1930s Sets

The 1930s make up a large chunk of my radios, in part because I have always liked large tombstones, pushbutton sets and tuning eyes (although they can be expensive!) and in part because some of the 30s sets just look cool and work well in daily driver applications. Although I have some 40s sets along the same lines, the 30s styling appeals to me more than the immediately pre or postwar sets.

This is a late 30s Air King 225 which came out of a relative's attic, its history is unknown because the set is not in anyone's memory yet it was found in an attic of a house thats been in the family since the early 19th century.

This is a battery operated Airline 04BR-460A farm radio, originally it had a full set of G tubes in it but a mistake in a varrible power supply setting killed all the filaments and caused an entire set of new tubes to be purchased, some were Gs, some were GTs. The set works quite well and is a simple, no frills cheap radio.

This horrible picture is of my Crosley 148 Cathedral, it is all original as far as I know, and perfectly clean inside and out. It was an antique show find and although I paid more than I generally do, it is worth it for such a fine set. The volume control is uber noisey but otherwise its flawless.

This General Electric A-53 is restored, was bought working at a show and is one of my favorite listening sets although the speaker is unoriginal and thus the non-perfect replacement gives the set a severe case of 60 cycle hum.

The General Electric A-64 is an other tombstone, with more features than the A-53, its notible feature is that the dail is more than a slider- it is a "drum" with one half with the short wave notations, the other for broadcast. One knob literally rotates the drum 50% while switching bands. The tuning knob is also geared to give both fast sweeps and slow, careful tuning. This one is almost all original.

The General Electric G-50 would have been a nice collectors piece. It looks good, it has a teledail/pushbutton system, and has everything that would appeal to a late 30s collector. But the pot metal used in the teledail assembly is kaput on everyone I have heard of, thus rendering the entire pushbutton feature as inoperable. The set works good otherwise and still retains its original call letter labels on the set's buttons.

This set (above) is a mid to late 30s Goldentone 7G. This was an other gift radio from a relative, I had never heard of Goldentone before but I liked the way it came out. The set is in great shape. Note the tuning eye and large golden colored dail.

This Silvertone R1181 is a nice set that was in the worst possible shape when I obtained it, speaker had to be reconed, the cabinet looked almost unsalvagible but it was a large AM/Shortwave set with pushbuttons and a tuning eye (all being pluses for me). It cleaned up quite well, as you can see and works great with regular basis listening. It isn't my reception powerhouse, but it pulls in the far away stations like its skipdistance while its the middle of the day.

This is a Simplex of unknown model #, it was in rough shape but restored decently with some refinishing. A couple minor vineer chips but otherwise its all intact. I did not even know the make until recently when someone told me it was a Simplex, but so far little remains known about this mid 30s tombstone.

This tiny tombstone is a Stewart Warner R-116, and uses a dail common to many of the early 30s Stewart Warners. It is a nice set and has had very little, if any work done to it.

The Stewart Warner R-1801-B is an other favorite of mine, it looks very pretty especially with the dail and woodworking. It was actually the first radio I ever worked on, and is complete with a vineered backing with the "craft built" metal tag/decal. The set was in beat shape originally, and must have come from down south as it was 100% filled with mud wasp nests which took quite some work to free from the case and chassis. Those mud wasps make a nest that is similar to concrete.

This Stewart Warner 03-5C1 is unusual since it lacks (and aparently never had) the left grill style commonly seen on this model. Perhaps a factory varriant, it has been in the family since new and just never had the horizontal grill bars that this model is known to have.

Here we have a Westinghouse WR-100. The set is very fancy, art deco with very special woodworking. The set is a tiny early 30s tombstone and features a special cloth covered power cord that has a twisted coil around the two AC power wires. This makes the power cord critical for perfect operation of the radio so I salvaged mine with heat shrinking.

This Zenith 5-G-534 is a fancy set, its a no frills AM Ac/Dc set but the cabinet is truly amazing to me. I features a very fancy set of grills, both on the front and the two cracks that run across the top & the sides. The set is in fairly complete condition and is one of those pieces I love to leave out where it gets noticed.

Here we have a Zenith 6-D-2620 black dail "bumberain" set, which was in rough shape when we got it. Grill cloth is new, otherwise its mostly original.