Philco-Ford 12 Transistor SS

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Tapehead47

Hello, AKers!
I love radios! I could live without a TV, but not a radio. Whenever I can get a nice one at a garage sale I swoop it up. I'm not actually a 'collector' as I probably have maybe 25 or so. And I use about 12 of them here and there, in different rooms, the garage, my shed, by the pool, at work. I have a little Sony AM/FM/SW for travelling, and camping. Drives my wife absolutely bonkers sometimes! Don't you just LOVE it!!(kidding). I listen to football and hockey on the radio, and watch the TV simultaneously. I don't care about the time delay, unless it's 5 seconds or more. I use my walkman radio when at friends houses during a football game. If the radio is ahead, I'm calling out plays before they happen. They think I'm some kind of genius.
Anyway, just picked up a beautiful Philco Ford 12 Transistor portable at a yardsale last weekend. It has a wooden case, is made in Japan. Uses 4 D-cells (still had some old RCA zinc batteries in it that hadn't leaked!). I put fresh alkalines in it and it plays beautifully. I need a 6V DC converter to run it off AC, so it couldn't be too old. Older models had an internal converter. I'm guessing 1970's or more recent. I have tons of converters, just have to find the right one.

I can't find the model number. On the bottom is a little black metal plate that says "Japan 403". That's my only clue. The chrome is sparkling, the wood only has a few scratches. I couldn't wait to get home! And it cost me only $3.00! Wowie Zowie, what a great find for me!

I just had to share my new find with other AKers who dig radio.

Attaching some pix (I hope). By the way, I sleep listening to George Noory or Art Bell. My wife finally got used to it. Good girl. My dog doesn't care at all.

Rick in Lutz, Fl.

There is no telling what you can find at yard sales; many times you find very gently used stuff (or things with very minor problems) that might cause you to wonder why it's being sold. I've seen this (and picked up some great sets in the process) many times at hamfests, rummage sales and even in the trash.

If you picked up this gem for only $3 and it works, you did very well indeed. Philco (and later Philco-Ford) was a good make in its day; their transistor portables weren't quite as good as straight Philcos by the time Ford bought them out in the '60s-'70s, but even these later sets weren't half bad. You were lucky the batteries weren't leaking like crazy if they have been in the set any length of time. I snagged a Panasonic boom box from the trash area behind my apartment about a month ago that still had its original batteries in it. They were all leaking and left electrolyte stains all over the inside of the battery compartment, but the radio and cassette deck still worked on AC (the cord was still attached when I found it). The only other thing wrong with the unit, besides the leaking batteries and a missing battery compartment cover, was that the FM rod antenna had been broken off at the base. I replaced it with a similar antenna I had on another old boom box, and don't you know it, it worked--and well, getting every Cleveland FM station just fine. So there's no telling what you'll find in the trash or, in your case, at yard sales. The adage "one man's trash is another man's treasure" applies here in spades.

I would also say you were very fortunate to have found one of these radios in a wooden cabinet; most are in cheap plastic cabinets and have small speakers, which makes them sound...well, like cheap transistor radios. I have a Sony MR-9700W AM/FM/FM stereo transistor portable, 1973 vintage in a heavy wood cabinet that sounds like a console; the only other radios I own that rival it for sound quality are my Zenith C-845 and K-731.

That Philco-Ford receiver looks to me as if it might be late '60s. If it is branded Philco-Ford rather than just Philco, it's probably 1968 or later, as this is roughly when Ford bought out Philco. Note that there are many older late '60s-'70s TVs which also bear the Philco-Ford branding. I don't know what happened to the company by the '80s or '90s, let alone now; probably got swallowed up by some offshore electronics firm that is now manufacturing radios and such under some other name.

The chances are the Philco-Ford name has long since disappeared, or if it (the Philco part of it anyway; Ford is still a copyrighted and probably patented trademark of the Ford Motor Company, what little is left of it) is now in the public domain, it might well be showing up on cheap AM/FM transistor portables the likes of small "mini" boom boxes (which are just AM/FM radios, not stereo and without tape decks, that are shaped like boom boxes) that are currently for sale in discount stores such as Big Lots for $3.99 or even less.

As with all offshore imports with the names of former American home entertainment equipment manufacturers on them, however, that sage warning "caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware) applies here in a big way. These things are no more Philco, GE, RCA, Magnavox, etc. than an "Omega" (for example) chronograph wristwatch selling for a ridiculously low price is the real deal. (A true Omega will cost at least $200 or so.) Counterfeit watches are also something to watch out for; many people over the years have been fooled into believing that they were buying a very famous make of watch for just $20 or so, only to find later on (after the watch eventually stops and the new owner takes it to a jeweler for repair) that the watch has a movement worth no more than $5 or so--needless to say, the watch isn't worth fixing at this point. I read an article in Popular Science magazine about 35 years ago which addressed this racket in detail; there was also an article in an issue of the (now defunct) Electronics Illustrated magazine from the same period that addressed the subject of AM and AM/FM radios containing "dummy" transistors; the extra transistors, which in many cases were not transistors at all but empty transistor cases, defective transistors with the leads soldered together under the radio's PC board, or even transistors wired as diodes; some radios had these dummy transistors in positions in the circuitry in which a resistor would have worked just as well, or even better. The claims made for these radios would often trick an unsuspecting buyer into believing he/she was purchasing a super-sensitive 17-transistor pocket radio that could pick up Hawaii stations from New York in broad daylight (for example), when in reality perhaps nine or more of those "transistors" were dummies. The radios, much more often than not, worked about as well as any legitimate 6-transistor portable, no more and no less; further, they would and almost always did work just as well with the dummy transistors removed altogether.

The high-transistor-count hoax has since vanished, probably having been stopped when Federal laws regarding truth in advertising were changed. I don't know, however, if it is even worth anyone's while to counterfeit digital electronic wristwatches, as, aside from the new super-accurate watches with WWVB receivers built in, I don't think most ordinary digital watches are worth copying these days. There is no need to, really, as one can find electronic digital watches (bare bones types in which the batteries may well be hard-wired into the watch) as cheap as $1 (I've seen them) in discount stores the likes of Dollar General, et al. These cheap watches don't last long and are throwaways when they do eventually stop (they don't keep very good time either, their quartz movements notwithstanding; I had one some years ago that gained something like 5 minutes every hour from the day I purchased it), but for $1 I guess many folks think they are getting a bargain. Often (perhaps too often) they find out too late they have been taken.


Caveat emptor, once again.