Japanese transistor radios from the late 50s and early 1960s are now attracting surprisingly high prices, especially if they are in pristine condition, but don’t let that put you off. There are still plenty of interesting bargains to be found, like this novelty globe-shaped model, which like many radios of the era was sold under a number of different brands. This one is badged Fleetwood but the same design also appeared as the Vista NTR-6G, Raleigh and Marc, and there are probably others as well.

The first thing that strikes you, when you see it in the flesh, is how big it is. It’s a far cry from the pocket size trannys we’re familiar with, and that’s a good thing when it comes to sound quality. Mounted in the base of the globe – roughly where the Antarctic should be -- there’s a chunky 8cm/3-inch speaker that doesn’t sound half bad, Inside the globe there’s a fairly ordinary 6-transistor AM radio but it does have an unusually large tuning capacitor. This is coupled by a simple pulley system to a sliding tuning lever, mounted on a chrome plated strip on the back, running from, east of Australia, across the Pacific right up to the Arctic circle. The on/off volume knob is at the North Pole and there’s a 3.5mm mono jack headphone socket on the base. This is also houses 6 x AA cells, covered by a removable panel.

A chrome trim strip, running around the equator, holds the two parts of the globe together; the globe halves are made up of an inner shell with the stylised map of the world, protected by a thick transparent outer shell. Sadly it doesn’t rotate or do anything interesting but it is superbly well made and it looks and feels like a quality product, though I suspect the selling price was probably quite modest.

I paid £10.00 for this one on ebay recently, which was less than it could have been because the seller misspelled the word ‘transistor' ('transister'). This almost certainly reduced the number of people viewing it, and there was only one other bidder. You would be surprised how often this happens… In tip-top condition this model could easily sell for five to ten times as much, though even without the spelling mistake I doubt that this one would have gone for more than £20 to £30 as it was sold as not working and with a couple of cracks in the outer shell. There’s quite a big one in North Africa going from Morocco to The Gambia, and another stretching from Iceland to Newfoundland, but they’re only noticeable close up and do not detract from the radio’s overall appeal. There was a fault in the radio’s tuner section but nothing that ten minutes with a test meter, soldering iron and a spray can of contact cleaner couldn’t fix

What Happened To It?

World and globe shaped radios have been around for yonks, indeed a quick web search revealed at least a dozen different contemporary models for sale and I have no doubt that there are have been scores of others over the years. The only thing that really sets the Fleetwood/Vista/Raleigh/Marc globe apart is its age, and the fact that it was probably one of the first world-shaped transistor radios. There may have been earlier examples but I doubt that they were produced in large numbers, or were as cheap as this one. The Fleetwood Globe is very much a product of its time, coinciding with advances and a dramatic lowering of costs in plastic injection moulding, big strides and price reductions in transistor radio design and the Japanese electronics industry getting into its stride. Novelty radios, like this one, have tended to be scorned by serious collectors but I am seeing a steady increase in prices so if you fancy a flutter in the collectable technology market I wouldn’t leave it too long.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1962

Original Price ?

Value Today? £25?

Features: 6 transistor AM radio, 8cm speaker, sliding tuner control, rotary volume, 3.5mm jack audio output

Power req. 6 x AA cell

Weight: 1kg

Dimensions: 210 x 160mm

Made in: Japan

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5

Satellite AM/FM Radio, 1988

Sadly this is not what it seems. It’s a simple analogue AM/FM radio dressed up to look like a miniature satellite dish, and that would be pretty much all there is to say about it, except that it has a story attached to it. This was one of what I suspect a small number of souvenir radios made to mark the launch of the first Astra satellite, back in 1988.

I first started writing magazine articles and books about satellite television in the early 1980s. Back then it was very much a minority interest and the satellites of the day were mostly low power communications types. Around half a dozen of them were receivable in the south of the UK. They were mainly used to carry relays for broadcasters and news organisations and feeds for cable networks and the signals they broadcast were not meant for public consumption. You also needed a seriously large dish to pick them up, typically 1.5 metres across, and it helped if it was motorised, so you could point it at different satellites. Home dishes were very rare, in fact you were supposed to have a Home Office permit for one and I suspect that I may have had one of the very few STVRO (Satellite TV Receive Only) licenses ever issued. Anyway, to cut a long story short, in the mid eighties a European consortium called SES (Société Européenne des Satellites) funded the development of Astra, a high-power, 16-channel satellite for direct to home (DTH) broadcasts, receivable on small sub-1 metre dishes. Astra 1A was launched in December 1988 and a little known media tycoon called Rupert Murdoch became one of its first customers, using it to broadcast his Sky channel (up until then only available via cable), direct to people’s homes, and I guess you know the rest.

This little radio was given to me on one of several visits to the Astra operations centre in Luxembourg, or it may have been the Ariannespace launch complex in French Guyana in late 1988, either way it was meant to be a joke. You may be able to see in the photo that it has a label on the top of the dish that say’s it’s NOT compatible with Astra. This was a spoof of an official ‘Compatible with Astra’ sticker that was meant to identify the new generation of satellite dishes and receivers; there was some concern that the public would be baffled by the new technology and prevent hucksters from selling incompatible systems to unwary punters.

The radio’s one notable feature is the speaker, which is housed in the reflector, mounted at what would be the focal point of the dish. For the technically minded this is known as a Cassegrain configuration. Most home satellite dishes use what’s known as an offset design, with the receiver module or low noise block converter (LNB), mounted on a stalk stuck out in front of the dish, but I digress. Whilst this is a good arrangement for a satellite dish, it’s a really bad place for a small speaker, and you can take it as read that it sounds dreadful. Otherwise the rest of the radio is fairly unremarkable. It hails from Hong Kong and the receiver circuit is a simple superhet design, with a two transistor front end, and an early amplifier chip for the audio output. Power comes from a PP3 battery, which lives in a compartment on the base.

What Happened to It?

I am reasonably sure that SES didn’t commission this radio especially for the Astra launch campaign. It looks to me like a lightly customised off-the-shelf product so it’s likely that many thousands of them were made. I doubt that many have survived though; they certainly wouldn’t have been kept for their audio capabilities… Examples like this one, with a ‘NOT compatible’ label are probably quite scarce but that doesn’t mean it’s worth anything, at least not in this lifetime. Nevertheless it is a reminder, for me at least, of a really exciting few years, when satellite TV was actually interesting and not just another bland technological commodity.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1988

Original Price £10?

Value Today? £10?

Features: Analogue AM/FM radio, tuning and volume knobs, satellite dish shaped speaker

Power req. 9 volt PP3 type battery

Weight: 500g

Dimensions: 200 x 265 x 150 mm

Made in: Hong Kong

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 8

Sinclair Microvision MTV1, 1976

The Micro Television MTV1A was undoubtedly one of the best things Sinclair ever made. Even after more than 40 years no other pocket TV has come close to what this little box of tricks can do, or is ever likely to now, thanks to the Internet and the global shift towards digital broadcasting.

So what makes it so special? Well quite simply this tiny telly could be used in more than 100 countries. It was genuinely portable too and ran on its own internal re-chargeable batteries. Back in 1976 that was a remarkable feat for something about the size of a thick paperback book and given the diversity of TV systems and standards in use around the world.

It was the culmination of Clive Sinclair’s long held ambition to build a pocket TV. He began teasing us with promises of a titchy telly with a 2-inch screen in the mid 60s. It seemed that it was always just about to go on sale, and at one point it was even advertised with a price tag of 49 guineas. Alas, Sinclair’s enthusiasm exceeded his company’s ability to mass-produce such a device and it never went much beyond the prototype stage. Then in 1976 the MTV1 appeared and it blew everyone away.

Until then Sinclair products had a reputation for been cleverly designed but poorly made but the MTV1 was a revelation. It is based around 2-inch cathode ray tube (CRT) made by Telefunken, originally designed for use in test instruments. It’s housed in a metal case and inside there are 5 densely populated circuit boards, mostly by discrete components but there’s a sprinkling of analogue microchips in the audio and tuning sections. The standard of construction is excellent, though Sinclair made a big mistake with the rechargeable batteries. There are four AA-sized nicads permanently soldered to the power supply board. These would have had a fairly short useful life, 2 –3 years at best, and the only way to replace them was to take the whole thing apart. This is not an easy job, and getting it back together is even harder… A lot of old batteries eventually leak, the corrosive juice eats into the nearby circuitry and many MTV1s effectively self-destruct after 10 – 15 years.

On the positive side it’s very easy to use. The row of buttons along the bottom edge switch it on and select the band and TV system. There are two thumbwheels for tuning and volume and around the back there are four adjustments for brightness, contrast, line and frame hold. It has two on-board antennas, a telescopic jobby for VHF reception and a weird folding frame aerial for UHF channels. There’s also connections for an external aerial, a 2.5mm jack for an earphone and two DC input sockets for mains adaptors. The original outfit came with a range of adaptors that were supposed to work anywhere in the world.

With a good signal the black and white picture can be bright, crisp and pin-sharp, and it comes with a little clip-on sun shield so it can be used outdoors in bright conditions. The circuitry can be a little unstable at times, or after it has been on for a while and getting a decent picture with a less than perfect signal can involve a lot of knob-twiddling and aerial wiggling. The sound is a tad tinny but there’s plenty of volume from the small 45mm speaker, which lives in the top of the case. One other design flaw is the lack of a stand; hand-holding it for more than a few minutes is hard work and getting the right angle and distance makes it a pain to use for longer viewing sessions. But hey, no more nit-picking, this is a pocket multi-system TV from the 1970s, and that deserves respect!

What Happened To It?

Unfortunately it cost a small fortune to manufacture and it almost crippled Sinclair. At one point the UK government had to pitch in with a £1.6m grant and this was reflected in the selling price. Initially it was deemed too expensive for the UK market and the only place you could get one was in the US, where it was sold for a hefty $400 (around £250).

Well-heeled world-travelling gadget geeks were apparently in short supply in the late 70s, consequently the demand for such a device was relatively small and sales were disappointing. At the end of its 2-year production run more than 12,000 MTV1s remained unsold and were disposed of at a fraction of their original cost, resulting in a huge losses for Sinclair. In 1978 the company tried to open up the market with a cheaper single standard pocket TV, called the MTV1B, but this also struggled and the huge costs involved in developing pocket TVs contributed to the company’s eventual downfall and sell-off in 1979.

