Any Radio Buffs in the crowd?

[saltysam]

Hello everyone. Wanted to see if any of you all are familiar with old radios. I picked up this sweet looking unit last Monday. It has a Silvertone tube Radio with Am/Fm/Shortwave 1 and Shortwave 2 it also has a Silvertone Turntable and kicker here is a Silvertone Recordable Wire Recorder/Player. I had never heard of a Recordable wire recorder until I came across this unit. Everything still works even tried the recordable wire unit and it plays also. Whoever had it before kept all the wire spools in their metal storage containers and they are in perfect shape. When I was digging around in the cabinet that's when I found the wire spools. Each one has a number written on it and there was a little green notebook that had a number written at the top of each page with what was recorded on the wire. I did a little research and these are all old radio shows from the 30's and 40's. they are awesome to listen too. The previous owner also wrote down who the actors were on the radio shows. I have included a picture and hopefully someone here will be able to fill me in with some information on this console. Thanks in advance for any information you all might have!
Mark

 

[athanasius80]

Wow. Rarely does one find a complete setup in working condition. Please transcribe the wire recordings to something more stable. (They tend to turn into birds nests easily.) But thats awesome!

 

[little-edie]

wow!

 

[pdub]

very cool Mark!

That is a very nice radio / phono/ wire recorder. I've never seen one of those before and it sure does look well preserved. Congratulations!

I just picked this up:

 

[pdub]

1951 Philco radio phonograph

Here it is opened up:

 

[pdub]

the radio:

 

[pdub]

the phono

It had 1 bad tube. I replaced it and it came to life. The sound is good and it was in 1 family it's whole life and well taken care of. The phono will need some cleaning and oiling to bring it up to speed as it's a little slow. I love it!

 

[sudsmaster]

That's quite a find! I agree, digitize those wire recordings ASAP!

I have what looks like a late 40's Silvertone manual record player console with AM radio and wire recorder. None of it works, unfortunately. It will need some new tubes and probably capacitors etc to get it going again. I did get a new cartridge for the tonearm, though, and a blank spool of wire off eBay.

Do you have the microphone that came with the wire recorder? I'm told it's sort of Flash Gordon in styling. Never seen one, though.

 

[pdub]

Here is another one I have but it's the cabinet only. When I got it the insides had already been removed. It's still a beautiful piece of furniture though.

 

[qsd-dan]

Here's an old Zenith and Silvertone of my grandfathers that I finally got around to restoring. Sadly, there's nothing worth listening to on the AM frequency anymore. AM around here mostly consist of talk radio and Mexican music. Whatever happen to "Magic 61" and the like (Ok now I'm REALLY dating myself, lol)

 

[qsd-dan]

Silvertone

 

[saltysam]

Do you have the microphone that came with the wire recorder?

Hey sudsmaster, yes the microphone was in with all the wire spools and such. In the picture is it sitting on top of the console with all the wire spools.

qsd-dan and Pdub - those radios are absolutely beautiful! WOW. Probably the one thing I like about older appliances is well obviously the quality but the craftmanship. Back then items like the one pictured here were actually a piece of furniture that would last for decades......what a shame we got away from the and into this throw away society.
Mark

 

[davek]

Wow.

Some of those are really nice. I've long wanted an AM/SW radio with a tuning eye. That Zenith console is incredible. I've also always wanted a Trans-Oceanic, either an early one with the round tuning or a transistor one.

I have many radios, but the two that see the most use are my Grundig Satellit 800 and Grundig S350. Batteries seem to last forever in the S350! I mostly just use them for local stations and Arnie Coro. Someday, I'd like to have a Satellit 600, 650, and/or 700.

 

[polkanut]

Mark,

Transcribe those recordings to digital media, and then possibly donate the original wire recordings to a media archive. In this way they can be preserved for the future, and possible research. Donating them might have some tax advantages as well.

 

[saltysam]

Transcribe those recordings to digital media

I am going to need a little guidance with trying to "digitize" these recording. What would be the best way to go about doing this?
Mark

 

[whirlcool]

I collect those large German radios. I currently have a Saba, a Nordmende, a Telefunken and a Grundig. I don't have any photos of them yet. I love those lovely highly lacquered cabinets. I have a SW antenna in the attic so sometimes I can listen German and British programming.
I have started to work on them replacing the capacitors and resistors. I only had to replace a tube or two on them. Those vacuum tubes last a long time!

 

[davek]

German

If you're down for the German radios, I saw this Loewe Opta Hi-Fi stereo at a used electronics store up here a while back. The store has since closed, so I don't know where this radio is now. Sorry about the quality...all I had on me was a 35mm P&S with B&W film, and I didn't want to use the flash. I had to use a gumball machine for a tripod.

I'm sure that it is an amazing radio, but I couldn't afford the price they were asking. It has a pretty narrow cabinet for stereo as well.

 

[whirlcool]

The tabletop radios usually go for a pretty penny if they are in top condition, but the consoles as you shown in your photo go for much less just like their American counterparts. Nobody wants that style of furniture anymore. But the usually sound VERY good with top notch electronics inside.

 

[sudsmaster]

How to digitize music/audio

You can get a free digitizing software over the internet. It's called... Audacity as I recall...

Then you'll need a line-out from your wire recorder... which you can usually simply plug into the microphone or line-in jack on your computer's sound card. Most computers today come with audio built in, esp notebooks.

If your wire recorder console doesn't have a line-out, things get more interesting. It might be safest just to put a microphone on the computer and record the output of the wire recorder speaker. It won't be as good quality as a line-out feed, but then we're talking 30's AM radio, right?

Audacity is quite good but it does take a learning curve. If you're computer savvy it shouldn't be a problem, and after a while you'll get used to its quirks. It beats the pants off the software that came packaged with my ION USB turntable, for example.

I've digitized a number of my vinyl records and a few tapes using Audacity. Eventually I hope to digitize my entire vinyl collection. But I'll need to tack on one of those new terabyte external drives onto my notebook system to do that.

Audacity

Download Audacity for free. A free multi-track audio editor and recorder. Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. Audacity is free software, developed by a group of volunteers and distributed under the...

audacity.sourceforge.net