RCA Victor score
 

I'm not normally a SS guy, but I just couldn't pass this up for $12 at a thrift shop. Heavy, real wood cabinet in beautiful shape, with a light bulb in the faceplate. From what info. I could gather, the Sams Photofact for this model is dated 1966 (unfortunately, it's missing from my Sams collection). I do know that RCA dropped "Victor" in late '68 which means its one of RCA's earliest SS table radios. It has a remarkably tube-like sound when the tone control is adjusted properly. I really like it!

The rca service data index says 1965, hmm i wonder if i have that. Nice table radio. Does anyone even make table radios anymore? Or just those boom box things

I think the days of the table radio are over, boom boxes having taken their place; in fact, CD and cassette boomboxes are all but obsolete today as well, since the trend nowadays seems to be towards mp3 players -- even CD car stereos are being forced into obsolescence by today's FM/mp3 (only) systems (I saw a JVC mp3 car stereo advertised in a Best Buy flyer in my Sunday paper a few weeks ago) that can download music from the Internet and/or play the user's mp3 files.

I have several table sets here (with tubes), all but one of them working quite well. The one that isn't presently working is a 1965 Zenith MJ1035, with a defective 2-megohm dual volume pot. The radio actually works, brings in lots of stations, but the audio is so weak, even with the control at maximum, that it is barely audible. There is a loud 60-Hz AC hum as well, which tells me the filter caps are overdue to be replaced. One of these days...

I stand corrected, date codes on internal parts indicate this was probably built in late '65 (no doubt for the '65-'66 model year). It even has vent holes in the back board as if to vent tubes. BTW, do any of you know when RCA stopped making radios in the US?

IIRC, right around 1968. Some were Sanyo and some were Hitachi. The first ones were labeled "Radio Corporation of America", with the earlier RCA logo.
The later ones were labeled with the new RCA logo only. :yes:

I wonder how much longer the am and fm analog broadcast format will be around.
These freaks and companies in charge have no issue making huge changes to obsolete a technology that works for the profit and to cut rural people off.

They killed analog cellular and it took phone service away from lots of rural ranches and farms because digital has hard distance limits. They got rid of analog ntsc tv and we all know how well that works.

If they can get rid of Rush and other conservative talk they will kill the AM band.

Then for the FM band the company that holds control on that HD crap would like to get rid of analog and take over. They can fit way more stations in the same space and have a much lower transmitter power.
Then they would come out with some crappy HD radio converter box from china that lasts 6 months.

Some AM stations have quietly turned off their digital garbage. You won't hear the hash in their sidebands now. You never hear ads for radios that can tune that stuff any more.

As to table radios today, maybe about the only ones are compact hi-fi types like Tivoli, some clock radios, and iPod docking sets. The Tivolis and their ilk are the only ones that remotely resemble table radios of yore.

Interesting, not only do I have one of RCA's earliest SS table radios, it is also one of their last....I guess they just couldn't compete against the onslaught of cheaper Japanese radios (something the Japanese are now experiencing with cheaper Chinese electronics).

I once worked in a thrift shop. The crappy Radio/CD player they had at the time running through a commercial amp was driving me nuts. Scratchy static mixed with music was all that filled the store. Then one day somebody...for some strange and unknown reason...donated a nice, shiny Tivoli Model One radio...like manna from the gods! I said to the manager, "That's our new store radio." Ran the thing through the headphone jack into the amp and presto, lot's of crystal clear radio stations without static throughout the entire store. Years later, they are still using it, and I don't even work there any more.

This soon-to-be-released stereo / analog tune/ wood cabinet/ sub-woofer equipped model from from Sangean looks like a nice traditional table radio:

http://www.universal-radio.com/catal...alty/4012.html

not affiliated,
jr

Thats great news because there is such a hunger out there for vintage table radios right now. And especially vintage hi fi receivers.
If i wanted to advertise that I fixed the stuff I would have more work than I know what to do with.
I currently fix about one a week for a local shop and thats enough. They can be major time vampires.

Nice score on the RCA! Take care of it and you will have a companion for life.

Nifty-looking Sangean. Too bad it isn't made here, so me no buy. Makes it a no-brainer to keep buying, restoring and enjoying the ones that were.

AM radio was such a treat for an only child growing up in the 1960's. My dad bought me a Hallicrafters S-22R after a Philco 615 failed and a Zenith console proved too weak to DX with. Later, an S-120, and in 1969, I took my paper-route profits and bought a Lafayette HA-600. What a P.O.S that turned out to be.

I spent hundreds of hours DX'ing stations from Honolulu to New Orleans. Always top-40 music to enjoy. Never a disparaging word, just spread-spectrum interference from the Sears TV in the living room and the oil-burning furnace in the basement.

Sad to say, nothing proves the old adage "you can't go back" better than a visit to AM radio these days. Hundreds of gasbags fill the airwaves, the majority spewing lies and filth hardly fit for the ears of a child. Almost any station playing an all-music format does so with eqipment, not live, entertaining personalities. And more commercials than ever. R.I.P AM radio.

Some of us prefer to live in denial! I hope the huge installed number of car radios keeps AM/FM alive for years to come. Around here new FM stations keep coming on the air, so it's not as though there's a lack of interest in the format from that end.

That Sangean is a pretty neat interpretation of a table radio.

On RCA dropping "Victor" in '68: that would be about 39 or so years after RCA bought Victor. I wonder if there was an agreement to use the Victor name for X number of years. Sometimes that happens with a buyout. Probably not, with Sarnoff in charge: he pretty much did what he wanted.

Standard AM/FM radio could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn't miss it. These days, I don't bother much with AM or FM radio (haven't listened to AM for years), preferring instead to listen to my own CDs ripped into my computer or to an easy-listening Internet station from northwestern Indiana (The Breeze, www.thebreez.com -- "breez" is not a typo) that plays easy listening. I have radios here that will pick up several AM music stations from towns 80-100 miles away, but since I listen mainly to Internet radio and my own CDs/cassettes I have no use for automated AM or FM broadcast stations.

You are so right as to "more commercials than ever" on commercial AM/FM radio. Many stations will run very long strings of commercials, maybe five or ten minutes' worth, for every few (!) minutes of music they play.

Yes, "RIP AM radio" is just about right. Speaking of "RIP", this can also be said for new CD car stereos; these days, many if not most car audio systems (I saw an ad for a JVC digital media receiver in my Sunday newspaper a few months ago) are being made without CD players, instead having mp3 players.

We said RIP to cassettes when CDs came in (although some people, myself included, have many old cassettes and even a stereo cassette deck on which to play them -- at 56 years of age I grew up with cassettes and 8-track tape, so I have a vast collection of cassettes here, and even owned a Zenith 4-mode stereo system with an eight-track player 30+ years ago).

It looks like the CD's days are numbered as well with the advent of mp3 digital car stereos, many of which, such as the JVC digital audio receiver I mentioned above, will play only mp3 files -- there is no CD deck built into the system. In fact, the ad for this particular system stated right up front that "this unit does not play CDs", no doubt to avoid confusion or the buyer thinking the CD deck was omitted from the stereo purposely.