Classic Hifi Care

Just saw this on Ebay at a reasonable price. These clean up nicely and look like a million bucks. Thought I'd pass it on. I already have one in the wings awaiting restoration.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/374870261272?h ... R6y0ycS7Yg

I was on a forum one time and a moderator on that forum used "75X11" as his username......

I had a 75X12 and a 75X16. They were good radios, but you had to study for a bit to figure out how to remove the chassis. One missed step and you can do a lot of hard-to-repair damage....

19&41 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 10:05 pm Just saw this on Ebay at a reasonable price. These clean up nicely and look like a million bucks. Thought I'd pass it on. I already have one in the wings awaiting restoration.

I've got one in the queue also. Tell me why you like it--the cabinet design?

And I'm always interested in seeing when people have added a phono input, as the photos show for that one. When I was a kid, a local family acquired a 1954 Chris-Craft cruiser, 45 ft. It seemed quite the elegant vessel. And still is; the son, my age, still has it. But his dad had one of the early V-M stereo tape machines. The early ones had a preamp output for the second channel and you had to supply an amp and speaker to get stereo. He had a tech convert an Arvin AC-DC portable radio, a 250-P, by adding a phono input. One one side sat the V-M and on the other the Arvin. Not way hi-fi, but usable. Here's the Arvin.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/arvin_250 ... e_248.html

I remember it because I have one, given to me by the same neighborhood eccentric who gave me my Edison cylinder player (thank you, Virgil).

Chris Campbell

I do like the cabinet design and more importantly, the brightwork. I have always liked the look of edgelit acrylic engraving. The basic chassis had been used for a few years with somewhat more subdued radios. One last thing I like about it is when It's aligned well, it's a great receiver.

I just looked at my card file. My 75X11 is from Granny in Alabama; she always found & saved radios for me. Wish I could tell her how often the radios remind me of her kindness. Out in the garage, in the way of my "mystery amp," I have a 3X521, a tiny AA5 in a case with a broken speaker grille. When I was getting the mystery amp out, the little RCA fell over and its main tuning knob shattered. I felt bad and have been gluing it back together. The label looks like "3X52," but there's a scratch and maybe a missing digit, and sho 'nuff, a search told me it's 251. Over at ARF, I found this comment:

"Tiny little thing, pretty plane jane but again in great condition and part of the package deal. This little turd sure gets in a ton of stations though..WOW!"

https://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewto ... w=previous

All those companies were in a race to the bottom in terms of parts count and other expenses, but somehow their engineers kept even the cheapos performing surprisingly well, at least in the RF portion.

Chris Campbell

It was good most manufacturers tried to accomodate all price ranges. My grandmother kept an RCA 8R71 in the living room. It was on a small table next to grandpa's recliner. That's why I have an 8R71 at home. It's a good performer but it picks up every wall wart in the house.

When that was designed, if you had said "wall wart," the engineers would have wondered what language you had lapsed into.

Chris Campbell

Dunno why but I've never cottoned much to the brown plastic/bakelite era of radios, they kind of seem similar to late '40s cars, lackluster in design. I actually like the cheaper made plastic ones from a bit later mainly because of '50s colors and futuristic/flashy design. I bought a brown late '40s Philco maybe 40 yrs ago but got bored with it and gave it away, to whom I no longer even remember.

Bakelite radio cabinets hold a place in history along with tailfins and other remnants of days past. I personally wouldn't want a radio collection without a bakelite radio. I have a big RCA bakelite, 3-RF-91 I think it is, that is not only an impressive performer, but has an interesting bakelite cabinet. The smaller bakelite models can be rather interesting, and can be "hot rodded" to make them more colorful without interrupting their historical significance. You can remove the paint and make them a brown bakelite radio if you want to. I like the later plastic radios as well. About the only radios I really don't care for are the three-dialers from the 1920's.

I sold two of my "75X" radios as the auction. They each brought over $100 and mine weren't the best examples in existence. I had polished the brass and they looked nice. I still have the "12" version, the plain bakelite model. It had an open primary in the output transformer when I got it.

My 75X11 in its original livery is ivory. There were color options.

And the little 3X251 I mentioned my not be eye-catching (especially with its broken grille) but I plugged it in the other day after finishing the shattered-knob project and it was receiving local stations competently. Have not tried it at night yet but suspect it will do just fine on the larger array of stations. Not bad for age plus neglect. OK, I did do some repair-- a line of Duco cement along a tear in the speaker cone.

Chris Campbell