The MTV1 in the picture is my fourth working example and a recent acquisition. I found it at a Brighton flea market and the stallholder was asking £50 for it. That would be a very fair price for a runner, but he was unable to give any assurances and eventually settled on £35. Even if it didn’t work it was worth that much for spares and as a bonus it came with a case, adaptor, the clip on screen – these always get lost – earphone and instructions, and cosmetically it looked very tidy. The plastic at the top of the screen surround had cracked but this was a well-known design fault and I’ve only ever come across one MTV1 that didn’t have that crack. The only concern I had was that the label on the bottom of the case was intact, which meant it hadn’t been opened (normally a good sign and that it hasn't been fiddled with), but in this case it meant that it probably still had the original re-chargeable batteries inside.

Once I got it home I gingerly powered it up and there was sound but the screen had just a single bright line – it’s called frame collapse. This was essentially good news suggesting that the bulk of the circuitry was intact and working. After opening it up I found that the original batteries were indeed still in place and they had seeped, but only for a short time as the damage was confined to a few tracks on the printed circuit board. Once the batteries had been removed (but not replaced – I don’t want it to happen again) and the chassis reassembled I tried it again and mysteriously the frame collapse fault had righted itself. The screen burst into life and a wobbly picture appeared and I was the happy owner of a working MTV1.

This was an unusually lucky find, but they are out there if you look and there’s a couple of dozen each year on ebay, selling for anything between £50 and £250 depending on the condition and accessories. Sadly they’ll loose a lot of heir kudos after the digital switchover but they can still be hooked up to analogue TV sources like old VCRs, computers and TV games so they won’t be totally useless. Nevertheless, I suspect that prices won’t go much higher so they’re not much of an investment but don’t let that put you off. It’s a real slice of television and technology history, and a really nice thing to have, even if there’s not much to watch on it anymore…

GIZMO GUIDE (Manual)

First seen: 1976

Original Price £250 ($400)

Value Today? £150

Features: 2-inch black and white CRT, Multi standard VHF/UHF tuner Bands 1 (50 – 90MHz), 3 (170 – 220MHz), 4 & 5 (470 – 890MHz), CCIR Systems B, G, H, I, M, 525/625 lines. Mode selectors, tuning, volume, brightness, contrast, frame & Line hold controls, telescopic VHF and foldable frame UHF antennas, external antenna, earphone socket, 45mm (1.75-in) internal speaker

Power req. Internal re-chargeable batteries

6/12VDC external adaptor

Weight: 800g

Dimensions: 160 x 104 x 42 mm

Made in: Britain

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Panda and Bear Novelty Radios, 1970s

When it comes to shoehorning radios into novelty shaped cases, bears and pandas appear to be a popular choice. I suppose it has something to do with the shape. Stoat or antelope shaped radios, say, would be much harder to make, with less space inside for the works and fewer places for knobs and buttons, and truth be told, they’re just not as cute or cuddly.

And so we come to this pair of bear-shaped AM radios, of which, I confess, I know little. The black and white bear looks a bit like the Misha (or Mishka) character, which was the official mascot of the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow, but it’s not quite right, and I don't recall it ever sporting an oversize maroon bow tie. There are no markings – apart from Hong Kong on the base – so my guess it that’s it’s a cheap or unofficial souvenir. The Panda’s origins are equally obscure, though again it hails from Hong Kong; maybe it’s based on a locally popular cartoon character? Either way I’m open to suggestions or a more detailed history.

What I do know for certain is that the Panda radio is the more conventional design, with a front-facing speaker and inside there is what looks like a standard 5-transistor superhet receiver board. It’s the sort that you’ll find in scores of 1970’s pocket trannys. The tuning and volume knobs poke out where the creature’s eyes should be, giving it a decidedly menacing robotic look. The bear’s PCB looks like a custom job. It’s a 6-transistor superhet design and the circuit board is an unusual circular shape, with a hole in the middle. The volume and tuning thumbwheels are concealed in the creature’s ears and accessed from behind. The speaker is built into the back of the head. The Panda’s battery – a standard 9-volt PP3 type -- fits into a compartment in the base, accessed through a removable hatch. The bear runs on two AA cells and to get at the holder you have the split the bear into two.

What Happened To Them?

Bears, pandas and critters of many different and sometimes indeterminate species continue to be popular places to fit radios, though most of the modern ones I’ve seem tend to be more fluffy and cuddly, dressed up, heavily accessorised, or more clearly merchandised, which is the price of progress I guess… These two came as part of a job lot of old radios on ebay. I bought them a few years ago and I doubt that I paid more than £10 or so. These two were in good shape cosmetically and both work, though like many radios of the era they needed new battery connectors and few squirts of switch cleaner to de-crackle the volume controls. Radios like these tend to be of marginal interest to serious radio collectors, they were after all produced in fairly large numbers and they’re not that difficult to find. Collectors of bears and pandas and associated furry beasts, and not forgetting fake Olympic mascots may like this sort of thing but they tend to go for mint and boxed examples. Needless to say this is probably not an area for serious investment, but if you see one at a car boot sale, and it looks like it’s next stop is going to be landfill, do the decent thing and save it for posterity, even if it costs you 50 pence.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1970 - 80

Original Price £5.00

Value Today? £5.00

Features: 5/6 transistor AM superhetrodyne radios, rotary volume on/off & tuning controls, built-in 55mm (2.25in) speakers, wrist carry straps

Power req. Panda 1 x 9v PP2, Bear 2 x AA cell

Weight: Panda 156g, Bear 202g

Dimensions: Panda 145 x 125 80mm

Bear 175 x 95 x 90mm

Made in: Hong Kong

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5

JVC HR-3300 (Aka Ferguson 3V22 & Baird 8902), 1978

My first encounter with a VHS video recorder was in 1977, just a few months after the format’s official launch in Japan. This was whilst I was working for Ferguson (Thorn-EMI as was) at the Southbury Road facility in Enfield, where a JVC HR 3300 was being evaluated by the marketing department. It was probably a pre-production model and almost certainly one of the very first VHS VCRs in the country. It clearly made a big impression on the company because shortly afterwards it was on sale and available for rent through its Radio Rentals chain, sporting Ferguson Videostar and Baird name badges.

Badge engineering, as it came to be known was undoubtedly one of the main reasons the VHS format saw off the technically superior Sony Betamax system. JVC’s willingness to encourage as many manufacturers and brands as possible to adopt VHS and nurture the market for pre recorded tapes ensured it’s early success; that and the equally early uptake of VHS by the porn industry, but that’s another story. Sony on the other hand kept a tight reign on Beta. Other brands were slow to climb on board, though it remained popular in the US for several years after the format battle had been decisively won by VHS in Europe and the Far East.

But back to the HR-3300. Like all early VCRs it has a clunky mechanical top-loading tape cassette mechanism but it’s not until you remove the lid that you see what an incredible feat of electronic and mechanical engineering it is. There’s hardly a microchip to be seen; it’s packed with densely populated printed circuit boards and thick wiring looms, supported on a heavy-duty metal chassis. Apart from the motors that spin the head drum and drive the tape loading mechanism, the deck is almost entirely mechanical in operation. Big ‘piano key’ levers emerge from the front of the case, even channel selection and tuning is by push button and thumbwheel. There is a socket on the back marked remote, but this was for an optional switch on the end of a long cable that engages and releases the deck’s pause function.

The downside of all this heavy metalwork was the weight. The 3300 tipped the scales at almost 14kg, which doesn’t sound a lot until you have to lug one around, which reminds me of my second meeting with this machine. That was in 1978, after I joined Electronics Today International magazine. A 3300 had been sent in to the office for review and I thought it would be a good idea to take it home to try it out. I still remember the pain of the box landing on my foot as I struggled to board an Underground train during the evening crush hour.

First generation VHS VCRs were relatively simple to drive though this one had a quirky three-way mode switch (TV, Video, Timer) on the front and I suspect few users ever mastered the single-event timer. In theory, if you got it right and left the play/record keys and mode switches in the right positions it would record a TV program up to one week in advance. Fewer still bothered to use the mechanical tape counter (with memory) or audio dub features, and I doubt that more than a handful of machines ever had anything connected to the chunky PL259 video input and output sockets or the DIN audio in/out socket on the back panel. In the end, though, the only connections that mattered were for the aerial bypass. One socket was for your rooftop aerial, the other for a lead that went into the back of the TV. Setup tuning was a bit of a palaver, the TV had to be set to Channel 36, then you had to manually tune the 8 presets hidden under a hinged flap on the top (actually there were only 3 channels back then, C4 didn’t start broadcasting until 1982, and then only in parts of the country). Once that was done it would be ready to roll and for those who remember it, the distinctive grind of the tape loading mechanism and rising whine of the head motor are hugely evocative sounds that take you back to a simpler time when the ability to record TV programmes seemed almost magical. I regret to say that most modern gizmos are boringly quiet and lack any kind of soul…

What Happened To It?

Historically recording formats and media have had 25-year life cycles and so it was with VHS. During its eventful quarter-century, from the late seventies to the early noughties, there were many major improvements to picture quality, deck mechanics, usability, reliability and a massive drop in the cost of the hardware. We had jitter free still, slomo and picture search. Top loaders gave way to front-loading decks and piano keys were replaced by servo-assisted controls. Remote controls lost their cables and went multifunction wireless infrared. Timers increased in sophistication with multiple event recording over a month or more but they never got much easier to use, in spite of numerous gimmicks like barcode and microchip programming, VideoPlus and many more. Philips even had a stab at voice programming. Sound quality got better too, initially with hissy twin-track linear stereo then with depth multiplex (DFM) hi-fi sound and NICAM tuners. There was subtitle recording, a big leap in picture quality with Super VHS and even a brief dalliance with digital (D-VHS) but then in the mid 90s along came DVD, which killed off pre-recorded tapes and in the last six or seven years, VHS’s last remaining application, for time-shifting TV programmes, fell to hard disc based PVRs like Sky+, Virgin+ and modestly priced Freeview and Freesat recorders.

