Philips B2X67U/65

[G6Tanuki]

Paid a tenner for this at the local car-boot. An intriguing little radio - MW and SW only, which reflects its European heritage (and must have dented its sales in the UK back in the old Home/Light/Third days].

AC/DC design, UCH81 frequency-changer,UF89 IF, UBC81 detector/first-audio, UL84 output, and strangely a UY42 as the rectifier.

Why the old B8 "Rimlock" valve as a rectifier when the rest of the valve lineup was the later B9A series? Who knows what they were smoking back then in the street-cafes of Eindhoven?

The case is relatively clean: there's a strange stain on the top which hints at something having been stood on it, but as Arthur Daley would have said "that'll polish out".

There's a piece of metallised-paper stuck to the inside top of the cabinet, with a lead from it disappearing down into the front-end. An intriguing combination of heat-shield and 'plate' antenna?

Looking through the reassuringly thick layers of dust I can see that in the area round the UL84 there are a few obviously non-original wires beneath the PCB and there's a similarly non-original 270-Ohm cathode-resistor for the UL84. And the UL84, though a Mullard, is the only valve not marked "Made in Holland". Signs of a previous burn-up?

I've not yet applied power.

Looking on Radiomuseum suggests this dates from 1956/57. The main 'chassis' is a satisfyingly modern PCB rather than old-style point-to-point aluminium-chassis-and-tagstrips. The case styling is really rather nicely 'IKEA' - certainly much more in-tune with modern styling than the likes of the dull "woodies" that the UK radio-industry was churning out at the time. In style-terms it makes my1960s Bush VHF81 look horribly quaint!

[paulsherwin]

That's an export set not intended for the UK market, but it's similar to a range of models produced by various Philips subsidiaries in the late 50s. In the UK there were Philips, Stella and Cossor variants.

None of the variants I've ever seen use a B8A rectifier. Nice find.

https://www.vintage-radio.com/recent...ps-b2g81u.html

[julie_m]

It was definitely intended for use on the Continent, from the choice of supply voltages. 127V phase-to-neutral is 220V phase-to-phase, and this was how some countries used to be wired up before the modern standard of 230/400V.

There may well have been a similar model with MW and LW, meant for use in the UK and France, but perhaps with the more obvious UY85 rectifier.

[G6Tanuki]

It's intriguing: particularly the SW coverage going down to the 60-Metre band (most 'consumer' radios I've seen generally only have SW coverage extending down to the 49M band - 4.7 to 5.mumble MHz)

And as I opined, lacking LW it would really not have bee a good radio to sell into the UK market in its time, because it couldn't receive the 200KHz/1500-Metres "Light programme" which I'd have expected many of the likely buyers of this radio to want to listen to as their prime source of entertainment [the 'Home Service" and "ThirdPprogramme" being at the time sources of lugubrious discussions and upmarket classical symphonies]

And as to why it used an even-then-obsolete rectifier: Perhaps Philips found a cave-full of them squirreled away?

Whatever, I intend to get it going again.

[Philips210]

Hi

That's an interesting set but strange there's no Long Wave band so probably not too many were sold in France.

It looks a great set to work on thanks to the PCB but PCBs and output pentode and rectifier valves don't really mix too well. The PCB material often gets very toasty over the years. A nicely styled set though and I'd also like one in my collection.

Regards
Symon.

[paulsherwin]

It may have been intended for Africa, which would explain the 60m band coverage. Is there any info on the tuning scale?

To repeat, that would never have been sold in the UK, so somebody's brought it home with them from their travels.

[turretslug]

I could just about rationalise the use of a Rimlock rectifier in a set with vertical chassis/PCB on the grounds that it might prevent this toasty bottle creeping out of the socket under repeated heating and cooling (remember all that stuff with B9a valves retained with a springy wire loop, both horizontal and vertical mounted, also the way some ICs could creep up from their sockets, especially if they weren't firmly gripped by turned-pin thoroughness) but it's more difficult to find an excuse with a horizontal board, other than pallet loads of UY42s crying out for use.

[linescan87]

I have a Stella badged radio in the exact same cabinet, but it is a mw/lw set.

John Joe.

