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View Poll Results: Are you still interested in antique radios?
Yes!!! I'm more of a radio guy than a TV guy. 8 9.88%
Not really, they bore me. 6 7.41%
I enjoy vintage radios and TVs equally. 47 58.02%
A few maybe, but by and large I'm more of a TV guy. 20 24.69%
Voters: 81. You may not vote on this poll

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  #16  
Old 08-23-2016, 10:01 PM
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Dave S Dave S is offline
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I clicked on the button for "love 'em equally" but that's not quite accurate. I started with old radios as a kid. And as you can see from my web-gallery in the link in my signature below, I like most anything electronic that makes noise: radios, TVs, phonographs, juke boxes and more. I have a collector sports car too.

But although I have a more-than-casual interest in all that, my primary thing is vintage television. I've been focused mainly on TV history and TV collecting after a friend gave me a set he found in his attic 30-some years ago.
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  #17  
Old 08-24-2016, 04:43 AM
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Let's not forget...if it were not for radio, there would be no television!
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  #18  
Old 08-24-2016, 04:52 AM
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decojoe67 decojoe67 is offline
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As a kid I believe my first interest was antique radios, but when I first saw pics of early TV's I was blown-away. The thing was that back around 1980 early TV's, outside of collectors circles, were no where to be found, so I started collecting radios. When I finally located a local TV collector/dealer, I finally began to acquire them. I find they both have their charm. The edge antique radios have is the smaller size, less troublesome operation, and much, much more diverse and interesting cabinet styles.
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  #19  
Old 08-24-2016, 05:19 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric H View Post
Not so much the Radios, but what's on the Radio that bores me.
True. If it wasn't for NPR...I'd never turn mine on...
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Last edited by Celt; 11-07-2016 at 06:01 PM.
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  #20  
Old 08-24-2016, 07:17 AM
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decojoe67 decojoe67 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Celt View Post
True. If it wasn't for NPR...I'd never turn mine on...
When I turn on one of my old radios or TV's I strictly use my AM transmitter or DVD player and have a choice of anything. I gave up on AM radio by the 1990's.

Last edited by Celt; 11-07-2016 at 06:02 PM.
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  #21  
Old 08-24-2016, 09:57 AM
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There is still good music and programing on AM to be found during night DXing...Some places there are good oldies AM stations you can get during the day too. I've got 1-2 such stations in my area.
NPR Classical music + talk with horrid left bias = hell no! I'll take oldies-80's pop/rock, or Rush or the local right talk hosts any day. Only good thing on NPR is the 30's-40's dramas they play on Sunday out here....Used to like Prairie Home Companion for some of the humor and stuff, but once the current POTUS got elected the next episode singing his praises permanently soured the show for me.
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  #22  
Old 08-24-2016, 10:05 AM
dieseljeep dieseljeep is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by decojoe67 View Post
When I turn on one of my old radios or TV's I strictly use my AM transmitter or DVD player and have a choice of anything. I gave up on AM radio by the 1990's.
There's three AM stations in this area, that play music, one easy listening and two oldies stations. They're those 500 watters that cut their power down to 27 watts at night.
One's in Milwaukee, one in West Bend and one in Plymouth.
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  #23  
Old 08-24-2016, 10:44 AM
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Robert Grant Robert Grant is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Titan1a View Post
I used to enjoy television before DTV. My forte is DX and with DTV DX is nearly useless. <snip>
Did you get in on the opportunity that the digital transition (with its near-abandonment of VHF-Lowband) provided for really long-haul analog TV DX by sporadic-E?

Since the transition, I've received television stations from Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and several Mexican states in Michigan by Es.

These places had always been "trying to come in" all along, but local lowband stations, and stateside stations in the "Es ring" about 1,000 miles around me were burying the DX.

With locals gone, the real DX can get through (though note that the Mexican analogs are gone).

Yes, there are lowband digitals in NE, but North Platte and Hastings will be in the side null of an antenna pointed south, and Superior is far enough away that an analog ch4 DX station could get through (certainly the audio if not the picture as well).

