FM tubes tests weak, so I wasn't able to get much. But, I like being able to read German towns & locations on the dial though.

When I get home, I'll take some more pictures. It's got longwave too, but I don't think that'll do me any good in the US.

Bingo! Ultrakurzwelle = Ultra short wave = VHF = FM
I'm trying to remember what the others mentioned meant. Pix will be a huge help to jog memory cells! :)
I sure wish my German wasn't so rusty.
Tom

I'm having problems getting a good clear picture. In the meantime, here are the button markings left to right; AUS, PHONO, LANG, MITTEL, KURZ, O-UK, O-M, UKW. Maybe the "O" designation is for tape recorders? There's an little picture of a tape deck on the back panel.

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k1...t/DSCN1183.jpg


http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k1...t/DSCN1164.jpg

(BTW, the tubes are 2x 12AX7, 2x 6BQ5, 2x 6BA4, ECH81, EABC80, EB91, and EF84. Too bad most of the Seimens tubes were weak!)

AUS = off (see posts below)
PHONO = ceramic phono input
LANG = Langwelle = Long Wave
MITTEL = Mittelwelle = MW = AM
KURZ = Kurzwelle = Shortwave
O-UK
O-M
UKW = FM as above

:scratch2: Maybe you're right about the "O" being for tape...

You lucky, lucky ^%$& . No I am not jealous, really, i swear! Scouts honor. OK maybe a little, Alright i might be a little green with envy. I think Aus means off. and maybe the O-M means magnetophon or tape player. Logan:D

Very nice find. When I was studying in Germany, I had a very similar old tube radio, with the same kind of dial with all the city names on it. I remember they went alphabetically von Aachen bis Zagreb, with just about every major European city in between, too, including some obscure ones that you wouldn't expect these days.

It was explained to me that years ago, each city's official station had a fixed radio frequency that didn't change, so the manufacturers could put the city names on the dial for people's convenience. Many (most) of the European tube radios of that era had the city names like that; the bigger the set and dial, the more names they crammed in. Some cheaper sets just had a few city names marked. I sort of judged the status of the radio by the number of city names. Of course, these days the city names don't match particular frequencies any more, and such dials are no longer produced.

I remember that radio had a very rich, full tube sound. I liked it. Mine didn't have the doors yours does, but it was BIG, too. I loved that radio, and wish I still had it. :tears:

Thanks for reminding me of that old radio, and congratulations on a great find! :thmbsp:

I think AUS is off. I have it on one of my radios too.

That is one sweet radio!

Radiomusem has some more info on it:

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/siemens_schatulle_m47.html

The specs on it are quite impressive. Sold for 575 DM when new which puts it at the top of the line. Also has 11 tubes and a noted output of 14 watts which is more than double the normal German table top of the period. Also has 12 FM circuits which is at least 3 or 4 more than your average German radio.

So you got yourself a keeper!!

AUS = off
UKW = FM

M = probably AM band, aka Medium Wave. Might also mean magnetic cart.
K = maybe the crystal cart?

The O is usually a phono, Since yours has both a magnetic and ceramic input I'd guess one button is for mag, one for ceramic. Actually its probably not really an O so much as an inverted Q. On mine, it has a little arm on the lower left side.

Thanks, guys. "Aus" does indeed equal "off". Sorry for any confusion.
Tom

I remember seeing a Zenith console with station names arranged around the rotary dial, but it seems interesting that stations would be arraigned in such a way... but I wish the shortwave had actual frequency markings! Individual markings like BBC and "Amerika" don't really cut it anymore.

That radiomuseum site is pretty neat. 575 DM? Sounds like a lot of money...

Some guy has a similar radio on Ebay right now.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Siemens-Schatull...QQcmdZViewItem

I'll probably have these pictures by the holiday, really. Thanks for all the replies!