I came by this machine through a friend who had put it in his loft ten years ago and forgotten all about it. After a decade of inaction it powered up and worked first time. I had expected all sorts of problems, from rotten drive belts and sticky mechanics, but it ran like a dream. Talk about bullet proof; they really built these things to last! Picture quality was more or less as I remember, a bit whiskery, a fair amount of colour and luminance noise and overall pretty poor by current standards but that doesn’t matter, it was good for its day and would certainly stand comparison with VCRs made ten years later.

So the question is, are video cassette recorders collectable? I have to say yes, but only the first models of a particular format (Philips VCR/S-VCR, Technicolor, VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS, 8mm, Hi8, Betamax, V2000 and so on.). They have to be in working order, in good condition and preferably come with a supply of blank and recorded tapes as once the digital switchover is completed you won’t be able to directly record TV programmes through their built-in tuners. It’s very difficult to put a price on these things. A boxed HR3300 in mint conditions could be worth several hundred pounds to a collector, but on a good day you can still pick up a decent-looking runner on ebay or at your local car boot for under £20 pounds. The real problem though, is where to put it, and if you start collecting these things, you are going to need some serious display or storage space, and check the strength of your shelves.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1978

Original Price £650

Value Today? £50?

Features: VHS play record (SP only), audio dub, single-event/1-week timer, UHF tuner with 8 channel presets, RF modulator, line and microphone audio and video inputs, manual tracking, optional wired remote pause, mechanical tape counter with memory stop

Power req. 220VAC

Weight: 14kg

Dimensions: 465 x 320 x 180mm

Made in: Japan

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Franklin LF-390 Electronic Guitar and Radio 1969?

You’ve probably worked out that this is a novelty radio, but what you may not realise is that it’s also a working miniature electric guitar. It appears to be loosely based on the classic Fender Stratocaster; the plastic and metal case houses a fairly standard 8 transistor AM medium wave radio, with the sound coming from the speaker grille below the volume and tuning knobs. Flip a slide switch on the upper left corner and it goes into guitar mode. That’s a real magnetic pickup in the middle of the chrome-plated pickguard. The four strings are metal and the tuning headstock and bridge adjustments are miniaturised versions of the real thing and actually work. It’s debateable as to whether you could ever get a tune out of it, but pluck the strings and you can – just about – hear the twang it through the speaker.

I haven’t been able to find out much about it, but what is known is the model number, LF-390 and that it was made by Franklin Creative Products in Japan. The removable back cover also mentions that patents are pending in Japan, USA and UK. There are no other clues on the box or instruction manual so the date is complete guesswork and based on the design and components used in the radio (germanium transistors and a diode – definitely no chips or silicon here), and the very high standard of construction. I reckon it dates back to the late sixties, but it could be 5-6 years either way.

It’s a functional radio but clearly designed for display and to that end it comes with a metal stand with a fold out leg. Again the quality of construction is of a very high order. It is powered by a single 9 volt PP3 (006P) battery and as far as I can make out there’s nothing missing and it is in excellent condition.

For the record I found it on ebay and was surprised by the low number of rival bidders and the final price of just £20.00. They rarely come up for auction in the UK – I don’t think many were sold here -- but I have seen the exact same model, in not such good condition, selling on ebay US for over £50, and that was without the box or instructions. Perhaps the fact that the auction ended midweek at 3pm had something to do with it.

What Happened To It?

Novelty radios made in the sixties and seventies tended not to be in production for very long. Fads come and go and I doubt that this one – probably riding on the back of early rock and roll, Beatlemania and so on -- was no different. As soon as sales started to dip the company would have moved on to making radios in some other trendy shape. My guess is that they were around for 5 or 6 years; tens of thousands of them were probably made in that time but radios, being essentially disposable items, maybe only a few hundred will have survived, which makes them quite collectable, and potentially a good investment if you can find one in a decent state for a fair price.

GIZMO GUIDE (Manual)

First seen: 1969?

Original Price £5?

Value Today? £50?

Features: 8 transistor AM radio, magnetic pickup, working headstock and bridge, volume and tuning knobs, fold out display stand

Power req. 9 volt PP3

Weight: 346g

Dimensions: 295 x 105 x 40mm

Made in: Japan

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 8

International HP-1000 AM/FM Headphone Radio, 1982

Over the years I’ve come across several examples of small radios and other widgets shoehorned into headphones. In terms of technology and performance the International HP-1000 is nothing special but it’s a neat design, even if it is fairly cheaply made. In the absence of hard evidence, such as adverts and reviews, precisely dating products like this can be tricky but there are clues. On the top and sides of the box are a couple of blonde models, proudly wearing their HP-1000s, sporting classic eighties mullet hairstyles. The blurb on the box makes a big thing of the ‘bright red’ LED power indicator; these started appearing on low-end consumer products at around that time. The circuit board uses all discrete components – no chips here – and the sound is mono only. Finally, the PCB is covered in wax, a favourite trick of Hong Kong and Taiwanese radio makers of the era. Back then circuit design and assembly could be a bit slapdash and the wax stopped RF components from moving around and upsetting the alignment.

Potential purchasers not blown away by the novelty of the bright red LED may well have been swayed by the ‘stylish, lightweight’ design. The two slim earphones have simple and accessible controls (volume and on/off switch on the left side) and tuning and AM/FM selector on the right. However, the big selling point is the hinges at either end of the headband; the whole thing folds up neatly and slips easily into a pocket. As it says on the box, ‘Take-anywhere sound can be yours’, placing it firmly in the rapidly growing market for personal music players, kickstarted by the revolutionary Sony Walkman just a couple of years earlier.

Other key features include a rather nifty 5-section telescopic aerial on the right side module – remember to duck when you go through doorways – comfy foam padded earpieces, and plenty of adjustment on the headband, for heads (and hairstyles) of all shapes and sizes. Power comes from a pair of AA cells, which fit into the left hand module. Needless to say sound quality is tinny, mono tinny in fact and FM works best within sight of a transmitter. Tuning is quite temperamental too, but hey, they almost certainly sold for less than twenty quid and were fine for catching the news or a bit of music when you were out and about.

What Happened To It?

The HP-1000 and its ilk was pitched at those who wanted, but either couldn’t afford a decent personal tape machine, or didn’t want the bother of lugging the player around and fighting with a tangle-prone headphone lead. However, by the mid 1980s personal cassette player prices had plummeted. They also became significantly smaller, lighter and easier to carry; quite a few of them also had built in stereo radios, and these developments will have reduced the already limited appeal of a not very good mono headphone radio. I suspect they lasted until the mid 80s and the survival rate was probably quite low, judging by the build quality and the few that turn up on ebay.

This one actually came from Brighton’s excellent Marina market a couple of years ago. I think I paid three or four pounds for it, mainly because it looked to be in good condition and had its original box. Unfortunately someone had left a battery in it, with predictable results. Luckily the damage wasn’t too bad and it was easy enough to find a replacement spring and fit some new contacts, but if I had thought to inspect it more closely I would probably have haggled. I doubt that it’s ever going to be much of an investment but I have a soft spot for small novelty radios, and it marks an interesting and less travelled backwater of the 80s personal stereo boom.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1982?

Original Price £10

Value Today? £5

Features: Folding headphones with built-in AM/FM radio, mode & on/off switches, volume and tuning thumbwheels, 5-section telescopic aerial

Power req. 2 x AA cells

Weight: 160g

Dimensions: each module 105 x 48 x 38mm

Made in: probably Hong Kong, possibly Taiwan

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 4

Clairtone Mini Hi-Fi Radio, 1970

The little radio on the left is a bit of a mystery. What isn’t in doubt is that it’s a very close copy of the Mk 2 Sinclair Micromatic (right), billed as the ‘world’s smallest transistor radio’ (which it wasn’t, incidentally). It’s also a fact that the Mini Hi-Fi was made by a Canadian company called Clairtone, almost certainly in 1970. Clairtone, once a prestigious Hi-Fi manufacturer, had gone bust by the time the Mini Hi-Fi was launched. The firm lost a small fortune getting into the colour TV market too early and had been bought out by the Government of Nova Scotia. This was one of its first, and as far as I’m aware, last products, under its new ownership.

The odd thing is that it’s not an exact copy of the Micromatic. The circuitry is sufficiently different from the Sinclair original to avoid accusations of blatant cloning, yet the case and cosmetics are almost identical. I would have expected fewer differences if it were being made under license, which begs the question, was it an officially sanctioned product, or a rip-off? There’s very little about it on the web; one site suggests that it was produced as a promotional give-away for car dealers, but the packaging has the look and feel of a retail product so there is definitely a story to be told. If anyone can fill in the gaps I would be very pleased to hear from them.(Update -- see below)

Time for a closer look. The Clairtone Hi-Fi has all of the key features of the Micromatic. It’s a tiny single band AM radio, not much larger than a box of matches, based around a simple 2-transistor reflex circuit. Power comes from a pair of button cells and the audio output is via a 2.5mm jack to a magnetic earpiece. The radio is switched on by plugging in the earpiece. The circuit and PCB differ significantly from the Micromatic and it uses a more substantial tuning capacitor, rather than the crude postage stamp trimmer of the Sinclair radio. The cases could almost have come out of the same moulds, though the Hi-Fi has a slot in the top for a wrist strap and a notch cut around the earphone opening, which I suspect was to make assembly easier. Access to the battery compartment is via a sliding panel on the back, it’s a much snugger fit on the HI-Fi – the Micromatic back has a habit of falling off -- and there’s a moulded recess that makes it easier to remove with a fingernail.

It was sold as not working but it was easy to fix. A couple of wires coming from the coils around the ferrite rod aerial needed resoldering and there was some light corrosion on the battery contacts that had to be removed. In spite of the changes to the circuitry there is little or no difference in the performance, compared with a Mk 2 Micromatic, in other words it’s pretty awful and can only pull in a couple of strong stations (and this was less than 5 miles from a main AM transmitter).

What Happened To It?

According to Wikipedia Clairtone closed down in 1971 so this little radio was probably only on sale for a year or two but without knowing how many were built it’s impossible to say how rare it is. My guess a few thousand were made, and they turn up on ebay three or four times a year so there must still be a few of them about.

Not surprisingly my Mini HI-Fi came from ebay. It is in excellent condition, came with the original box and earphone and cost £20, which isn’t bad, considering that I have seen non-working Micromatics in a sorry state, fetching twice as much. However, it’s probably not going to make me or even my grandchildren rich. As radios of the era go it’s just not that rare or interesting, though I suspect that Sinclair aficionados, like me, will be happy to give it space in their collections, if only for its curiosity value.

