I present you photos of vintage radios that I have collected, some of them I have already restored and some are in the queue for restoration.
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Elektrit Allegro is a 5 tube superheterodyne radio from 1938/1939. These receivers were produced by Elektrit company in Vilnius. This company made high quality receivers, however chassis and electronics is mostly licensed from a Austrian company Minerva. Allegro is probably most popular model of Elektrit, it features three band (long, medium, short), magic eye, big speaker and colorful glass dial. I have fully restored this radio, new capacitors are put and sealed into shells of old caps.
This 1937 model of Elektrit features potentiometer to control tone and variable IF filter width (7/9/11 kHz). Again this radio is based on Austrian Minerva radio.
This one is important to me since its made by Wurlitzer. Yes, Wurlitzer was mostly known in 1920s for their mighty theatre pipe organs and later for their jukeboxes of course. Radio was produced around 1926, it is a typical TRF construction with five 01A tubes. Front panel is a metal sheet with wood pattern.
This console was manufactured in 1930. Radio uses 8 tubes but it receives only one band (broadcast) and it is an TRF with 4 RF stages and push-pull amplifier. GM intended to design one chassis and allow user to change the cabinet, there are few cabinets from the same year. This one features speaker at the bottom, facing the floor and electric record player on top.
This 5 tube TRF receiver was made in 1931. I have fully restored it. The restoration included sand blasting the chassis, painting it, all capacitors are new one in old shells. One knob was missing so I have 3D printed it.
Philco 56 is very similar to 52, the difference being that it has two bands (long and broadcast). So it was most likely targeted toward UK. From electronics point of view it is a superheterodyne receiver. It was manufactured in 1932 and uses 5 tubes. Interestingly the volume is controlled by potentiometer which attenuates the signal directly from the antenna, there is no potentiometer before the audio amplifier stage.
This is a typical five tube superheterodyne from 1934. The dial is quite big and moving the tuning knob up or down switches to precise tuning. Radio covers all three bands (long wave, medium (broadcast), shortwave. It also has selectable AC voltage. Pilot made multiple models in UK so it is possible that this model was either exported at some point or perhaps the same chassis was used in British version.
This is an export version of popular Atwater Kent 145, this means that it works on 220V mains. This radio was in terrible state and did not have knobs or glass window. The glass piece comes from a clock and knobs were 3D printed.
See my page about 3D printed knobs if you want to know more about homemade replicas of radio knobs.
This radio is a 1935 five tube superheterodyne, unfortunately I still don't have two tubes to complete the restoration since someone previously replaced the tube sockets.
This is a Garod console that I was unable to identify, it was probably made in late 1930s. Chassis seems similar to lot of Garod's models. It is simple receiver with no mains transformer that uses ballast to voltage across the string of heaters. I have added a mains transformer for isolation and stepping down voltage from 230V to 110V. Radio uses seven tubes plus ballast. From technical point of view there is nothing special, standard superheterodyne with 6H6 working as detector and magic eye you can see that it is jsut typical five tube superheterodyne. Nice advantage is that input filter is preceded by stop band filter tuned around 460KHz which might help preventing picking up IF from other receivers. Also the dial is coupled with the shaft using leather strap, I have replaced it with rubber and it works very nice. There is also a precise indicator and whole dial has pleasant warm glow.
In my radio one knob was missing so I have modeled, you can download my model from Thingiverse Link.
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Model 720A playing "720 in the books"
Photo of radio tower that I took visiting Gliwice. This is a historic site, in 1939 when Gliwice belonged to Germany shortly before break out of WWII a provocation took place in which Germans were to broadcast a message that Poland has attacked Germany border. After the war station was used by communists to interfere western radio stations so that they could not be heard on the east side of the curtain. Now it is a museum with lots of equipment still remaining. The tower itself is made out of out of wood bonded with brass screws and it is over 111 meters high. This makes it the highest wooden construction in Europe.
This is my first DIY radio. It is regenrerative receiver based on two tubes ECH81 and ECL82, it receives long wave with some taps on the coil allowing tuning into part of broadcast band.
The cat approved radio is highest reward a radio can receive. Only the purrfect radios become cat approved on SP6GK.com
Cat's whiskers receivers are not qualified!
