Late 1950s Zenith Deluxe Roayal 500 Radio
 

Hello everyone, today I found at the local antique shop a late 1950s Zenith Deluxe Royal 500 8 Transistor Radio for $5 and some change and it was being sold "as is" (the Zenith label at the top of the radio is coming off presumably from water damage) so when I got it home stuck some new "AA" batteries in it and turned it on and sure enough the radio came to life and was picking up stations all over the dial including an oldies station from Cassopolis, Michigan and WBBM from Chicago, WOWO AM 1190 from Ft. Wayne, Indiana and some other stations that I wasn't sure about where they were from, but anyways I was just kind of surprised at how good this radio sounded for it being just a simple AM Only Transistor Radio from the late 1950s, it gets really loud! :music: :thmbsp: :yes:

Zeniths transistor radios were the best back then. They will perform well today if the electrolytics aren't bad.

well the one I have seems to still work pretty decently (I haven't touched any of the capacitors or transistors inside the radio) it was picking up stations from well over 100 miles away from me so that just tells you how good this thing is quality wise compared to your POS units you have now a days. :yes:

Try it at night, you'll be amazed at what it can do.

Most modern radios suck, here is two examples. A friend goes to some local auto races with some folks he knows that have a 60's-70's IIRC Airline multiband radio a cheap Japanese made off brand of the day. There is a low power FM station at the track that has info etc. which they listen to on the airline. Someone brought a new boom box that could not tune that station a few yards from it's transmitting antenna!

Another example: Recently some oldies stations cropped up on the AM band near me, my friend has a newer Honda and his car radio picks it up, but the sound quality of the music is SO bad fidelity wise that it is like listening to it through an old phone line. We later were in my '78 Lincoln and tuned the same station and the audio sounded so good that we though we were listening to FM for a while.

Once top AM 40 stations and AM stereo were dead most radio manufactures stopped bothering to make the AM sections of most receivers worth the parts they are made of.

i know, there was an oldies station on the AM band near me up in Michigan and it came in really well and sounded awesome on this radio. :) This thing sounds about as good as some of my old tube radios I have. :thmbsp: :yes: :music:

Is that the station, that's broadcasting on 1290AM and 100.3FM. Even when I get to Milwaukee, the FM is a little hard to get in some areas.
The original format was, what they referred as "Party Music" which was nasty noisy disco and very few decent tunes from that era.
You gotta love "Arbitron". :thumbsdn:

I don't know of an FM mirror of it. There are 2-3 AM music stations I can get, and 1-2 are 50's-60's music.

I'll have to look for that Disco station. I just finished recording a 2hour Disco 8-Track mix-tape for my car, and I easily could make another 1-2 of them for the songs I could not fit....

You fellers need to invest in a Zenith Trans-Oceanic...Or 2. You get one, most people ain't satisfied w/just one, be it a Tube or Soiled-State-either version. Zenith KNEW how to make a good radio, & the T/O was sort of their "Brag Piece". But oncet you get into Angel Modulation in a BIG way, yr ONLY recourse will be an R-390A. Winter DX season will be here before you know it, but PLENTY of time to score an R-390A, set up an Antenna, & get All Set for an exciting DX season..

The translator of WTZI on 100.3 is only 99 Watts, and does not have a huge coverage area:

http://binged.it/1LKqUWF

jr

I went to church with a friend that had a 1950s Zenith Transoceanic radio that had the really weird radioactive tubes in it (the 1U4 and the 1U5 tubes if I recall correctly and I actually serviced it for the guy because he was having issues with it not getting stations in.) Anyways I would love to find an original 1950s Zenith Transoceanic Radio but whenever I see one on everyones favorite auction site they are usually going for over $200 or more and I don't have that kind of money laying around to sink into a multiband radio like that. :sigh:

Interestingly enough these old Royal 500s definitely have a very respectable tuner in them they actually have an RF Stage in them which is rather unusual for a portable transistor radio, which I think is part of the reason why they have such good reception quality and sound quality for a transistor radio, listening to it you would think you were listening to a tube radio from the time period. :yes:

I have ANOTHER theory on these-This was right at the beginning of "Soiled-State", they hadn't had time to figure out how to cut corners, make 'em "Cheap & Nasty" just yet..

Huh? The 1V4 is not listed in my tube manual and the 1V5 is listed a subminiature type, which was not used in any Transoceanic. I have 4 different models of the TA, spanning from very early models to the end of the TA era...NONE of the tubes are radioactive.

jr

Prolly 1U4 and 1U5.
If one of 'em pops the filament, then they all go out since they're in series. Then the radio ain't active anymore.



:D

yes the 1U4 and 1U5 that's what I meant, which i had read somewhere online that they were radioactive tubes.

I meant the 1U4 and the 1U5 and I had read online somewhere that they were Radioactive tubes.

Yep, my thoughts exactly, which means that they're still good Made in America Quality yet just before the el cheapo Chinese and Japanese stuff came around in mass quantities. :yes: :music:

:lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao:

jr

I've got three of the tube transoceanics, 2 of them using the 7 pin mini tubes (1 needs a lytic wiring mistake fixed to work properly), and one using loctals. I also have got the red Halicrafters tube TO clone working.

When I want to seriously listen to SW and Ham radio I use a Sony ICF-SW7600GR (I prefer digital tuning so I can dial in to a new frequency if a station says it's about to change frequencies)....It is good with it's internal antenna, but connect it to a good long-wire antenna and it will blow away just about anything.

As for the quality of early Zenith SS radios it is not about cheapness (though once the cheap jap imports killed domestic SS radio manufacture that became a major factor) Zenith always wanted to make the BEST consumer radios and TVs for DX'ing/fringe reception, and that goal made it into most all American made Zenith products, and some of their foreign made products too.

I'm solidly outside of that station's FM coverage area 99% of the time.

Better not say that too loudly! :D
There are plenty that believe that the finest radios ever made were made in America 50 (or so) years ago, and that anything "modern" or "offshore" or "digital" is pure garbage! Sorry, that is just not the case.
Now, I indeed love my small collection of "boat-anchor" radios, which includes a R-390a, SP-600 and products from Hallicrafters, National and others, but most of the time for dxing I use a Sony XDR-F1HD (China) for FM and an ICOM IC-8500 (Japan) for everything else.

jr

For REAL DX I use a Panasonic RF-2200 for AM. The FM sucks and the Shortwave is mediocre.

DO NOT think the 1U4 or 5 are radioactive..

Only tubes like the 0A2 B2, C3--etc.. I THINK these ARE radioactive....

Hmm, then I wonder why somone online would say that one would need to be careful around the old Zenith Transoceanic radios with the tubes in them then? Because I did honestly come across an article on one of these antique radio forums (not this one I don't think, maybe Audio Karma or ARF) that mentioned that some of the tubes in the Zenith Transoceanic Radios were Radioactive and that one needed to be careful not to break the tubes or one might risk getting radioactive poisoning.

I suspect they may have heard reference to the "regulator tube" used in some Transoceanics (type 50A1) that's used as voltage dropper/current regulator for the filament string, and conflated it with gas regulator types which are used for B+ shunt regulation in precision equipment, and do contain a trace of radioactive stuff. It promotes reliable ionization of the gas.
The 50A1, by contrast, is a thermally-variable resistor and contains nothing radioactive.

OK that makes sense. Sorry about the confusion, I didn't relize that it could of came from that. Anyways now that's cleared up maybe we should get this thread back on topic again. So anyways I've been having some issues with a scratchy volume control and was wondering how I might go about clearing that up?