My first post in this forum... X-mas Table radio

[Carmine]

I've never posted in the radio forum before, but I thought you might like to hear about the Christmas gift I got for my grandparents (mostly grandmother).

She mentioned how hard it is for her to receive the AM radio shows, especially now that some have moved on to smaller-time, less powerful stations. When I was a kid, she usually always kept a radio on AM, but back then (80s) radio hadn't been ruined into a bunch of clear-channel syndicated junk.

I briefly considered buying a new radio at Circuit City, etc. Taking a look, the table radios were some of the cheapest crap you could imagine. All made-in-china, knobs loose in the box, 2" speakers, etc. Most all of them had dials that could barely be read by my 34-y/o eyes, let alone her 80+y/o eyes. What really amazed me was that these pieces of junk weren't cheap! $50 and up!

So I decided to call capt'n Moody, of TV forum fame, because I knew he had a good selection of old-timey radios. The good captain first offered me a Zenith, knowing I'm partial to that brand. I wasn't super-impressed with this S.S. Zenith, so he showed me an S.S. RCA Victor table radio in a real, solid wood cabinet.

This thing was sucking in the weakest AM stations in our area, straight into his basement. Add to that the easy-to-read dial, easy to turn knob, and cabinet that I knew would look right at home in her kitchen, and I was SOLD. Or perhaps I should say "gifted", because he gave me the radio as a Christmas present!

The only thing I did was change the speaker grille cloth. The original was looking a bit ratty/wrinkled. I taped the old cloth to the inside of the cabinet should anyone ever want to convert it back, and picked out some new stuff at a fabric store to better match her kitchen.

Here's the picture:


This is the piece of tinny junk they had been suffering with for years: (That's a dog in the lower corner, not a part of the radio)



Doesn't this piece of BPC just exemplify everything that went wrong with electronics/design in the 80s? A hard-to-read dial; made even harder by a stupid red grid, tiny controls, sound quality of a buzzing fly... The only good sound that junk will ever make is a rattle at the bottom of a trash can!

Makes me feel bad I didn't do this sooner!

[Chad Hauris]

It's good to see that complete radio...I have a cabinet from one of these that someone removed the electronics from and connected an RCA cable to, to use as just a speaker.

[Sandy G]

I have one, too-I paid $130K for it, & they threw this house in for free...Mine needs to be De-Oxidised, & have the silvery panel glued back on.

[ozmoid]

Nice story, Carmine. Very nice little radio, and loads of good Karma for you, sir!