[Jeffhs]

These receivers were made for shortwave listeners and beginning amateur (ham) radio operators, and were new about 50 years ago, give or take a year or two. The four-band continuous coverage went from the low end of the broadcast band (550 KHz or 0.55 MHz) to 30 MHz, but the sensitivity wasn't all that good at the higher frequencies (hence the need for a very good antenna to get any kind of reception at all on these frequencies). They were great for SW listeners and hams of the 1950s on tight budgets, but usually, as one progresses in these hobbies the desire is for more sophisticated gear the longer one is involved in it. If this set goes on ebay, I wouldn't pay more than $20-30 for it, given the simplicity of the circuitry and the low sensitivity above about 14 MHz (20 meters).

The earlier receivers were just as bad, if not worse in this regard. My dad had a Hallicrafters receiver which dated to 1936, which later became my first shortwave set when I became interested in ham radio in the late 1960s. It would not work at all without an antenna; even with a decent antenna such as a longwire or dipole, it would not work well, or in some cases and on some frequencies at all, above 14 MHz. The reason these old sets were such lousy performers at the higher frequencies was that they were not actually made to be used as communications receivers in amateur stations, etc. In fact, most of these were just broadcast receivers with shortwave coverage added as an afterthought. The BFO (beat frequency oscillator for reception of Morse code or CW signals) and AVC (automatic volume control) circuits of these crude SW sets were as simple as the manufacturers could get away with, while still keeping the price within what would have been fair market range at the time. Moreover, the SW performance of these receivers was probably not much better than that of the expensive multi-band console radios (Zenith, RCA, et al.) of the period.

I wonder about the claim made that this set picked up stations on the AM broadcast band without an antenna. I've been a ham radio operator for over 30 years, and know for a fact these receivers cannot possibly operate without some sort of antenna connected to them--unless the person who made this claim lives very close to one or more powerful AM or FM broadcast stations. I once lived near a powerful (27,500 watts ERP) FM station on 92.3 MHz whose signal forced its way into anything and everything with either a radio tuner or an amplifier (including my dad's Ampex Micro 88 stereo cassette recorder, my TV set on channel 6, and even at several points on the 10-meter amateur radio band on the receiver [Hallicrafters SX101A] in my Novice amateur radio station). The station's tower was less than a mile from where I lived (I could see the tower from my third-floor bedroom window at night, when its lights were on), so one can easily imagine that the signal at my location was tremendous. Believe me, it was. If I had had fillings or braces on my teeth at that time (I didn't), I probably would have been hearing the station in my head all day and all night!

Good luck and very kind regards,