What Radio have you got that has an amazing performance way above expectation.

[plaka78]

I am always amazed by the performance of this Sanyo Radio cassette M 2400FG, I listen it for about an hour at time when I am soaking in the Bath, I used it with a home made pantry transmitter on FM. I have it on at very HIGH VOLUME and the sounds quality is superb and very clear with excellent bass. Its also performs well when the batteries are getting flat were as other Radios would have given up the ghost.

[kestrelmusic]

An Invicta 39. It's based on the Pye Fenman 1, so I would expect quality performance, but it is a real treat to listen to.

[mark pirate]

My 1959 Bush TR82B, over 60 years old & never repaired, still used daily
This is one set I will never restore for sentimental reasons.
It performs as good as new, despite having plenty of Hunts caps!
I get well over 18 months from a battery, These early versions use OC series transistors, so no shorted AF117's to worry about.

Mark

[Julesomega]

The Arena T2700 is the FM-only sister to the T2600 which I bought from Comet in 1972 when I realised I could afford the £45 'special offer'. The audio quality of either model is very pleasing for a 'domestic' radio and I use my T2700 daily as the main radio or as the amplifier for CDs

[Joe_Lorenz]

I have got a 1956 Philips Saturn BD 653 A that I found in the skip more than 25 years ago. Some cleaning, dust removal, cabinet polishing - that was all of repairs.
It is in use on an almost daily basis and it performs more than well! Four 800 Ohms loudspeakers fed by four EL 84 / UL 41 valves. What a sound! Got to admit I would not know what to do if one of the speakers should develop a fault.

Regards, Joe

[Radio Wrangler]

I've bought a new one which is way below expectation.

David

[Sideband]

Depends what you mean by performance....I have a Philips 470A 1938 radio. It's a short superhet with no RF amplifier and it performs far better than it has any right to! Shortwave performance is very good and medium wave is exceptional....it will receive weak stations that other sets miss completely.

The only other set that comes close is a Bush VHF80....used on AM it closely approaches the Philips....but it has an RF amplifier (on AM). The Philips achieves comparable performance without.

Murphy A104, I expected a good set, got a brilliant one. I had it on radio 4 off air. A fellow member popped round and after a few minutes (noticing the sound was coming from the 104 as opposed to the stereo) asked if it was a) from the 104 and b) off air.

[G6Tanuki]

My Bush VHF81 - its weak-signal performance on MW is really-rather-good compared with other 'consumer' radios of the era.

(On MW, one of the valves that otherwise forms the FM IF/limiter chain is repurposed as an untuned RF amp ahead of the UCH81 frequency-changer - it can only give a few dB of extra gain but it really does perform well and satisfies my 'DX' mentality - I'm a hardcore knob-twiddler, much more interested in *hearing* a station than actually listening to the content they're broadcasting)

[Nukeybrown]

Hacker mayflower rv14 and hacker rp38a that started me down the road of collecting/hoarding.

The hacker rp38a was my first and only bought it cause i liked the look of it. Never really knew about the quality side of things but oh my god talk about stepping into another world. It was like a revelation.

The hacker mayflower, again didnt really expect anything special but how wrong was i, for me it has the correct depth and sound that make it a joy to listen to.

[ekjdm14]

Not strictly a radio, but a miniature TV/AM/FM alarm clock radio combo, My Bush BN6520A, bought for £5 as a novelty cool item from the local auction just before this virus shut down the place.

Firstly I was surprised it worked at all, given the price and source. But the FM tuner is the only one I've experienced so far that can pull in a weak rock station I enjoy, inside the house on it's built-in antenna.

Sound quality is also very acceptable for a small mono transistor set with more range than you'd expect & the fact it can also be my alarm clock AND an eminently watchable bedside B/W TV for old cowboy films etc (played from a National M5 VHS CCD!) just makes it one of my favourite buys in a long, long time.

Have I waxed lyrical enough about it yet? (Could also mention the ability to run from mains/12v and Battery/rechargable pack, clock back-up and the way it looks too). All in all, much better and less of a compromise than such a combo unit has any right to be.

