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Originally Posted by Celt
I dunno Jeff. Wouldn't that be rather late in the game for a "cats whisker" radio? Either way, it looks cool.
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I was just making a wild guess as to the vintage; that radio could very well have been from the '30s or even the '20s. Now that I think of it, the logotype style looks more like the one which was used by Zenith on its radios of the '30s (I see radios all the time on eBay with that logo on the tuning dials), so it would make sense that it would show up on a crystal set of that era.
I wonder how many of these catwhisker crystal sets Zenith sold, alongside their standard table models and consoles of the '30s. It wouldn't surprise me if most of those sets were sold to kids or teenagers with an interest in radio. Were these catwhisker sets any better or worse than other similar crystal sets of the same vintage?
Being Zeniths, I'd think these sets would have had a performance edge over most other catwhisker sets in use at the time. The Bakelite knob just below the catwhisker detector wasn't used on other crystal sets, though I think it may have been a tuning control; can't imagine what other function it may have had.