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This article is from the Antique Radios
And Phonographs FAQ, by Hank van Cleef vancleef@netcom with
numerous contributions by others.
37 I just looked at a Radio Wire Television model B45...
... It has 13 tubes
and two loudspeakers. I couldn't see all the tubes but I saw a 6H6, two
6L6's, two 5Y3's, and a bunch of metal tubes with top caps. It
has three bands, two shortwave, and a phono, and is in a custom-built
plywood cabinet. What can anyone tell me about this set. The radio
works, but not well. The owner wants $100 for it. Is it worth it?
This is the type of radio you should be asking questions about. The
radio itself is a "class act"---high fidelity, 1938 style. It's the
same manufacturer listed in the question above, and shows that
"brands" could range from absurdly cheap to top quality. It also is
typical of the radios that justified service shops paying good money for
Rider's manuals over the years.
As a "collector" radio, it's a difficult one to put dollar value on.
But as a museum piece, an example of what a high-end thirties radio was,
it is a class act. For those who have Rider XVIII, look at Radio Wire
page 18-8, and notice that only the schematic and a few notes are
published, some ten years after the radio was made. (confession: I owned
one of these from about 1948 until sometime in the sixties, and it was
my first really hard-core restoration project. It also was my "hi-fi
amplifier" for many years). If you want an example of high tech
history, it's well worth the $100, and if you restore it, you'll find
that quality is a lasting thing. But restoring a set like this can be a
major project and take a good deal of skill.
Other "high tech" radios that are more readily identifiable by brand
name are the Farnsworth Capehart sets and the 2-chassis Magnavoxes.
McMurdo Silver, E.H. Scott (Scott Radio Laboratories in Chicago) and
Radio Craftsmen are fairly well know high-end receivers. Many of these
last were sold as chassis only for custom installation.
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hobby, recreation, old radio, old phono, antique, radios, phonographs, tools, test equipment, resource, repair, identification, books, components
