What is it about old radios?

[Arkay]

I've always loved the old tube radios. I bought my first when I was only about 7 years old. It was already an "old" thing, a Philco from the early fifties. I carefully cleaned it up and would listen to that thing, staring at the tubes... When a teenager studying in Germany, I got a huge old Grundig set with the names of dozens of European cities on the dial, instead of just numbers; each city used to have one main station with an assigned frequency! While limited resources (mostly space) keep me from building up any significant collection, I nearly always have at least one or two tube radios around.

The oldest I've ever found is one I got just a couple years ago, if that long: a 1923 Stromberg-Carlson Neutrodyne. It appeared just a year after the first-ever public radio broadcast, so I don't know if I'll ever find an earlier one than that. Due to the need for multiple voltage inputs and careful log-keeping, etc... just to be able to find stations, it is more of a decoration these days than a daily listener, but the build quality of it (thick, solid hardwood slabs for the case, machines brass and bronze fittings, etc...) puts to shame even the mid-century plastic-and-metal ones that so many here (including myself) love so much.

I don't know any better than anyone else just what it is that makes the old tube radios so much more attractive; probably everything that has been mentioned. I get the same feeling about many other types of things, too, though: solid, durable, simple enough to repair by yourself -- these are the characteristics which I prefer in almost any product.

I have a medical floor lamp that is probably 40-50 years old. It works superbly and looks almost brand new, and should work for more decades to come than I'll be around to see. I have a bunch of old desk fans that date back as far as the 1920s, that needed only a little cleaning and lubrication to run as-new, and they'll undoubtedly run for decades to come, with just a bit of occasional TLC. Perhaps eventually the insulation on the motor wiring will fail from age... but the quality to last a LONG time was built right into them. Yes, modern computer-designed fan blades run a bit more quietly; some of the old "propeller blade" fans were a bit noisy... but those modern, plastic fans tend to break within a few years of use (if they last even that long!).

On my desk, next to one of the fans, I recently put a gooseneck desk lamp that has to be quite old, too. I'm guessing 1950s era, although the design of the base harks back to considerably earlier pre-war times. It was very dusty and the gooseneck part had some corrosion, when I bought it for a few bucks from a trash-scavenger lady, but it works just fine as-is, even with the original wiring and plug (which I may replace soon, for safety reasons). The lamp that it replaced was less than ten years old, and already didn't work reliably.

There are still a few manufacturers making GOOD QUALITY products that can last a lifetime. Duralit toasters and Le Creuset cookware come to mind as examples. Of course, they are VERY expensive today, too: far too expensive for 90+ percent of households to buy them. Yet years ago, many households managed to have similar-quality items, because even the cheaper brands were better-made than most things are today (although there was always also some real "rubbish", it wasn't the mainstream products that most households bought).

Part of the difference is quality vs. quantity. Today most households have computers, multiple TVs, multiple phones, umpteen kitchen gadgets (most of which are seldom used), tons of toys (including expensive electronic games) for each kid, etc... We have traded quality for quantity. We wanted cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, and the "Wal-Mart Effect" has given us what we (well, a lot of us) voted for with our dollars. And we bury ourselves in the clutter of it, in the name of "lifestyle".

Personally, I'm gradually moving back the other direction, reducing the clutter and looking always for high-quality, well-built stuff to replace less-well-made "junk". Sometimes that can mean new stuff, but often good-quality new stuff just isn't available. IF getting quality means I have to find and restore something that is 50+ years old already, then so be it. In a way, I'm also doing something for "the environment" (although not for the economy) by recycling things that might otherwise be discarded --or less efficiently recycled into other products. I'd rather invest the in the cost of a restoration once and use the thing 'for life', than be stuck buying something anew every few months or years, because stuff today just isn't made to last.

My worst/best example of 'being stuck' like this is a very simple thing that we don't often give much thought to: I wish like heck that I could find some of those old unbreakable hard-rubber men's pocket combs, that used to be sold just about everywhere on the planet, and for relative peanuts! I'm sick and tired of scratching my scalp and picking from out of my pocket the bits of plastic that have broken off my embarrassingly falling-apart comb, that I have to pay too much as it is, once every several weeks! I'd gladly pay ten times as much for just one of those (once very cheap!) unbreakable hard-rubber ones! Whatever happened to them? How could something so well-done, that lasted for OVER EIGHTY YEARS in the market-place, suddenly (well, within just a few short years) DISAPPEAR, without comment or really much notice? If a better product had superseded it, I would understand, but that has NOT happened here. Just as with so many other things, the consumer has been "shafted" for the sake of, presumably, lower production cost and a higher rate of repeat sales. After all, an unbreakable comb is only replaced when it is lost, whereas a highly-breakable one gets replaced at least several times a year!