Fidelity Radio Ltd

[Paul_RK]

Fidelity were... interesting.

I've mentioned the Rad 11, a tall slim portable radio, LW/MW/BS, in a ply cabinet covered with black padded rexine, maroon tuning scale, aluminium 'speaker grille. There was also a Rad 11B, the same thing in dark blue rexine with a mottled blue grille: and the Rad 14, sharing the cabinet but with FM replacing the Lux. bandspread, and finished in dark green.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/fidelity_rad14rad_1.html

Note, if you care to, those two little strips of white piping beneath the grille at either end. If they're not there on a Rad 11 or 11B, you're looking at the cheapened later version of the set, which has quite a flimsy plastic case replacing the plywood. Its side cheeks are still covered with rexine, while the area showing under the grille is of plastic textured to look like rexine.

Now, there was an earlier Fidelity set, of the same size but unashamedly in a plastic case: that was the 208.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/fidelity_208.html

Instead of the edgewise on/off-volume control on top of the Rad 11, it had on/off-volume and tone controls on the front: and it had wavechange keys on the front, giving way to buttons on top for the Rad 11. There was another set which used the 208's cabinet moulding: the LW/MW/SW Fairline. Twelve transistors, it proudly said, though two of them were connected as diodes, and there was even a wee tuning meter.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/fidelity_fairline.html

The Rad 11's circuit board, though, is clearly marked on the back "Fidelity 208A".

This was a puzzle to me for years, until I finally met a 208A. There aren't many of them around, and, while its plastic case is that of the 208, the works, and hence the control positions, are those of the later Rad 11.

After years of looking out for one, I have my very own 208A, a few photos of which are attached, with apologies for it not yet being thoroughly spruced up. The very strange aspect of its aesthetic design, at least to me, is how they've addressed the matter of the blank space at the far left of the tuning scale where the 208 has its volume and tone controls and the 208A has nothing. The earlier model has a pair of controls, in the 208A they've gone: I know, some bright spark must have said, let's just provide an image of the two controls that aren't there. And so they did...

Paul

[FERNSEH]

Advertisement in the 11 June 1960 Wireless and Electrical Trader magazine.

The Fidelity "Ayr" transistor radio, it's not a cheap set.

DFWB.

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by FERNSEH

The Fidelity "Ayr" transistor radio, it's not a cheap set.

It's a surprise to many of us at first to discover that there weren't any cheap sets from British manufacturers in the early days of transistor portables, and that there wasn't much of a price differential between manufacturers often thought to have very different reputations. For comparison, the Roberts R200 launched around the same time, at 18 gns: and, with prices steadily falling, the Dansette 222 was 15 1/2 gns. when first offered in 1961.

We've a couple of Ayrs still, both gamely working after 58 years with probably little if any attention in that time. There was a table version too, in the same box but veneered and without the handle.

Paul

[Bill]

I have a Fidelity "Florida Six" portable as the bathroom radio, wooden rexine covered case with plastic fascia and brass trim round the tuning dial. I have had it there for over twenty years and beyond fitting a battery and cleaning now and again it has received no maintenance. It always works despite the damp atmosphere. I'm guessing it's 1959/60?
It would not win prizes in a beauty contest but it must be the most reliable electronic device I own.
Bill

[Paul_RK]

June '61 release according to "Radio! Radio!", which is usually reliable. Cost was 14 gns, probably only below that of the Ayr because of the general downward trend at the time.

[G6Tanuki]

It was only really once Hong Kong production [usually badged as 'Empire made'] of transistor radios got going in the early-1960s that the prices started to fall. This in turn saw-off a slew of UK brands who couldn't compete.

[Perdio being probably the best example].

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

It was only really once Hong Kong production [usually badged as 'Empire made'] of transistor radios got going in the early-1960s that the prices started to fall.

Well, it was then that the fall became more of a bloodbath. If you look at the prices of British sets from the Pam 710 in 1956 (£31. 10s.!) to the early '60s there's a steady but unmistakeable decline. The original Dynatron Nomad was 29 gns. in 1958, the at least comparable Hacker RP30 Herald 22 gns. six years later.

Fidelity made much in advertising of the low price of their Coronet pocket portable, the first mainstream British transistor model to break the £10 barrier, in March 1961. A few years later there were six transistor Hong Kong sets to be had for typically 39s.6d, a little more if you wanted long wave as well as medium.

Paul

['LIVEWIRE?']

IIRC the Coronet, one of which I bought new in, I think, 1959, cost 9 Guineas (£9 -9s-0d or £9.45 in Decimal currency). This would be maybe £300 of today's money. Those Hong Kong made radios @ £1.98 (£1.19s.6d), by comparison would be around £67 today. Exensive still by 2018 standards, but only about 20% of the Coronet's price. The Coronet was a good performer for such an early pocket radio. I wonder what a good working example would be worth now?

[Paul_RK]

RR says the Coronet was launched at £9. 19s. 6d, i.e. 9 1/2 guineas - I'd guess their 1961 date must be right, the 1960 Ayr seems generally acknowledged to have been the first transistor set from Fidelity. My Coronet came to me still in its display box, so if I could only find it I might be able to confirm the retail price from that. As I recall it's a later version and suffers, unlike the initial Coronets, from AF117s.