[its ur aerial]

I have had two of those USSR made multi band Radios from the early 80`s, badged as Selena and another name I cant recall, they were sold mostly through mail order by a company called Scientific and Technical, who remembers them? And did they have a shop in Tottenham Court Rd, near the Heathkit Showroom ?
Radio selectivity and audio very good and reception on LW for BBC`s TMS (Test Match Special, I like Cricket sorry), unsurpassed.
But were they a copy of a Grundig, I have always wondered ?

Ken, G6HZG.

[Viscount]

years ao i got hold of an amstrad selena 215,after some amount of work i was really suprised with the quality of the sound ,fm a bit low on volume (common with these )but still ok ,am reception great ,all in all a great sounding set i think

[Paul_RK]

I'd read owners praising it, but it still surprised me: the Proton 300. Looks, as others have observed, like a scaled-down microwave oven from behind the old Iron Curtain, but the sound quality is phenomenal. Maybe not so amazing if you think of it as a good two-way bookshelf 'speaker with a very compact tuner-amplifier attached to one side, which is pretty much what it is. A matching 'speaker unit for stereo was also produced, but the radio itself seems hardly to have been available here and was mainly marketed in the USA. I would happily have dedicated a step-down transformer to it, but the set that came my way is a 240 volt version, and I've yet to hear of another. Coverage is FM and MW.

Paul

[Mullard_Nut_74]

Paul it seems the light in your Proton 300 W Microwave has gone out with 9 minutes left on the timer.

The best radio I had was a Philips AM/FM Car Stereo with Auto Reverse tape deck I pulled out of a 1980 Toyota Corona CS. From memory it had 3 FM and 2 AM presets but was manually tuned otherwise. Had great volume because I was always being told to turn it down.
I mounted it in my old school suitcase with the matching Phiips speakers and ran it with 2 rechargable 12V SLA batteries in parallel.
I mounted a car antenna in the lid that I could extend and even had a plug in for a 12V 5W laptop transformer.
Took that thing everywhere with me and used it daily on the bench at work as a factory radio in the print shop.
It never missed a beat and I could fit 20 or more cassettes in the case with the radio. 21 if you count the head cleaner.
It sounded great and never had a problem picking up any station even inside the concrete and tin factory I worked in.
I wish I remember what happened to it.
I would still use it now days if I had it.

[vidjoman]

I recalled the name of Proton from the 1980's. Looked at the images on Google and you will see that the Proton 520 amplifier is the same as a NAD.

[ekjdm14]

Originally Posted by its ur aerial

I have had two of those USSR made multi band Radios from the early 80`s, badged as Selena and another name I cant recall

VEF or Vega/Riga possibly? I have a VEF206 here and thought similar about it being a Grundig "inspired" set. Yes the audio is pretty smart on that too.

[dglcomp]

A made for ASDA Philips DAB clock radio, nice long wire T antenna (dipole) with fixing points at the middle and at both ends, not super loud but never seems to distort, decently sized speaker for such a device too.
The only negative is the display is an LCD with white backlight which whilst can be turned off (uses the sleep button for this function) is a bit of a pain as you need to switch the backlight on to be able to see the display at night, something my eyes don't like!

[Trifocaltrev]

I have a Murphy A40C from the late 1930s which is an exceptional set. The seperate converter on shortwave make shortwave reception extremely good.

I also have a Mullard MAS 407 with double conversion, both are push-pull output with large speakers make both of exceptional.

Trevor.

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by ekjdm14

VEF or Vega/Riga possibly? I have a VEF206 here and thought similar about it being a Grundig "inspired" set. Yes the audio is pretty smart on that too.

Vega was the brand for the Selena models, some (early?) versions of which were badged as Astrad. Those that came this way were, at least as regards the sets with FM, specifically export versions, as the Soviet FM band was roughly 66-74 MHz. Top of the range Soviet-era portables seem not to have been sent to the West at all, at least I've never seen Westernised version of the Leningrad, Imperial, etc. - very good radios, but big.

Paul