Elgin R1750

New to the forum, and would like to know if anyone else out there owns an Elgin R1750 9 band shortwave. I've had alot of enjoyment out of this radio since I bought it new in 1972.

[Celt]

Not familiar with that one, but my family's jewelry store sold a ton of Elgin 8 transistor AM radios back in the sixties. Outstanding reception and audio and had a cool little battery holder that'd pop out with one push of a chrome button. My oldest brother has an Elgin AM-FM clock radio (circa 1966 with aTelechron clock movement) that also offers outstanding performance for it's diminutive size.

I can remember Elgin making quite a few small transistor sets. The R1750 is a 10lb. shortwave or multiband set that is built like a Sherman Tank. It was manufactured in Japan, for Elgin Inc. of Maspeth NY, and sold by Frederick and Nelsons in Seattle. It was a division of Marshall Fields, and went out of business quite a few years ago. I treasure this radio because it was the first thing I bought with my first real job when I was 17 years of age.
Appearance wise, it had a plastic plexiglass cover for the dial and brushed chrome aluminum for the tuning knob, bass/treble knob, and on/off volume knob. There's a slide switch for AFC on FM down in the lower left corner. It also had an aluminum grille which covered a 4"X6" speaker which up to this day gives fantastic sound. The retractable antenna is really long, and tends to be prone to bending, so one has to be careful with it.
Elgin Corp must have gone out of business shortly after I purchased this radio because I never heard much more about them.
As I said, I'm still using this radio, and it still gives excellent sound, and relatively good shortwave performance. Even though it was considered a "portable" in its day, by today's standards it is too bulky and heavy to be considered a portable, so I use it for desktop service. I'm assuming that the Elgin R1750 must have been a competitor to the Zenith Transoceanic.

[Celt]

Yep, Elgin had its fair share of financial probs. They made fantastic watches here in the states until some point in the very early 60's. After that, movements and cases were made in France and a far cry from the quality they once had. Still, Elgin made some remarkable radios. Bulova Watch Co. also offered radios, but while Bulova made some dandy watches, their radios for the most part were lacking.

[Jeffhs]

My dad had a bunch of old Sams Photofacts from the '50s and '60s that had at least one Bulova radio folder. The radio was your basic garden-variety AA5 from the mid-1950s, IIRC; it must have been from 1953 at the earliest, as the tuning dial still had Conelrad marks at 640 and 1240 kHz. I don't remember if this set had a solid metal chassis or the whole thing was on a PC board. I remember another radio, made by a famous watch maker of the '50s whose schematic/alignment data was in that batch of PFs, but don't recall the brand--whether it was another Bulova, Elgin or what.

I once had a regulator-type wall clock with a quartz battery-operated movement, with the name "Elgin" on the clock face. Don't know if it was actually made by Elgin (the real deal) or some offshore company using the name under license--or if the name was in the public domain by this time (early 1990s). I bought the clock at a Big Lots store in my hometown for something like $20, and it looked like it had been through heck and back--the cabinet was scratched and dinged like anything. But it ran as soon as I put a C-size battery in it, and I used it for perhaps six or seven years. Ran well all that time. I can only hope my present wall clock, a Seth Thomas quartz battery clock in a wood case, runs just as well and as long (I got it as a Christmas present seven years ago).

Just listened to my Elgin R1750 9 band shortwave today......It still sounds as good as the day I bought it.!!!

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by lightfoot44

Just listened to my Elgin R1750 9 band shortwave today......It still sounds as good as the day I bought it.!!!

I didn't know anything about your Elgin radio (I had never heard of this brand being associated with anything other than clocks until now) until I read your post, but it seems like it's a good one--much better than the cheap portables coming off the lines in Korea and other offshore locations these days.

Do you have pictures of that radio? I'm sure a lot of us here, myself included, would be interested in seeing what it actually looks like. It sounds to me as if your set is built and performs every bit as well as the Zenith Transoceanic radios were and did, respectively, even if the Elgin was made in Japan for an American company, as was stated by yourself or another poster to this thread.

You said the Elgin sets may have been in competition with the TOs, so it wouldn't surprise me if the Elgin radios were built to the same exacting standards. The statement that the Elgin R1750 was built "like a Sherman tank" would indicate to me that the manufacturer must have taken great care in designing and building it to very exacting standards indeed, something we very rarely if ever see in radios or much of anything else coming from the Orient or other offshore locations these days.

I would hold on to that Elgin radio as long as possible It seems to represent a level of build quality in portable radios we will never see again, as I have stated many times in regard to early Zenith radios until the company went out of the radio business (sets of 1920s to early '80s vintage). That the Elgin R1750 may have been a competitor against Zenith's Transoceanic line of radios indicates to me that the two companies may well have been rivals, trying to outdo each other every chance they got. And while we're at it, let's not forget one model of Silvertone (Sears) multiband transistor portable that looked an awful lot like the Transoceanic.

These companies may have tried to imitate or copy the TO, but the latter were one-of-a-kind sets; the phrase "often imitated, never duplicated" comes to my mind as I write this. There never was and never will be another all-band portable radio as good as the Zenith Trans-Oceanic sets were. If Elgin (or the company that actually made these receivers) were trying to make a portable radio that rivaled the TO, Elgin had one strike against it right away if their R1750's main chassis is a PC board with the transistors soldered in place; all Zenith TOs up to the Royal 7000 were built on solid metal chassis, with socketed transistors to boot.

I don't have a digital camera, so I'll have to see if I can take a pic and scan it somehow. I'd love to let anyone who's interested see it. I'm not much into circuit boards, or electronics, although I did have to take it apart once to solder the internal wire back to the antenna. It was about a 10 minute fix, and simple enough that even I could do it. I remember seeing alot of heavy metal parts inside, and that the radio housing was made of wood with either leather or vinyl covering it. It has lots of chrome and brushed aluminum in the 60-70's style.
Actually, I've loved to listen to shortwave since I was a little kid. My grandmother had an RCA tube set that I couldn't get enough of. I promised myself that I would get a shortwave set of my own as soon as I could so I could re-live the fun. I've never tired of it, even though my wife and a few others think I'm nuts to listen to "radio" in this modern age of I-pods, computers, and CD players. To me there's nothing more fascinating than getting a "global" perspective on news, and I really believe that shortwave is the best way to do that. I will keep the Elgin, or pass it on to my daughter if she wants it someday.

Here's a pic of my Elgin. I love this radio.