All would depend on condition in today's market. The boxed Coronet turned up locally and so was cheap enough, but I suppose might realise £50 or so at auction.

[Reelman]

There must be at least some interest in Fidelity sets. I see that they go for reasonable money on eBay with the early sets attracting plenty of bidders.

Peter

[Paul_RK]

It's odd how very scarce several of the 1960s Fidelity models are. The Galaxy, for instance, which unless I'm mistaken shared its basic cabinet moulding with the Floret and Fulmar but included short wave: or the Kestrel, which again if I recall correctly was a bit like a Comet but had FM. "Radio! Radio!" lists a Zodiac too, MW/LW from 1966, and I can't place that one at all. As I've said, I had quite a wait before a 208A came along, and even the Fairline and Fulmar are hardly eBay staples.

[Richard_FM]

A while back I bought a Rad 24 off eBay as it was the same model one of my Aunts used to have. It's interesting by having a tuning scale in metres but with the 1978 realigned BBC radio frequencies.

I heard Fidelity had a factory in Perry Barr, Birmingham, or I'm I thinking of another company?

[Colourstar]

Originally Posted by ukcol

Did Fidelity ever get round to manufacturing anything under HMV brand name?

Not only the b&w portable tv mentioned by Hamid, but also hi-fi separates. These were on the market in 1982/3 and all UK made if I remember correctly. The same units were available both as Fidelity ('teak' finish) and as the HMV (black finish) 8000 series. I believe the record deck was a re-badged BSR... or was it ADC?

Steve

[FERNSEH]

Another Fidelity advertisement. This one is from the 20 August 1960 Wireless and Electrical Trader. Shown in the attachment the popular RG26 radiogram and two tape recorders. Not shown are four record players, models HF12, HF14, HF16 and the HF17.

DFWB.

[FERNSEH]

One of the last TV sets made by Fidelity Radio Ltd was the series 5000 model which employed the ITT Digivision chipset. In 1987 Fidelity supplied ITT with a 14" portable TV set. It was quite a good set. I sold a good number of these sets and didn't have any problems under the guarantee period.
Remember the Amstrad-Fidelity Sky dishes?

DFWB.

[Gulliver]

I suspect there is a value in vintage/collectible Fidelity products because they will be childhood memories for a lot of British people. I certainly remember my parents Fidelity RAD 12, which was the only radio we owned in my early childhood. Being a prototype geek I was the one, aged five, who figured out how to connect the audio output to the "tape" input of my dad's stereo record player.

Hardly a great performing radio, but it did the job and I was told it was cheap. I think that would have been the attraction of a lot of Fidelity products in the 60s and 70s....not the best but good enough and cheap. My cousins all had that HF42 suitcase record player bought for them one Christmas...again cheap and cheerful for them to play the top 40 on.

For those reasons, I've always had a soft spot for Fidelity. I remember the documentary on them making TVs, and the Amstrad takeover. So...do Sky now own the brand name?

[Paul_RK]

I had a Rad 12 too for a while: I think it's another model which started off with a plywood cabinet and was switched to a plastic one so subtly that it was hard to see the difference, but there would have been a moderate difference to the sound quality and there was quite a difference to the weight.

It was introduced in 1968, by which time Fidelity had abandoned the pocket, even the coat pocket, market, so it was their smallest set and retailed at £9. 9s.. That did make it a bit cheaper than nearly every other British portable of similar size - there would still have been quite a few around £12 - £15, Roberts' RIC1 was 15 gns.. Even 9 gns. was half a week's gross pay for many folk, so small differences in price mattered, and the Rad 12 seems to have sold pretty well.

[McMurdo]

Don't forget 'Britannia', a Fidelity brand, afaik aimed at the cash and carry supply chain. A 14in non remote colour portable was around £99 plus VAT which was still competitive. I had a rescued one in the kitchen for years and it was only put in the loft when Mum went 'lcd'.

[ukcol]

I originally started this thread to supply a little bit of context to an article I'm writing about the Fidelity Battery Saver. The thread has developed into a particularly interesting one.

The HMV story was of particular interest. HMV had a quality image in its early EMI days and that is probably why Thorn kept the name so that they could sell a Ferguson to a particular sort of customer by simply changing the badge to HMV. Obviously even Fidelity thought they could market products successfully under the HMV name. There is, of course, a history of successful old names being sold on because of their value in the market place.

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by ukcol

I originally started this thread to supply a little bit of context to an article I'm writing about the Fidelity Battery Saver.

I wonder if that may have been Fidelity's last domestic radio. From the Radiomuseum entry it's clearly a Hong Kong production, and the last entry in the Rad series mentioned there, the Rad 29, was from the information on its back made in England. Dating such things isn't always easy and I suspect the Rad 29 pre-dates the Battery Saver. There was also, though, a Rad 30, looking every inch the Hong Kong radio that it is: I'm not sure I'd ever seen one before a current eBay offering appeared,

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VINTAGE-F...53.m1438.l2649

So that at least could be contemporary with or even later than the Battery Saver.