Scratchy Tivoli Audio Model One

The Model One has been a huge success. But in many ways it is a daring retro design judging from all the features that are missing in this radio. I am thinking of features such as a customizable equalizer, a digital display, and memory presets. It just has a plain old analog tuning dial for FM and AM.

The radio could as far as I can tell just as well have been made in the 70's except for some of the IC's which are used. Actually it is easy to see the similarity with the even older KLH Model 18 from the 60's, and yes - Henry Kloss played a role in both radio designs. But that makes for easy repairs, such as a seemingly common fault in the FM tuning capacitor, which over time may develop contact problems.

My grandfather's Blaupunkt radio

As I was clearing out my childhood home I came across an old radio that my father had tucked away in the basement. It was a German Blaupunkt radio, and what a historic dial it had!

It turned out that my father had himself found it as he was clearing out his childhood home many years before and that it had belonged to my grandfather who died in 1959.

It covers longwave, medium wave and three shortwave bands from 5.5 to 21 MHz. I had never before seen a radio with a dial given in meters rather than kHz or MHz, but I have later understood that that was not uncommon for pre world war II radios.

Since the back was missing, I had no information about age or type. The tubes which were all in the 11-series suggested the end of the thirties, but here it turned out that the dial had valuable information.