UPDATE

Some more background on the origins of this intruiging little radio and my thanks to Bob Althouse of Cordova Mines in Ontario Canada. He got his in 1970, it was a promotional freebie and he recalls collecting box tops from cereal packets -- Kellogs or Quaker Oats -- he's not sure which, but for him it was the start of a radio collecting hobby.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1970

Original Price £?

Value Today? £20

Features: Two transistor AM reflex receiver, rotary tuning, earphone power switch

Power req. 2 x AG13 button cells

Weight: 28g

Dimensions: 47 x 34 x 12mm

Made in: Canada

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 8

Vidor Battery Shaped Radio, 1970?

I have a soft spot for weirdly shaped radios, especially promotional items, like this giant Vidor battery. They were often produced in relatively small numbers, for display purposes or to be given away to valued customers or suppliers, so they can be quite rare. Sometimes, because of a manufacturer’s iconic status – companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi for example – there was enough prestige and kudos to warrant large production runs but I doubt that that applied to a relatively humble battery manufacturer.

To be honest I have no idea of this radio’s origins, but I can take a stab at the date, which I put at between 1970 – 75. This is based on the fact that it was made in Hong Kong, which, at the time, was just passing its peak as a centre for this type of product. The single band (AM) superhetrodyne radio is a very conventional design using five transistors. These are early silicon types, which by the early seventies had replaced the older and less reliable germanium semiconductors.

The radio has just two controls, for volume and tuning, via a pair of thumbwheels protruding through slots on either side of the cylindrical case. It’s powered by a single 9 volt PP3 type battery, which fits in a compartment in the base. This is accessed by rotating the bottom cover. The speaker is mounted horizontally and sits beneath a grille, just below the metal positive contact at the top.

It’s in great condition with only one or two very minor scratches. It also works, though not surprisingly the sound quality is very tinny – in all senses of the word… It was sold as a non-runner but all it needed was a speaker wire re-soldering and some contact cleaner on the scratchy and intermittent volume on/off switch. The battery clip was also about to fail – a very common fault – but it was easily fixed with a modern replacement.

What Happened To It?

Promo radios have never gone away but over the years they’ve become a lot less imaginative and nowadays they’re most likely to be standard off the shelf items, finished in a company’s colours or decorated with their logos. As styled radios go this one is fairly ordinary, I have seen far more interesting and ornate ones in the shape of spark plugs and light bulbs, but that doesn’t diminish its value for me. They’re also a good place to start for budding collectors of early technology. Prices are still quite reasonable – I found this one on ebay for £5.00, plus the same in postage -- and there are often a dozen or more other 60s and 70s promo radios on sale at any one time. However, as time goes by prices can only rise, so now is the time to start looking.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1970?

Original Price £10?

Value Today? £10

Features: 5 transistors AM superhet, 5.5cm (2-inch) speaker

Power req. 1 x 9volt PP3

Weight: 91g

Dimensions: 67 x 128mm

Made in: Hong Kong

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Bambino Challenger Multi-Band Radio, 1970?

Radio seemed to be a lot more interesting back in the 60s and 70s. Of course there was the regular broadcast bands, though for the most part they were uniformly dull, apart from the off-shore Pirates; then there was the VHF and short wave bands. All sorts of things were going on up in the nether regions of the airways, and much of it you were not supposed to know about or listen to, which made it even more exciting. This included police, fire and ambulance two-way radios, air traffic control, military communications, CB, ham radio, lots of foreign stuff and plenty of mysterious squeaks and squawks.

This was all pre-digital so it was mainly in the clear with almost no attempt to encrypt or scramble what was supposed to be private two-way communications. This meant you could listen to what the local cops were up to, and much else besides, but it went largely unnoticed by the general public. That was because the vast majority of consumer radios only covered the legitimate broadcast bands. However, a small number of subversive foreign manufacturers produced multi-band models that strayed into the forbidden territories, and the Bambino Challenger was one of several that appeared in the classified sections of electronics magazines and the truly wonderful (in the 60s and 70s) Exchange & Mart.

Enticing ads promised that owners of radios like these would be able to listen to banned frequencies and transmissions from all around the world. Of course the reality was rather different; a 70cm telescopic antenna is going to have problems picking up short wave and VHF signals from a couple of miles away, let alone the other side of the globe, and the kind of unsophisticated tuning systems radios like these had were simply not able to discriminate between the sort of tightly packed transmissions that filled these bands.

Nevertheless the Bambino looks the part, with a big tuning scale, promisingly labelled Air, PB (police band) and WB (weather band), then there were all of the knobs and switches; all in all a very teccy look. The case is a piece of work too, it’s adorned by what looks like a fake (very fake…) padded crocodile skin cover. It’s just weird, I know the sixties and seventies were tacky decades, but crocodile skin…?

What Happened To It?

My guess is most owners were quickly disillusioned by the Bambino’s ability, or rather lack of it, to pull in the type of transmissions promised in the ads. In fact it just wasn’t capable of picking up much of interest in the UK. It’s clear from the frequency coverage, and that mysterious Weather Band that it was designed for a US audience, but that wouldn’t have mattered to the importers who shamelessly flogged them to gullible British buyers, like me. Or at least they would have, had I the money back then – I was a real sucker for this kind of thing. Later on, older and wiser and armed with a radio amateur licence, I did briefly dabble with proper radio equipment with a succession of scanners and transceivers of various abilities, but that’s another story.

This Bambino I found at a local car boot sale, sitting amidst a pile of other old electronic stuff. This looked like the only item that had any chance of working, and after brief haggle it was all mine for £3.00. In fact it didn’t work, but the fault was a simple one to fix – a wire had become detached from the on/off volume control – and it came alive. Sad to say the airwaves – as received by this device -- are still pretty uninteresting, no cops, no hams, not even a local cab firm, and there’s not much to listen to on the medium wave band any more… No to worry, it’s never going be worth very much but it is still an interesting example of 60s/70s kitsch, clever marketing and a colourful addition to any collection of old transistor radios.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1970?

Original Price £9.99

Value Today? £9.99

Features: 3 bands (AM, FM Air/PB/WB, 540 – 1600kHz, 88 – 108MHz, 110 – 175MHz), switchable AFC, 14 transistors, 70cm telescopic antenna, earphone socket, band/volume/tuning rotary controls, on/charge light

Power req. 230 volt AC mains

Weight: 1.4kg,

Dimensions: 245 x 175 x 105mm

Made in: Hong Kong

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Sony Watchman FD-9B Pocket TV, 1986

Not for the first time has Sony been caught on the hop when it comes to TV technology. The company’s late involvement with large flat screens tellies in the early 2000s almost certainly cost it its lead at the high end of the market, and it made a similar, though much less costly mistake back in the mid 1980s. At this time small pocket TVs were all the rage and most of the major manufacturers were busily churning out models with active matrix liquid crystal displays (LCDs), but for some unaccountable reason Sony launched a model with a bizarre ‘flat’ black and white cathode ray tube (CRT) display, not dissimilar to the one used by Sinclair on its FTV1. At the time Sony cited better picture quality as its reason to use CRTs, and to be fair picture quality was pretty good, but the expense and difficulty of producing these tubes, and their associated driver circuitry posed considerable problems. It didn’t help that by then colour LCDs were getting cheaper, and picture performance was improving in leaps and bounds.

The FD-9B, featured here was a second-generation model, joining the FD-10, which was launched in 1982. Looking back it now seems like a last gasp to hang on to a share of the market; not surprisingly it didn’t last very long and Sony switched to colour LCD screens in 1990 with the first colour Watchman (FDL-310).

For those unfamiliar with flat screen CRTs, the idea is basically fairly simple. A normal CRT is a large glass bottle with all of the air sucked out. At the neck end there’s an electron ‘gun’, which shoots a stream of electrons at a phosphor coated screen at the wide end of the ‘bottle’. When the electrons strike the screen it glows. The picture is built up by focussing the electrons into a thin beam, creating a single bright dot, which is swept across and down the screen in a series of lines. The beam is moved around by a coil on the outside of the tube, or by electrically charged plates inside the tube immediately in front of the electron gun. In a flat CRT the electron gun is at right angles to the screen and the electrons beam is deflected through 90 degrees to strike the phosphor coating, which is viewed through a transparent window in the side of the tube.

The main problem is CRTs, flat or conventional, needs very high voltages, at high frequencies to move the beam around. This requires a fair amount of specialist circuitry and in a pocket TV this has to live side by side with sensitive tuning and amplification circuits, so it’s quite a challenge. Nevertheless, Sony managed it and the FD-9 is an impressive feat of engineering. In spite of the complexity the FD-9 isn’t much bigger than LCD TVs of the same era, though the screen, at just 3 x 4cm is a good deal smaller than most of the competition.

It’s powered by four 1.5 volt AA cells and is very easy to use with just three controls: volume, tuning and a three position switch for power and sound. There are a couple of sockets on the right side for earphone and external power and on the right there’s a foldaway telescopic aerial.

What Happened To It?

With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to see that Sony’s decision to go with flat CRTs on its pocket TVs was doomed to failure. Even at the time the smart money was on LCDs but Sony stuck with it, and thanks to its high profile and reputation it probably sold fairly well. Pocket TVs were always going to be something of a passing fad, though, and the novelty quickly wears off. I suspect most of them ended up in the backs of cupboards a few months after they were bought. They had other problems too and the FD-9 and even the LCD tellies had terrible battery lives (the LCDs don’t consume a lot of power but they rely on a backlight, which is on all of the time); the best you could hope for was a couple of hours, and that was on a set of expensive Duracells. The tiny aerials these TVs used also meant that they only worked in fairly close proximity to transmitters, even so, they haven’t gone away. Looking into the not too distant future it’s fairly obvious that broadcast TV is on a steep decline and today’s pocket TVs are more likely to be in the form of smart phones and instead of aerials will rely on the Internet, 3G and Wi-Fi, rather than plucking signals from the ether.

