Homo ludens radiohistoricus

The dark brown lacquered wood brings you back into grandparent's time. You look over the beauty. Click. The dial lights come on. You wait. After thirty seconds, a slight hum starts in the large speaker. At the same time, the tuning eye starts glowing green. The glow grows stronger, the hum also gains strength, then suddenly drops out and is replaced by music. Deep, full, rich sound, although there is not much above 5 kHz... You tune around, see how the tuning eye deflects its shadow pattern when you come across stations. You switch to short-wave, tune in a station from the antipodes. The same rich, deep and full sound. Ahh, the glory of old radios!!!

I picked up the hobby of restoring and collecting them in 1996. My collection is slowly growing. I have had lots of good time, but also I have nearly burnt down my home when a paper capacitor exploded and sent burning paper chips into the curtain behind the radio... I enjoy it anyway!

Here you will find pictures and stories about each of my radios. They are sorted by age. This is NOT the order in which I got them! Some of the stories include extensive instructions on restoration.

The Cosmos mystery (1932?)

Mystery radio (1933)

Atwater Kent 206-X (1934)

RCA T4-8 (1934)

Acratone (1936?)

RCA Victor 87T-1 (1938)

Belmont 542 (1941)

General Electric HE-740 (1941)

General Electric JE61L (1942)

Philips 916 X-10 (1947)

RCA Chile (1948?)

RCA Chile 5Q25-A (1950?)

RCA Chile (CRC) 528-XM-6 "Acuarium" (1958?)

Telefunken 648WP Trop "Caprice" (1962?)

And a special feature: My first radio restoration, at age 13.

I will be adding pages about any other radios I can get for my collection as soon as each radio is in a presentable shape! At the time of this update, december 2004, there are seven radios awaiting restoration. They include the two mystery radios (info dearly needed!), a Stromberg-Carlson 226-H rosewood Art Deco set that I ripped out of the hungry mouths of termites, a big Blaupunkt desktop from the late fifties, and another two Chilean RCAs, one of them a lowboy radio/phono combo that weighs a ton and then some...

Where should I start???




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