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Originally Posted by Midnight Blues
I use my tube radios every day. I'm partial to Zenith though. I have a nice original AM/FM High Fidelity(c845)that I use in the kitchen, wonderful sound.
I also have a 600 series Transoceanic shortwave that is just amazing, she pulls in stations from all over the planet (a few satilites too).....
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I am also a Zenith fan, having six vintage radios built by the former Zenith Radio Corporation. The oldest of these radios is a Zenith H511(1951); the newest, a Zenith R70 AM/FM transistor portable and a Zenith H480 AM/FM/FM-stereo clock radio (both from 1980). The sets in between are between 1960 and 1963 vintage. My Zenith K-731 is from '63, I also have a Zenith TransOceanic solid-state portable from I would guess 1962, and my newest acquisition is a Zenith C845 from about (again I'm guessing) 1960 or thereabouts. However, every one of these radios work, in some cases not as well as they probably did when they were new, but they still power up and receive stations. I am particularly impressed by the sound of the C845. Fantastic! It even sounds better, IMHO, than my K-731, which I always thought was hi-fi with its electrostatic tweeter and 5x7 main speaker.
Zenith really had a winner times at least ten in the C845. This radio sounds so good it could be the center of a small sound system, as it has stereo speaker inputs and a phono jack. The audio is so powerful I can hear most of the local stations without even turning the volume control up at all--I simply turn it on and most stations are already at normal volume. I hate to think how loud this thing can go; probably could be heard quite a distance away at full volume.
The sensitivity of the C845 is great as well. I live near the south shore of Lake Erie and can hear many Canadian stations as well as if they were locals on this set, and every other AM radio I own. (My personal favorite AM station is a standards station in Toronto, CHWO-AM 740; it comes in like gangbusters here.) I bet my C845 will get stations on FM like crazy from Detroit and southwestern Ontario, Canada (which all my other radios, including the so-so digital tuner in my stereo system, get as well) when the band opens up this summer, as sensitive as I understand it is with that 6BJ6 RF stage. This radio was clearly built for distance reception on AM and FM; they didn't refer to it and other radios they made, from the '20s through about the '60s, as "Long Distance" for nothing. The designation was dropped, however, some time in the '70s, IIRC; my two 1980-vintage Zeniths do not have the slogan anywhere on their cabinets, so I would guess it was dropped by the seventies if not earlier. Was this an early peek at things yet to come at Zenith? It wouldn't surprise me one bit if it was.