For the record this FD-9 came from a South Coast car boot sale and cost £4.00, haggled down from the £5.00 asking price. It does work, in that the screen lights up, and there is sound, but it’s not currently capable of doing both at the same time. I have had a quick poke around inside but it’s a scary sight and not the sort of job I’d like to tackle without a service manual and a very fine pair to tweezers... Sadly I doubt that I will ever get around to fixing it. The UHF TV signal in London is going to be turned off shortly and without an external aerial socket there really not much you can do with it, working or not. It’s an interesting novelty, though and although it’s never going to become a sought after collectible – at least not in my lifetime -- it’s a worthwhile addition to any collection of pocket TVs.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1987

Original Price £200

Value Today? £5?

Features: 4 x 3cm (5cm diagonal) black and white flat-screen CRT, UHF tuner, rotary volume & tuning, switched power & audio, earphone and ext power, 6-section telescopic antenna, wrist strap, belt clip

Power req. 4 x AA cell

Weight: 296g

Dimensions: 155 x 60 x 35mm

Made in: Taiwan

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5

Sinclair Micro–6 Matchbox Radio, 1964

Like so many of the gadgets featured on these pages the Sinclair Micro 6 was something that I hankered after as kid, but could not afford, and by the time that I could it has disappeared.

The Micro 6 was the second of Clive Sinclair’s matchbox radios. The first, the Slimline was sold as a kit and as far as I can see it wasn’t around for very long.

The Micro-6, which first appeared in 1964 was based on a similar circuit design and used the same high performance metal alloy transistors (MAT) as the Slimline. Legend has it that Sinclair used to buy up batches of rejects which he graded and used in his kits and ready made radios. As always with Sinclair products the sales blurb was enticing and nothing if not inventive. This included the claim that it was the ‘world’s smallest radio set’, in spite of the fact that at least one Japanese radio of the time was smaller and considerably more sophisticated. But that didn’t matter, it was tiny, relatively inexpensive, it looked great and I wanted one!

The 6 in the name is another example of Sinclair’s bold way with words and alludes to the circuit having ‘six stages’. Theoretically it does but the simple three-transistor design only achieves that by some technical jiggery-pokery, known as regeneration, which basically involves re-using parts of the circuit twice.

The tuned radio frequency (TRF) circuit is actually quite sensitive, but not very stable and stations come and go, depending on how you hold the radio. Other notable features include the clever use of a postage stamp trimmer for the tuning. It's clever because a trimmer -- a preset variable capacitor -- was only ever designed to make one-off adjustments.

There’s only one control, the tuning dial, and the radio is switched on when the chunky crystal earpiece is plugged in. Power comes from a pair of button cells, which last for 4 or 5 hours of continuous use. It’s housed in a small plastic box with a removable sliding back.

It really is no larger than a matchbox, but in order to get it that small the plastic has to be very thin and it is prone to cracking, especially around the earphone socket; very few can have survived without at least one of the corners being knocked off.

The radio was sold as a kit, and ready built, and for an extra 7/6 (37 pence) you could have an optional wrist strap – called the ‘Transrista’ --, making it arguably one of the first, if not the first wristwatch radios.

What Happened to It?

The Micro 6 was sold from 1964 to 1967 when it was replaced by the Sinclair Micromatic. First generation Micromatics were essentially Micro-6s with a fancy new black case, sturdier battery contacts and some minor tweaks to the circuit. Soon afterwards a mk 2 version appeared, with a more stable circuit employing two silicon transistors and the crystal earpiece was replaced by a smaller magnetic type. The Micromatic lasted until 1971 by which time it was beginning to look a bit past its sell by date as were the claims that it was also the world’s smallest radio.

My Micro 6 came from good old ebay a few years ago and it cost me £15.00. They do turn up from time to time but it’s been a while since I’ve seen one going for less than £50 and they can go as high as £100, so I’m definitely hanging on to mine. It’s in excellent condition, the case is intact and yes, it actually works. The front panel and dial label looked a bit tatty but I managed to get some decent scans from them and with a little digital magic, made new ones by laser printing on clear acetate film and backing that with gold and black spray paint. I have to say that it looks great and is virtually indistinguishable from the originals, though I’ve kept them safe so it can be fully restored should I ever feel the urge.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1964

Original Price 59/6 (£2.47)

Value Today? £50

Features: 3 transistor, 6-stage TRF AM receiver, earphone activated on/off switch, rotary tuner dial

Power req. 2 x 1.2 volt button cells

Weight: 25.8g

Dimensions: 34 x 45 x 13mm

Made in: UK

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 9

Sony CFS-S30 ‘Soundy’ Boombox, 1982

I predict that 80s’ boomboxes could one day become quite collectable. Relatively few of those giant audio abominations will have survived and examples in mint condition must by now be extremely rare. Exactly where the Sony Soundy fits in is hard to say. It’s definitely in the ‘what were they thinking’ category. It appeared at the height of the boombox era, and although Sony had its fair share of chrome-clad macho monstrosities and was still riding high on the back of the Walkman, it clearly wanted more. Maybe someone in the marketing department was responsible, though I seem to remember a press release suggesting that one of the executive’s wives came up with the notion. Anyway, the idea is it is designed for a female audience and it is supposed to look like a giant purse...

The spec is generally okay, it has a stereo auto-reverse cassette deck, with recording capability through a built in mike. There’s an AM/FM radio – more on that in a moment -- but the key selling points were the natty woven fabric covers on the speakers, a fabric flap covering the tape deck – no unsightly technology here – and two zippered end pockets, to keep your lipsticks and lady stuff in. It was also rather expensive, I can’t remember the exact figure (I’m guessing it was around £75) but it was definitely a lot more than it should have been and it seems very few were sold.

Boomboxes were an acquired taste and I doubt that they had much female appeal, however they were styled. With a full load of batteries on board they weighed a ton, and unless you were using pricey Duracells you only got an hour or two’s worth of music. Sound quality always took a back seat to volume, though to be fair to the Soundy, Sony didn’t skimp on the amp and speakers and it wasn’t too bad.

What Happened To It?

The eighties was a strange time for portable audio. It was marked by extremes. Boomboxes getting bigger and louder, becoming increasingly antisocial in the process. Personal stereos getting small and lighter, and in the end it was the personals that won. This particular model must have been an early production sample, sent for review on one of the magazines I was working on at the time. Sony were clearly not that enthusiastic as they never asked for it back – and at the time they were very hot on returning samples

The only real oddity is the FM tuner, which must have been designed for an overseas market as it tunes over 76 – 90MHz, missing out the bulk of the UK FM band. Apart from that it works really well and produces a reasonably mellow sound, with a fair amount of volume, though you really need a mains adaptor, as keeping it fed with batteries is an expensive business. I’m in no way an arbiter of fashion but I have no doubts that the female twist was a mistake and it was probably quietly dropped after a year or so. I’ve never seen another one – not that I look very hard – and I don’t recall any of the other manufacturers following Sony’s lead so there’s probably very few of them around but if you ever see one, grab it!

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1982

Original Price £75

Value Today? £10.00

Features: AM/FM stereo tuner, autoreverse stereo cassette player & recorder (built-in microphone), tone & volume, end pockets, shoulder carry strap, telescopic antenna

Power req. 5 x C cells

Weight: 57 x 16 x 12cm

Dimensions: 2.7kg

Made in: Japan

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7

H & G Germanium Radio, 1965

Several generations of kids have grown up without experiencing the magic of crystal radios, and in my view the world is a poorer place for that. Crystal radios are the ultimate green technology, an electronic gadget that’s entirely self-powered; certainly no batteries, but there are no solar panels or wind-up generators either. All of the power comes from radio signals and that really is something for nothing. Back when I was a lad a crystal set like this one was just about the only sort of radio someone of my age could afford. If memory serves they cost around fifteen shillings or 75p in new money. In fact you could make one for next to nothing. All you needed was a set of high impedance headphones, just about everything else could be scrounged or scavenged, even the crystal detector. Although most of the radios I built used factory made semiconductor diodes, I did once manage to briefly get what I supposed to be a signal from a detector based on a razor blade. This was my attempt at a ‘prison camp’ radio, designed by POWs in the Second Word War – there are plans on the Internet if you are interested.

But back to this little guy, and radios like this – and there were many similar models -- were really popular in the sixties, as the pocket money alternative to proper transistor radios. It looked like a tiny portable radio, until you caught sight of the bulky crystal earpiece and the long wire with a crocodile clip on the end. This is the big problem with crystal radios, they need an aerial. And by that I mean a wire aerial, preferably at least 10 meters long, strung up as high as possible. If you were lucky and lived within a few miles of a radio transmitter you could get away with the metal springs in your bed, or a shorter length of wire hanging out of an upstairs window but you get the picture, this isn’t a portable radio.

I already have one of these in my collection but this model really caught my eye. The badge on the front reads ‘H & G’, which I am fairly sure stands for Headquarters and General. This was a truly fantastic shop, I believe they had several branches, but the one I frequented was in London’s Edgware Road, and it was stuffed full of electrical and electronic gadgets, bits and pieces and military surplus gear but that’s another story for another day.

I found this one on ebay for a tenner – normally they fetch £20 to £50, especially if they are boxed but the auction was timed to end early in the morning so there was little or no competition. It is in excellent shape and just needed a wipe over before being hooked up to a length of wire dangling out of the window and I was able to pick out two or three stations straight away. The tinny crystal earpiece is surprisingly loud – certainly enough for a spot of crafty listening under the bedclothes…

What Happened To It?

Crystal Radios had a very good run. The first ones, using ‘cat’s whisker’ gallium arsenide detectors were developed way back in the 1890s. As radio broadcasting took off in the 1920s they sold in their millions. But listening through headphones isn’t much fun and amplification, firstly with valves, then later transistors, eventually made them obsolete. The magic is still there, though, and when I next get a spare moment I’m going to have another crack at building one from an old toilet roll, a bit of wire, a diode and an old tuning capacitor. Good quality wooden cased crystal radios from the 20s, 30’s, typically with lots of brass fittings can fetch a very pretty penny indeed, and they are lovely objects, but cheap little radios like this one, which would have been owned by a kid like me, are what really get my nostalgia juices flowing.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1965

Original Price 15/-

Value Today? £25

Features: AM only, germanium diode detector, ferrite coil tuning, crystal (piezo) earphone, 2-metre antenna lead with crocodile clip

Power req. n/a

Weight: 70g

Dimensions: 50 x 80 x 20mm

Made in: Japan

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 8

Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart Radio, 1975?

