[Jeffhs]

I agree with Adam. I have a Zenith C-845,identical to the one in my avatar, in the "toasted mahogany" (blonde) cabinet and like it; great sound, sensitive as anything (mine will get stations from southwestern Ontario, Canada, Detroit, Toledo, Youngstown, Ohio and Erie, Pennsylvania, as well as the locals from Cleveland, simply using the line cord antenna and under favorable band conditions; the set still has its original tubes and everything else--I haven't done a thing to it since I got it seven or eight years ago, and it still sounds great). Today's gutless-wonder one-chip "stereo" radios cannot possibly match the C-845 for the qualities I mentioned. That is almost certainly why the C-845 is, as Adam put it, the king of AM-FM table radios of the late '50s and early sixties. The same goes for this radio's variants, the C-845M, -L, and the H845 series; the only differences between any of those radios are in the cabinet style, as they all use the same basic chassis (8C01 or 8C02).

BTW, I put the word "stereo" in the last paragraph in quotes because today's portable radios claiming to have stereo FM give the medium a very bad name. The stereo separation, for one thing, is a joke in most stereo portables. I have a Panasonic AM/FM/stereo-FM boombox that is perhaps a foot long; it sounds good, but the speakers are still far too close to each other for the best stereo effect. I don't use that radio much, but if I do from now on, it will be with headphones.

My Zenith H-480 AM/FM/FM-stereo clock radio has the same problem, but that radio hasn't worked very well on FM in perhaps ten years or more since I tried to clean the slide pots for volume, tone and balance. The cleaning spray must have shorted something out (I'm darned if I know what shorted), as the radio does work after a fashion (in mono) on FM, but the volume must be at maximum to hear anything; even then, the sound is extremely weak. AM works perfectly, with more sound volume than I know what to do with.