[Vintage_RC]

I have a particular interest in portable radios, especially first generation transistor sets. I have recently acquired from France a Solistor Transistor 8 whiich was the first French transistor radio, their equivalent to the British PAM 710. Solistor was part of the CSF group and the radio uses early CSF junction transistors which look a bit like the well known Ediswan top hat type. The transistors have an interesting numbering system - just a letter depending on function - A to F. Like the 710 it was released in 1956, also like the 710 it has a low IF but in this case very low - 130KHz which might lead to some image problems. It was reviewed in Toute La Radio (All Radio) Dec 1956 edition (anyone got a copy?). The set was manufactured in its original form for about a year and was then superceded by a revised version which was housed in the same case. The revised version can be identified by the rotary wavechange switch, mine is one of the original type. After some searching on Google France I found a website a bit like Electrotanya which had a copy of the service manual (in French of course) which I have spent a few days translating.

As received it was in quite good shape (see photos), the rexine covered wooden case had no woodworm problems, the battery compartment has some minor battery leakage damage and the volume control knob is not original but the PCB looks free of tampering. The volume control pot has been changed (which may explain the non original knob as the Solistor knobs fit over a shaft with a key). The only other obvious mod was a badly soldered wire visible in the battery box picture, this effectively bypasses the first 4.5V flat type battery. I can only assume someone was trying to run it from 9V, it would have been unlikely to work as the first (bypassed) battery provides a bias voltage for the transistors (unlike the later model which uses normal biassing with resistor chains). I have removed the wire. There was a small area of damage to the speaker cone (the paper has become brittle with age) which I repaired using model aircraft tissue and diluted PVA. The repaired speaker was tested on another set and works fine.

The components on the PCB are of French origin and I have no idea of anything that might be suspect, the electrolytics visually look OK, I think it is going to be a case of powering it up and taking it from there. I'll report back in due course of how I get on. If anyone out there has one of these early French sets I would love to hear from them of any potential problems, I could also supply them with a copy of the translated manual.