It’s a 5-transistor AM radio, and truth be told, a rather ordinary one at that. Normally it wouldn’t have rated more than a passing mention but it does have one thing going for it. Look closer at the photograph and you’ll see there’s some handwriting above the tuning dial. To save you getting out the magnifying glass it’s the signature of one Ed ’Stewpot’ Stewart. If you haven’t heard of him you definitely weren’t around in the 60’s and 70s. He was one of the top DJs of the day, one of the original BBC Radio 1 presenters and clearly important enough to warrant his own line of promotional products.

This radio was almost certainly produced under the auspices of the Beeb because on the back is their logo and that of a famous kid’s radio show Junior Choice, which Stewart fronted for the best part of 12 years. It first aired in 1968 and judging by the components in the radio, and allowing for the time it would have took for Ed Stewart to become sufficiently popular for the BBC to splash out on merchandising, I’m guessing it dates from around 1975 onwards

The radio was made in Hong Kong by Taiyo. I vaguely remember the brand but as far as I’m aware it never went on to bigger or better things and probably faded away some time in the 80’s. It’s a fairly conventional design, a 5-transistor superhet, 3-inch speaker and so on. The 3-volt (2 x AA) supply reflects the use of silicon transistors, which by that time had all but replaced the less efficient first-generation germanium transistors that kick-started the tranny revolution.

What Happened To It?

These days promotional radios are two a penny but they were still a bit of a novelty back then and I doubt that many of these were made. Indeed it’s quite possible this was part of a very limited production run and may never have been sold but only given away as prizes in competitions and so on.

I came by it in a job lot of 60s and 70s radios that I bought on ebay. It was in a pretty sorry state and the contacts on the battery holder had corroded away, probably more than 10 years ago judging by the state of it. I struck lucky, though, and after replacing the holder and popping in a couple of AAs it sprang back into life. Needless to say sound quality wasn’t that good but considering it’s age it’s a wonder it worked at all.

Ed Stewart was a BBC regular until 2005 and he pops up from time to time in retrospectives and specials; he and the radio live on. I have no doubt that there were a good many Junior Choice fans that would have given their eye-teeth for one of these. I was a bit too old for the sugary stuff he was playing back then; the design is bit girly -- I suspect that it is supposed to look like a handbag -- and I have no particular affection for it so it will probably end up back on ebay the next time I have a clearout.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1975?

Original Price £ unknown

Value Today? £5?

Features: AM only, 5-transistor superhetrodyne receiver, volume on/off tuning

Power req. 2 x AA cells

Weight: 260g

Dimensions: 143 x 133 x 60mm

Made in: Hong Kong (Taiyo)

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5

Sony MDR-3 Stereo Headphones, 1979

You are excused for wondering what on earth a pair of headphones is doing in Dustygizmos but in my opinion they were one of the most revolutionary audio products of the 20th century and played a key role in the development of the personal stereo.

I first encountered the MDR 3 whilst working on Electronics Today International magazine. Early in 1979 Sony’s press office sent us a pre-production sample to try out; within a couple of days I and almost everyone in the office who heard them had placed an order! Back in the late 70s stereo headphones tended to be big clumsy affairs that enveloped half your head and unless you were willing to shell out very large sums of money, they almost always sounded horrible. The only alternative for personal or private listening was cheap magnetic earphones and they were rubbish, only good for crafty listening to the radio at the back of the class or under the bedclothes.

Decent sounding compact, lightweight stereo headphones simply didn’t exist. To begin with, as far as we knew there was no way to make small headphones sound good but more importantly there was little need as there were very few portable stereo devices, so the unheralded arrival of the MDR-3, whilst welcome, was a bit mystifying.

Needless to say there was method in Sony’s apparent madness, and a few weeks after the MDR-3 appeared Sony introduced us to the Walkman (or Stowaway as it was originally known – but that’s another story for another day), and lo and behold, it came with a pair of MDR-3s.

So how did Sony crack the quality problem? The breakthrough was a combination of a powerful Molybdenum magnet and a tough but microscopically thin Mylar diaphragm. The magnet allowed the diameter of the diaphragm to be reduced to just a couple of centimetres and the very low mass of the Mylar material meant it was able to move more freely and reproduce a respectably loud sound over a wide range of frequencies.

What Happened to it?

Every Tom, Dick and Harry mercilessly copied the MDR 3s during the personal stereo boom that began in the early 1980s but few if any of them were a patch on the originals. The technology has been tweaked and perfected and shoehorned into the high-quality earphones we have today so the story continues and we take it all very much for granted but it’s difficult to overstate how important they were in the development of the personal stereo

These headphones are the ones I bought from Sony in 1979, even after languishing in my loft unused for more than two decades they still retain the sparkle and clarity that made them sound so magical all those years ago.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1979

Original Price £25

Value Today? £25

Features: Molybdenum magnet

Power req. N/A

Weight: 65g

Dimensions: 140 x 150cm

Made in: Japan

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Jupiter FC60 6 Transistor AM Radio, 1966

I just can’t resist 1960s ‘trannys’, especially the classic PP3-powered 6 transistor models that my generation grew up with, straining our ears to listen to the offshore pirates and later, the nationalised, sanitised and – for me at least – the rather boring BBC Radio 1. Anyway, radios like these generally sold for around a fiver. I’ve guessimated the original price of this one at 79 shillings and sixpence, or just under £4.00 because it is towards the middle to lower end of the quality scale. That’s mainly because it comes with a leather case; really cheapo models usually had fewer than 6 transistors and nasty plastic carry cases, the dearer ones had nicer and often more robust casework though the guts were often the same.

It’s typical of what was coming out of Hong Kong at the time and inside the case there’s a 2.25-inch 8-ohm speaker and the near standard 6-transisitor superhet circuit. These are often generously coated with wax, though this one is relatively wax-free, except for the immediate area around the coil on the ferrite aerial rod. The circuit boards are fantastically crowded; it’s hand built and the reject rate must have been very high. They can be swine’s to repair though like many radios of the era there is a microscopic circuit diagram printed on a label inside the back of the case.

This one is what can only be described as ‘fair’ condition. It has obviously been dropped at some time as one of the corners of the case is cracked. There’s also a fair amount of wear and tear on the shiny front panel and maker’s label, but hey, it only cost me 50 pence at a local Sunday car boot sale, which I consider an absolute bargain. It was sold as dead but it was an easy and very common fault, the battery clip had fallen apart and was quickly and easily fixed with a modern replacement. Sadly there’s not much to hear on Medium Wave these days, but it works, and that’s all that matters and the tinny sound bought memories of the sixties flooding back.

What Happened To It?

Pocket radios never went away, they just got smaller, cheaper and more sophisticated but nothing can match the sound of a genuine 6-transistor Hong Kong tranny. The ever present hiss and whine of slightly mis-tuned IF stages, the muted or rather non-existent bass and crackly volume wheel, pure magic! The good thing about old radios like this is they actually do something, and will continue for as long as there’s broadcasting on the AM band. They’re constantly threatening to shut it down but in my view that’s dependent on DAB taking off, and I don’t see that happening any time soon so I reckon we’ll be playing with our old trannys for years to come. So keep looking, there are still plenty of bargains out there.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1966

Original Price 79/6

Value Today? £1?

Features: AM only 6 transistor superhetrodyne receive, manual volume & tuning, 3.5mm mono earphone socket

Power req. 1 x PP3 9-volt

Weight: 190g (ex case and battery)

Dimensions: 108 x 67 x 32mm (whd)

Made in: Hong Kong

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 3

Music Man Talking Radio, 1970?

What makes this little novelty radio really unusual is Mr Music Man, the bespectacled character on the top. He’s not just there to look pretty either, his mouth moves in sync with whatever is playing on the radio, and trust me, it’s a truly bizarre sight to see him chatting away in time with the Archers on Radio 4…

The moving mouth mechanism is very simple; the lower lip is on a pivot, attached to a short lever with a small permanent magnet on the tip. This is positioned close to a chunky coil, wired in parallel with the speaker on the base. You can see where this is going, the coil is an electromagnet and the pulsating field it generates moves the magnet, which moves the lever, which opens and closes the mouth. Brilliant stuff!

The word ‘Loyal’, stamped on the inside of the case, is the only clue as to who made this unusual novelty radio, but I have no idea where or when it made, so 1970, and Hong Kong or China is pure guesswork. I’ve based this on the type electronic components inside (all discrete superhet, silicon transistors but no chips, wax coated ferrite antenna etc. etc.), the condition and the fact that the tuner is AM only; FM reception was comparatively rare feature on portable receivers until the mid 1970s. But as always I welcome informed comment and correction.

What Happened To It?

I haven’t been able to find out anything about it but in my investigations I did come across what appeared to be another model, with a ‘talking’ clown’s head. There may have been others but they seem to have come and gone quite quickly. This one was an unexpected ebay bargain; it cost me a fiver and was sold as a non-runner. The radio worked but a pivot on the mouth lever had broken off. It didn’t take too long to fix and it was gabbing away in next to no time. The printed labels are bit faded which tends to confirm my suspictions about the age; otherwise it’s in excellent condition.

I can’t say why it never caught on; it kept me amused for hours… But I’m guessing the mouth mechanism was prone to failure so many of them probably ended up in the bin quite quickly. I suspect this makes it quite rare, I’ve never seen another on ebay, before or since, and it’s definitely going into weird but wonderful section of my old transistor radio collection.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1970?

Original Price £5?

Value Today? £5?

Features: AM radio, moving mouth feature

Power req. 4 x AA

Weight: 300g

Dimensions: 130 x 100 x 105mm (whd)

Made in: Unknown but probably Hong Kong or China

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Ingersoll XK505 TV, Radio, Cassette Recorder, 1980?

I vaguely remember this model, or something very much like it coming on to the market in the early 1980s. This was just a couple of years after the first VCRs appeared and quite a few people thought that it was a combined TV/VCR. In fact such a device was developed – made by Funai and marketed by Technicolor -- though I don’t think it was ever launched.

Anyway, back to the Ingersoll XK505, which is one of those what-were-they-thinking sort of products, a combined cassette recorder, AM/FM radio and 4.5-inch monochrome TV, a kind of video boom box, but without the boom. Quite who it was aimed at I was never certain, I suppose it might have appealed to caravanners as it could run off a 12 volt supply, or for a few minutes, from 10 D-cells or an optional rechargeable battery pack, but with just a simple telescopic antenna it would have been unlikely to have got much of a signal anywhere further than 5 miles from a TV transmitter. To be fair you could plug in an external aerial but I can say from personal experience that even if you get a good picture watching TV on a 4.5-inch screen isn’t’ much fun.

