Looking for Midland boombox....
 

Hopefully I am putting this in the right place, I know it's not ultra-vintage but it is 26 years old at this point! It's also a crosspost from stereo2go, just to get a little more exposure.

I used to have a Midland that I found in the trash when I was a kid, it never worked at all with its original electronics but I did stuff like put a separate amplifier board in and run it off a Walkman. I have never seen another of this model but I just found it in a vintage ad, via Google news archive search.
It is a close relative of the Canadian Candle/Prosonic on this page: Golden Age 4
Based on that image and my memory, a few years ago I hacked together this image of what I expect it to look like:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~rpm1200/...empt4_gimp.jpg

Now I have found this newspaper ad: Apr. 7, 1984 Times-News Scroll down and left a bit and you'll see this:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~rpm1200/...o07Apr1984.jpg

Not the clearest image but from what I can tell, it's the same one I am looking for! That shows the model number as 23-7393-4.

Now Midland has been around at least since the 70s and as far as I know they are still around. However, they are typically known for their CB radios and, more recently, weather radios. The Western Auto ad shows an entire page of Midland telephones, radios, TVs, etc. Here's the whole page.

I'm wondering if the Midland name was exclusively used at Western Auto, aside from the more widely available CB radios. That would explain the relative rarity of this model...

Any help finding one of these things would be appreciated. Thanks....

Midland is a manufacturer of (as you noted) CB radios; however, to the best of my knowledge they had nothing whatsoever to do with Western Auto. Midland also made at least two 2-meter FM amateur radio transceivers, their models 13-500 and 13-510A, in the 1970s. The company was located in Kansas City, Missouri at the time; goodness knows where they are now--probably sold the Kansas City plant and moved to Korea, like the rest of the big-name TV, radio and communications entities.

At least they still have an office in KC, From their website:

Contact Us
Address Information:
Midland Radio
5900 Parretta Drive
Kansas City, MO 64120

816-241-8500 (phone)
816-241-5713 (fax)

They even appear to have a job posting for a sales rep in the KC area!

I may be wrong, but I thought that their manufacturing was aways offshore... anybody got an old piece of Midland gear that actually says "made in USA" on it?

jr

I've seen Asian-made radios sold by Western Auto badged as both Midland and Truetone. My impression was that they sorta worked the Midland name in as they were phasing the Truetone name out - were talking about the mid-1970's.

In fact, I have a cheapo Truetone AM table radio that was also sold as a Midland: Truetone on my Flickr page

Sounds reasonable to me. The boombox I had definitely had a KC, MO address on the back but was made somewhere in the Far East.

I had a Midland brand 16" black and white TV in the early 1970's - Model 15-126B. It was an all-tube design and the tubes had the "MICO" lable on them - presumably standing for Midland International COrporation.

The set was purchased at the old west coast chain White Front in 1972 during the Republican National Convention.