[AC/HL]

The valve complement would have been those easily available in the destination market. Philips manufactured radios for every continent (and in most of them) and would be acutely aware of local parts availability.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

It may have been intended for Africa, which would explain the 60m band coverage. Is there any info on the tuning scale?

The dial has precisely no 'station names', just frequencies/wavelengths. Which would definitely suggest it was intended for sale to global markets rather than UK/European national ones.

Interestingly it's got the French "OM" - Ondes Moyennes, and "OC" - Ondes Courtes - titles on the relevant scales along with MW and SW.

Fascinating, n'est ce pas?

[turretslug]

There are quite a few francophone countries in Africa, also SE Asia and various Pacific and Caribbean islands- and they're very keen on taking every opportunity for folk not to have to learn English.....

[julie_m]

Sets intended for sale in France itself (which had MW and LW broadcast stations, bu tno SW stations IMMSMW) most commonly used "GO" -- Grandes Ondes -- for Long Wave, and "PO" -- Petites Ondes -- for Medium Wave. SW, if present, would have been denoted by OC, Ondes Courtes. And some rural parts of France used 110/200V until the mid-20th Century, but not 127/220V. France also seemed to stick with wavelengths in metres as opposed to frequencies in kHz, though not as late as the UK.

Former French or Belgian (though the Dutch for Short Wave is Kort Golf, which does not fit with SW) colonies in Africa sounds like a reasonable destination. Or maybe somewhere like Morocco, which had both French and English speakers.

[turretslug]

It would make historical sense for GO and PO to have been adopted in the very early days of broadcasting when what we now call "SW", "OC", "KW", "HF" etc. was regarded as an electromagnetic spectrum backwater, odd and unpredictable (and apparently, on that basis, handed over to radio amateurs who promptly demonstrated that it could be very useful and long-ranging indeed under appropriate circumstances!) and thus "medium waves" really would have been petite ones, relatively speaking. However, once HF had become accepted as a worthwhile place to broadcast, a radio with just MW and SW coverage and no LW would cover the seemingly confusingly equivalent "Petites Ondes" and "Ondes Courtes" in territories where "Grandes Ondes" weren't familiar anyway- so I can see that the term "Ondes Moyennes" would seem more appropriate in these cases.

[linescan87]

Just for interest, here is a couple of pictures of my one. I was mistaken when I said it was a Stella, it's actually a Siera.

John Joe.

[julie_m]

Wasn't Siera another Philips-owned brand supplying badge-engineered sets to independent dealers, a kind of Continental Stella or Cossor?

[Nuvistor]

Anyone remember 60m band being called the Tropical band?

[linescan87]

Funny how they just stuck the siera badge on the front, you can clearly see the outline were the Phillips badge would fit.

John Joe.

[G6Tanuki]

This history of my radio is really intriguing me: I can appreciate that its lack of Long Wave would have made it a non-seller to the UK market in the late-1950s. And the various British/Dutch/French 'Colonial' markets in the late-50s/early-60s were equally undergoing a whole spectrum of political upheavals which make the late-1980s collapse of the Berlin Wall look simple in comparison.

As well as the technology, I'm always deeply intrigued about the sociopolotical ramifications reflected in radios. Was my Philips designed to fulfil a market-niche in the Belgian Congo? And then when that niche fell apart did Philips offload the radios onto the UK market at a bargain-price to stem their losses?

Who knows what path led my radio to appear at a minor Wiltshire car-boot-sale.

The conjecture and intrigue is for me a big part of the attraction.

Today I've spent a couple of hours flicking-out accreted dust with a paintbrush and an airjet. There are a couple of big-and-bulky pitch-stuffed capacitors in there, and I really don't want to be subjecting it to proper-mains until I know they're OK, or they fail my 300VDC-through-a-resistor-and-a-neon test.

I really want to get this little radio working again to its full potential: I've got a shortwave "Pantry-transmitter" that could provide it with some decent late-1950s/early-1960s content!

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Nuvistor

Anyone remember 60m band being called the Tropical band?

And also 90M and 120M were known as the 'Tropical bands' - widely used for broadcasts acros Africa/Central-Caribbean areas because the spectacular electrical-storms in those areas were truly crippling to European-style 'medium-wave' broadcasting.

[Boater Sam]

The black tar bombers will be very leaky.