It’s a classic piece of 70s/80s design, lots of silvery plastic and the dreaded slider controls for band selection, mode selection and volume, the latter being unusually noisy. The tape deck in the centre is a simple piano-key model with auto-stop function and the radio covers the FM and Medium wave bands, TV and radio tuning is shown by a moving indicator on a vertical dial on the far right, driven by a marvellous collection of wheels and pulleys, which, miraculously still works. In fact everything works, even the tape deck with what appears to be the original drive belts. Other points of interest include a folding carry handle, sockets for headphones, mike, external antenna and power, controls on the backside for vertical hold, brightness and contrast and a folding wire stand on the base.

What Happened To It?

I am fairly sure this model appeared under a variety of different names, Ingersoll were one of a number of companies involved in badge-engineering products sourced from the far East. I suspect that the price – and I’m guessing it would have been in the region of £150 - £200 – and the relatively limited market meant that it only lasted for a few years. Mini TVs really started to take off in late 1980s with the development of LCD screens, and by then the Walkman personal stereo was well established, so there really wasn’t much of a demand for a strange and unwieldy combi product like this. In case you are wondering this one cost me £4.00 at a local car boot sale. The seller assured me was a runner but when I got it home only the radio was working. I’m not sure how I fixed it but after opening it up I used an airline to blow out the dust, tried it again, and this time it worked just fine. I don’t think many will have survived, let alone in working condition, having three such diverse technologies in close proximity to one another was always a recipe for disaster and when one part fails, usually the whole thing ends up being junked, as they are simply uneconomical to repair. If you ever see one grab it quick!

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1980?

Original Price £150?

Value Today? £10

Features: 4.5-inch mono CRT TV screen, auto-stop cassette deck, AM/FM radio

Power req. 220-volt AC mains/12 volts DC, 10 x D cells, rechargeable battery pack

Weight: 3.1kg

Dimensions: 320 x 190 x 140mm (whd)

Made in: Taiwan

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Pye 114BQ Portable 2-Band Radio, 1960

Normally I steer well clear of valve radios. Unless you have a really good stock of spares and access to old service sheets they can be swines to repair, but this little Pye ‘Jewel Case’ model caught my eye at a recent car boot sale because it was in such good condition. Fully expecting the seller to be asking a silly price I almost didn’t ask, but I did. He said a fiver and I said OK.

The Pye 114BQ is a battery powered portable, but it’s not going to running anytime soon on batteries as they stopped making the 90 volt ‘ high tension’ Every Ready B126 donkey’s years ago. It also needs a now-obsolete 1.5-volt ‘low tension’ battery, to power the valve heaters, but that’s not a problem. I suppose I could find out if it works by hooking it up to ten 9-volt batteries, or run it off a specialist mains supply, but that’s a job for a very rainy day….

This model was first made in 1955. I’m not sure when production stopped but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be much later than 1960, and judging by the condition of this one I suspect it’s a fairly late example. For the technically minded it uses a superhetrodyne tuner, the four valves are three DL96s and one DAF96. You may be able to spot three thick wires disappearing into the lid, behind the cover there’s a ‘frame’ aerial – basically a coil of wire stretched around the inside of the lid.

Back then it was a choice between Medium and Long wave bands, VHF was still mostly used by the military, and FM (frequency modulation) was a pretty advanced technology that wouldn’t make it into consumer radios until the mid 1960s, when the transistor made the circuitry simpler and cheaper to mass produce.

Opening the lid switched the radio on and there are just three controls, volume, band selection and a rotary tuner dial, bearing evocative names like Home (now Radio 4), Third (Radio 3) Light (Radio 2), as well as more far-flung stations, like Luxembourg, Oslo, Brussels, Paris and Motala. (I had to look that last one up, it’s in Switzerland and apparently was a big hit on the Long Wave band).

The case is made of wood, covered in some sort of impregnated cloth material that I’m guessing is supposed to look like snakeskin, very classy, and very 50s retro… Overall the finish is good, and the chrome plating really sparkles when polished.

What Happened to it?

The 114BQ went the way of all valve radios and was killed stone dead by the transistor, Initially they were much dearer than valves but they were smaller, needed a fraction of the power and lasted much longer, so it was no contest. Nowadays valve radios are very collectable, especially really old ones in fancy wooden cases, and unusually good or rare ones can fetch a handsome price. There are some real classics too, such as the Bakelite ‘frying pan’ models made by the likes of Ekco, but small portables like this one seem to have fallen under the collector’s radar, and looking at the prices on ebay it’s clear there are still plenty of bargains to be had.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1955

Original Price £9, 9s, 6d (£9.48)

Value Today? £10

Features: MW & LW coverage, built in aerial

Power req. Ever Ready B126, 90 volt HT, Ever Ready AD35, 1.5 volt LT

Weight: 2.1kg

Dimensions: 240 x 210 x 95 mm

Made in: England

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5

Baird Emerson Wondergram, 1960

You could say this was the Walkman or MP3 player of the 1960s, though at fifteen guineas (£15.75) a pop – a very fair sum back then -- I doubt that many were sold. In case you haven’t worked it out yet, the Wondergram, made in England by the Baird Company, is a portable, almost pocket-size record player. Amazingly this device plays both 33.3 and 45rpm records, yet it is not much larger than a couple of VHS cassettes stacked on top of one another.

The design is truly ingenious, open the lid, pop your disc onto the spindle and gently place the needle on the end of the tone arm into the groove and it starts playing. The record is spun by a pair of wheels set into the top of the case, they are spaced so that the innermost one drives 45s, and the outer one drives LPs. To stop both wheels trying to drive the disc at the same time the inner one is slightly smaller, so that when you are playing an LP it doesn’t come into contact with the record. The speaker is on the underside, and you would think that the sound will be muffled, but they have that one covered. Three spring–loaded feet raise the player off the ground, allowing the three-transistor amplifier full reign to blast your socks off. Actually it’s not that loud but it’s enough to fill a small room – providing there’s not too much background noise

What Happened to It?

I can be fairly sure that production started in around 1959 or 1960 but thereafter details get a bit sketchy. My guess is it lasted until the mid 1960s, it was quite expensive, and truth be told, not very good. A proper portable mains powered record player back then, like the ubiquitous Dansette, would have cost around £10, and they didn’t sound half bad. The cassette tape recorder had also started to appear by that time and that would have helped speed its demise.

The concept was revived briefly in the 1980s and in 1983 I tested an Audio Technica Sound Burger for Next… magazine (shown on the right).

The ‘clamp’ design and built in tone arm is almost identical to the Wondergram but as I recall little had changed when it came to performance, and in some respects it was a backwards step as unlike its predecessor it didn't have a built in speaker.

Quite a few Wondergrams were exported to the US where they sold under the Emerson brand name. That’s where this one came from; I bought it on ebay some time ago for around £20, plus the same again for shipping. They still turn up from time to time but really good examples can fetch £150 or more. This one is in quite reasonable condition but it needs some work before it’ll play reliably, and I need to track down a replacement stylus. I doubt that any original spares are still available but it should be possible to cobble something together using modern parts. A rare and unusual audio collectable and definitely worth keeping an eye out for!

Update: what goes around comes around… Crosley Radio in the US has just announced a device called the Revolution. The design is strikingly similar to the Wondergram and Soundburger, the big difference, though is the addition of a USB interface and an FM transmitter, so you can hear playback on a nearby FM radio.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1960

Original Price £15.15 0d (Fifteen guineas £13.75)

Value Today? £60 - £100

Features: 33.3 & 45rpm, transistor amplifier

Power req. 4 x 1.5 volt C cells

Weight: 0.9kg

Dimensions: 220 x 110 x 55 mm

Made in: England

Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 3

Aitron Wrist Radio, 1972

A wristwatch-sized radio was the sort of gadget youngsters back in the 60s and 70s would have given their eye-teeth for. Transistors had revolutionised radio design but the idea of having one so tiny that you could strap it to your wrist was pure science fiction. Yet, amazingly, there were several models, including a variant of the infamous Sinclair Micromatic (it came with a wrist strap).

This one is the Aitron and don’t be misled, it’s quite a lump – that’s a 50 pence coin next to it -- and wearing one provided a good workout for the upper and lower arms. Even so, it is still a remarkable feat of miniaturisation, cramming a 5-transisitor superhet radio and speaker into such a confined space. Some clever circuitry and a very unusual 50mm speaker (high-impedance centre-tapped voice coil, for those who care about such things) means it doesn’t need a final stage audio output transformer, which saves a lot of space, and it is powered by a single AA battery, which again is quite a feat considering the power requirements of the transistors of the day.

There are only two controls, on/off volume and tuning, the third larger ‘knob’ is actually the battery cap. The strap is a surprisingly high quality item, made of leather with a plastic protective backing, and it’s sturdy too, this one cleans up like new.

What Happened to it?

The Aitron brand seems to have disappeared without trace though this design did carry on until the late seventies and I have seen pictures of later models with a built in LED watch display. I imagine they are extremely rare and probably worth a few bob by now. Even so very few examples of this earlier model will have survived. Wrist radios have come and gone over the years and I saw one recently in our local ‘Pound’ shop, though it was only capable of driving an earphone. The concept also survives in wrist and arm bands for devices like the iPod, though again they are geared to personal playback through ear and headphones

This particular example was bought from ebay a while ago for the princely sum of £3.00. It is in excellent condition and works well, though there doesn’t seem to be much to listen to on the medium wave these days. Needless to say it sounds a bit tinny and the volume isn’t much to write home about, but for personal listening, under the bedclothes (it's what we did back then...) it’s great!

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1972

Original Price £10-£15

Value Today? £10-£20

Features: On/off volume switch, tuning
Power req. 1 x AA

Weight: 0.12kg

Dimensions: 55 x 75 x 28mm (excluding strap)

Made in: Hong Kong

Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 7

Fidelity HF42 Portable Record Player, 1975

Of course the classic 60s and 70s record player has always been the Dansette, though I must say that I don’t recall knowing anyone who actually owned one. Most of my contemporaries either used their parent’s stereograms to play their records, or if they were lucky enough to have a portable record player of their own, the chances are it was cheapo model made by the likes of Pye, Philips, HMV and Fidelity.