Last edited by Robert Grant; 08-24-2016 at 10:58 AM.
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  #24  
Old 08-24-2016, 10:51 AM
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DavGoodlin DavGoodlin is offline
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I started by enjoying .......as opposed to fixing .... record player, radio and a tv. Dad had a Philco 46-200 that introduced me to DXing AM. By age 11, I was getting "presents" of AA5s and began reducing some to parts and others started working by some miracle.

Our metal Motorola BW was buried in an upstairs closet when the '71 Zenith brought color to our den.

I would push the iron-rich Motorola down the hall to my room on top of a big Tonka truck for some early-morning cartoons, Hogan's Heros etc when the TV-Den was off limits. It was then that I HAD to address the antenna issues, which led to actually getting inside and fixing other issues.

I get sick of old radios, turn to tube receiver-amps and record players and get tired of that, then on to TV repairs and nostalgia-overload, which bring me back to the radios.....and so it goes.
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  #25  
Old 08-24-2016, 05:31 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dieseljeep View Post
There's three AM stations in this area, that play music, one easy listening and two oldies stations. They're those 500 watters that cut their power down to 27 watts at night.
One's in Milwaukee, one in West Bend and one in Plymouth.
I miss in the 1980's when the AM oldies station played big-band/vocalists here in NY, and occasionally old radio shows too. I find that having the opportunity to choose something great to broadcast myself is hard to resist.
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  #26  
Old 08-25-2016, 07:56 AM
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It's rather annoying & disconcerting to have built up a reasonable collection of the finest Devices ever dreamed up for grabbing an obscure signal outta the ether, & realizing all you can listen to are some rabid individual raising hell about JAY-ZUS, a couple of somnolent drunks droning on & on & on about "The Game", 5711 commercials extolling the virtues of some Majick pill that makes yr Unca Willie nice & hard,or annoyingly too numerous THIS year, having to listen to a couple of braying jackazzes wanting ME to vote for one of 'em. Poor ol' Lou Coulliard- one of the wheels at Collins radio-Lou is likely spinning in his grave..
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  #27  
Old 08-26-2016, 10:02 AM
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There's always shortwave!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha-z25ipm_c
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  #28  
Old 08-27-2016, 01:59 AM
Titan1a Titan1a is offline
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Amen!
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  #29  
Old 10-21-2016, 12:32 AM
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Phil Nelson Phil Nelson is offline
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I started with simple radios, then got interested in more complicated radios (boatanchors and higher-end consumer sets). Eventually, I moved on to TVs, and that's mainly what I collect and restore nowadays, unless I run across a radio that's irresistible for some reason.

BC programming around here has always been pretty ghastly. I used to listen to my boatanchors regularly (hear the BBC news at midnight!), but the "bigs" in English-language shortwave broadcasting have cut back to the extent that there's very little SW worth hearing any more. Late-night DX-ing ain't half as exciting in a world where you can dial up a zillion Internet stations -- foreign and domestic -- on your phone, with no static or fading. I listen to FM radio almost exclusively, and yes, I have a couple of AM transmitters, but most of the time I just turn on one of my old FM radios, which are located close at hand in places where I spend most of my time.

With tube TVs, I feel like can fix most sets most of the time, and get advice from forums if I get stuck. I still have plenty to learn, and there are enough different designs that I don't picture getting bored soon.

Just my $0.02.

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html
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  #30  
Old 11-07-2016, 04:04 PM
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Josef Josef is offline
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The answer depends on the TV or radio we are talking about. In the last months I spent a lot of time restoring a prewar radio what means I had to restuff around 25 wax/tar caps, adding new connection leads seal the whole things again and so on. Of course this was much more dirty work than restoring an average 1950s TV set.
I consider to build in a 1954 FM after market tuner from the same manufacturer into the prewar radio. I connected the FM tuner for test reasons and it sounded surprisingly good
What do you think about adding the FM tuner to keep the radio functional? Unfortunately AM is almost dead here in my region...

BTW: I own the radio which is in very nice technical and optical condition since more than 20 years and restored it accurately this year because of the large number of caps.

Greetings Josef
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