Hi!
You have a nice thing... o means Ortssender... think think... yes. Short range preception for am and fm. The other setting is DX or long range perception. There is a filter in the first circuit right after the antenna.
U or UKW: FM 87´5 to 100 Mhz
M or MW: AM 550 - 1600 Khz, magnetic carts where known but very uncommon those days, the first magnetic carts reached Otto Normalverbraucher (aka John Doe) at the end of the 50´s.
L or LW: AM 150 - 350 Khz
K or KW : Short wave, usually 6-19 Mhz
Phono or Q: Turntable
TB: Tape input
The schatulles costs a lot of money. You are happy to have one!
My grandfather earned 1,50 DM per hour in those days.

Yours
Alex

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k1...t/DSCN1185.jpg
http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k1...t/DSCN1187.jpg
http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k1...t/DSCN1195.jpg
http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k1...t/DSCN1177.jpg
http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k1...t/DSCN1181.jpg
http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k1...t/DSCN1196.jpg

Thanks! I didn't know that they had individual settings for short and long distance reception... that's the first time I've heard of that. :music:

That's fairly common. It desensitises the radio a bit, where you can't pull in as many stations, but you also won't pick up car ignitions, electric fences, florescent lights, etc-or at least not as badly. Sposed to cut down on static, was useful back in the day when there weren't many FM stations, & AM stations actually played "music"...What a concept, right ?!? (grin)

In Germany FM was initialized in ´49. There was an international meeting in Genova which ruled the bandwith a transmitting station could use and what frequency ranges could be used for civil broadcasting.
Unfortunately they defined the space for one broadcasting station very small, so that two senders often messed up each other (9 khz-"piping"). So you had two possibilities: The directional ferrite antenna, (Richtantenne oder Peilantenne, the knob under your volume control), or to weaken the reception, hoping the disturbing second sender will be faded out.
That´s the problem for am.
A weakened FM reception is seldom. Perhaps some radios had problems receiving a sender that blasted to strong.
The tuning sectors of that old beasts are often very sensitiv because of long distances between the transmitting stations.
I used to listen AFN Frankfurt on FM with an old tube set. None of my other receivers were able to fish that weak signal.
Yours
Alex

Oh, so I guess it's like a crude MPX system. Where this radio is sitting, hitting that button wipes out the signal completely. Everything works on this radio but, I noticed one of the 6BQ5 plates is running red... a bad capacitor or a short perhaps?

Or a bad resistor on the cathode circuit perhaps. Something is definitely causing the plate current to be too high though.

You should check the currents around that valve. By the way you should recap that ole beast at the points with high currents and tensions. This is:
Filter caps (should always be changed)
The cap that couples one system of EABC 80 to EL84 (pre stage to last stage)
Caps that rule the current and the tensions to the plates
Cannot explain better because of my english.
But remember: Your gear is over 50 years old, and some caps (especially those sealed with tar or those little nasty beasts printed with WIMA should be changed without hesitating. They are known to be down after all this years.)
I strongly advice you to do that. You don´t want your house to be set on fire cause of a 5´column german radio?
Seriously: You are messing around with high currents, and the siemens is very easy to recap. It hasn´t got many of them, and you have a lot of place under the chassis. Also you have the whole documentation. That´s worth a lot. If you need help with the german expressions I would be glad to help you. Good luck!
Schatulle means a little box used to store jewels and treasure. That´s what you got. So take good care of your baby.

Yours
Alex

Very good advice there Alex!

In the last years I got ca 20 radios from this aera, and only two of them worked correct. The others had problems with their caps.
ERO, Hydra and WIMA can be thrown out without checking them. They are simply bad.
That is my experience.

Uhh-Huh. Couldn't say it better myself...

Thank you, Jeff and Sandy... there are so many mistakes to be made, why make always the same ones? That would be boring.... grin.

Thanks for all the replies. Fortunately (or unfortunately) no capacitors seem to have the markings like WIMA... most of them have the Siemens logo and are relatively small by mid-50s standards. One of the electrolytics on the 6BQ5 was off by about 20uf, so that isn't a good sign.

Those tar-sealed praline´s and wax-sealed bonbons tend to get dry. So they short the circuit or don´t allow any current to pass (in extremes). Check them out. No matter what the marking is.
That cap you checked shurely is not the only one working out of tolerance...