The HF42 was a popular choice because they were so cheap and portable. They were available in a number if finishes, including a particularly garish red; this one sports a really tacky mock wood case, but like all models in the range, the case is made of an alarmingly thin plastic that shatters at the slightest touch.

It’s very basic, though unusually for a record player of that time it has four speeds, 16, 33.3, 45 and 78rpm. The controls are simple too, just on/off volume and ‘tone’. The arm is one hundred percent manually operated, there’s no lift, or cut out, but it does have the twin flip over stylus for LP and 78s (the latter being larger and more hard wearing). A nice feature is a captive retractable centre adaptor, so you could play records that had the middle pushed out. These were common fitments on record players but somehow they always seem to get lost.

It is mains powered but at some point Fidelity obviously made a battery-powered model as on the underside there’s what appears to be a fully functional battery compartment for 6 x D-cells. Sadly it’s not an option on this example as it is fitted with a mains synchronous motor. A simple 4-transitor amplifier with a push-pull output powers the 3.5-inch speaker, located behind the grille underneath the stylus. Needless to say it is not very loud, and in glorious mono. To be fair volume wasn’t an issue for most users back then, parents at that time had very sensitive ears and an acute dislike for the music of the day (nothing changes…) but even by today’s standards it sounds pretty good, and surprisingly mellow, as is often the case on old speakers that have been thoroughly ‘run in’ over the years.

What Happened to it?

There’s no need for a rerun of the demise of the vinyl record, we all know CDs virtually wiped them out in the early 80s, though they never completely disappeared and every so often there’s talk of a comeback. Collectors of hi-fi equipment have always prized turntables, but they tend to go for the fancy high-end models, which is why humble little record players like this one are often overlooked and are in danger of becoming quite rare.

There are still plenty of bargains around, though. This one cost me 99 pence on ebay recently, plus a tenner in postage… They’re never going to become seriously valuable but they are a genuinely interesting gadget, and a lot more representative of what the kids in the 60s and 70s actually listened to in their bedrooms.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1972

Original Price £25

Value Today? £10

Features: 4 speeds (16, 33.3, 45 & 78rpm), variable tone, twin stylus pickup (LP/78), 3.5-inch speaker, 4-transistor amplifier, retractable centre, carry handle, detachable lid

Power req. 230 bolts AC mains

Weight: 2kg

Dimensions: 325 x 260 x 100mm

Made in: England

Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 5

Hitachi WH-638, 2 Band 6 Transistor Radio 1967

In the same way that personal media players and mobile phones are standard kit for today’s teens, then back in the 60s you were nowhere man unless you had a tranny. Most of us had to put up with fairly basic cheapie pocket size medium wave jobbies but if you had rich parents you might have one of these, a 2-wave MW/LW model. It was a bit like owning a no-nameMP3 player when all of your mates had 4Gb iPods… The thing about long wave reception was that it allowed you to hear Radio Luxembourg a whole lot better than the notoriously unreliable medium wave signal on 208 metres.

Hitachi, along with Sony and Pioneer built their reputation and future global brand on humble transistor radios like these, though they were often outsourced to smaller companies and quite often the same chassis would turn up under a variety of different names. This one is a typical 6-transisitor (germanium type) superhetrodyne design with one densely packed, hand-assembled circuit board crammed full of coils, capacitors and resistors, and drenched with a liberal dollop of wax and varnish, to stop anything moving around. These circuits were so sensitive that any movement of the components would throw the tuning off bonk.

It’s powered by a single 9 volt ‘PP3’ type battery and has just three controls, for on/off volume, tuning and wave selection (on the back). There’s an earphone socket (3.5mm, mono, of course) on the side and it would have come with an earphone and a carry pouch, which fitted, on the leather case carry strap. They were very solidly built, and apart from a crackly volume, this one works fine, with the characteristic tinny sound coming from the 3-inch speaker.

What Happened To It?

Pocket two-band trannies continued well into the 70s then gradually models with higher quality FM reception began to take over. The development of more efficient silicon transistors and then micro chips meant radios could be made smaller, cheaper and more reliable, and by that time cassette tape had become established but the magic of listening to Luxembourg, then the offshore pirates under the bedclothes had disappeared and I guess we all grew up….

This one came to me courtesy of ebay for a couple of quid or around a third of the price of the postage, and as an added bonus it came with it’s original leather case, which is also in very good condition. Technically it’s nothing special, nevertheless, I really do think 60’s radios are a seriously underrated as collectibles and examples in good condition can only increase in value so get in quick, before I buy them all up!

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1967

Original Price £10?

Value Today? £5

Features: On/off volume switch, tuning, MW/LW, earphone socket
Power req. 9volt PP3

Weight: 0.3kg

Dimensions: 130 x 77 x 35mm

Made in: Japan

Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 3

Technicolor 212 Portable VCR, 1981

For a brief period in the early 1980s the Technicolor 212 portable VCR looked as though it could be the future of portable video. This was at a time when the only other portable video systems were huge ‘luggable’ VHS machines that weighed a ton and cost a small fortune.

The 212 used Compact Video Cassettes (CVC) spooled with ordinary quarter inch audio tape, similar in size and shape to a regular audio cassettes. It used a helical scaning system, similar to most VCRs and camcorders, with a linear tape speed of just 1.26 inches/sec (32.1mm/sec). Back then the 212 was regarded as a minor revolution in miniaturisation, though JVC and Sony were poised to launch the Compact VHS (VHS-C) and 8mm formats.

At the time Technicolor was best know for making movie film, so the appearance of this machine was a bit of a surprise. In fact it was jointly developed with the Japanese tape company Funai, who briefly marketed this machine under its own name. A 'combi' version with a built-in TV screen was also made though I don’t think it was ever sold in the UK.

At around £650 the 212 was quite expensive – remember this was over a quarter of a century ago… -- and you still needed a camera. In the UK it was supplied with a Hitachi model, which bumped the price up by another £550. Blank tapes cost around £6.00. It came with a companion mains power supply and RF adaptor, and an optional TV tuner/timer was also available (model No 5112), however, since only 30 minutes tapes were available (45 minute tapes did appear briefly), it wasn’t much use for serious time-shifting

It’s a lovely looking piece of kit with it’s clunky ‘piano-key’ controls, all of the sockets are mounted on the side; the large one is for the video camera connection, which draws its power form the VCRs internal rechargeable battery. As I recall picture quality was surprisingly good, though obviously not a patch on today’s portable video systems, however, much depended on the quality of the tape and dropouts – causing streaks and flashes on the picture – were quite common.

What Happened To it?

As soon as the technically superior VHS-C and 8mm formats appeared on the scene, backed by the world’s biggest electronic companies, it was curtains for Technicolour and CVC and the 212 quietly disappeared from view. Remaining stocks were sold off in shops in London’s Edgware Road for the giveaway price of only £75. A sad end to a brave attempt to take on the big boys, and who knows, if it had been launched a couple of years earlier things might have turned out differently.

Technicolor 212s still turn up on ebay from time to time, usually faulty and selling for a few pounds. I first reviewed the machine in early 1982 and I still have a small stock of CVC tapes in my collection, including one unopened one, which must be incredibly rare, all I need now is a working 212…

My thanks to fellow journalist and gadget collector Martin Pipe for his help with this one and you may be interested in his YouTube video documentary of the October 2010 British Audiojumble vintage hi-fi, audio and radio enthusiasts and collectors fair.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1981

Original Price £650 (camera £550, tapes £6.00)

Value Today? £50

Features: Tape speed: 1.26 ips (32.1 mm/sec), Video Resolution: 240 lines, Audio S/N: 40 dB, Audio Frequency Response: 100Hz to 8 kHz, audio dub, still frame, 40 minutes recording time on rechargeable battery pack,
Power req. 1 x AA cell

Weight: 3.2kg

Dimensions: 246 x 76 x 259 mm

Made in: Japan

Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 8

Sanyo G2001 Music Centre 1980 (manual)

The Music Centre was a classic piece of seventies technology. It was a complete home hi-fi system in a single box, well, three boxes, if you count the separate speakers. It was the natural successor to radiograms of the fifties and sixties, which were more often than not large unwieldy wooden boxes, usually designed more as a piece of furniture than hi-fi equipment.

The Music Centre broke free of the radiogram’s fuddy-duddy image and didn’t try to disguise its purpose behind wooden doors and lids. The turntable, tape deck and tuner were on display and protected by a smoked acrylic cover that more often than not would be cracked or broken within six months. Manufacturers found it hard to give up their old ways and most 70s and early 80s models had mockwood panels, and laminated chipboard speaker boxes but by the mid 80s these had given way to flashier designs.

The G2001 is one of dozens of models aimed at middle-aged buyers, who back then were the ones with the money. It’s conservatively styled, not too many controls or winky lights and still capable of playing 78rpm records. The cassette deck was one of the first to sport the ‘new’ Dolby noise reduction system, for de-hissing tapes and it had the slightly controversial ability to record directly from records. This example has survived intact, the lid is uncracked, everything still works and it actually sounds pretty good.

What Happened To It?

One box audio systems are still with us but the bulky music centre was killed off by the rise and rise of Compact Disc throughout the 1980s. As turntables started to disappear from audio systems they were replaced by CD decks, which allowed manufacturers to shrink the sizes of their boxes. Music centres gradually morphed into one-piece tower systems, then mini towers and micro systems. Nowadays you can pack 10,000 tunes in a box that fits in your pocket, and if you want to listen to your music through speakers you plug it into a docking system.

There’s still plenty of early music centres on ebay, often selling for less than the cost of shipping. If you’ve still got a collection of LPs or tapes in the loft it’s a great way of reviving those old sounds. Shortlist models from the better-known manufacturers as these tended to be built to a higher standard. Spares, like replacement styli and drive belts are also usually still obtainable and a good working example should still have a few years life left in it.

GIZMO GUIDE

First seen: 1980

Original Price £125

Value Today? £20

Features: Turntable (33/45/78rpm), cassette deck with Dolby Noise Reduction, FM/MW/LW receiver, twin speakers, 6W channel stereo amplifier

Power req. mains

Weight: 4.5kg

Dimensions: 525 x 174 x 379 mm

Made in: Japan

Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 4

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