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Listening to the AM radio in the kitchen before school


mr clean

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From just after my family returned from my father's accompanied tour of duty (3 years) in West Germany, when my parents bought a console stereo for the living room, sometime while I was in kindergarten in 1958 or 1959, the radio which HAD BEEN the family music-listening device, ended up on the bedside table in my bedroom.  It was a Grundig Majestic tube radio (which I still have, along with its 45 rpm record changer!) .  From that point onwards, at least while we lived in Odenton, MD, while my father was finishing up his army career at Fort Meade, MD, that radio was tuned to "60 on the radio" out of Baltimore...a rock-n-roll station, every night...all night long...I slept with the radio on!  Every night!  All thru school, and high school and my first year of college it remained bedside, although it had been re-set to more local stations for rock-n-roll after we moved from Maryland to Arkansas in January of 1964!  Its case was made out of a very dark brown bakelite type of heavy plastic, with gold painted trim.  This radio was a multi-band one, so I could change it to short wave and pick up airline pilots chatting on their radios and stuff, too!

 

4947310_GrundigMajestic.jpg.6373324b5a01f4ddde6576791d50eca0.jpg

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Hers a few more radios we had. The big zenith worked and it was in the back bedroom. Me and my brother made a wire antenna and ran it in front of the gutter along one side of the house using ceramic insulators. First time I heard BBC in Europe I was hooked on radio. We also had a bakelite radio. Its funny dad took the bakelite  to a man to have it repaired. We got it back about 4 years later and it was a different radio. Dad didn't notice but I did. 

 

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fdb3bf4bd57e69552cad8464f0b505e5--retro-

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The audio tubes which were designed for use in radios like your Crosley and GE are capable of providing outstanding sound which is why I use them extensively in my flea power budget designs.  It is unfortunate that AM radio is so prone to interference from so many modern devices.   Listening on the old radios, with their generally excellent audio quality, was a wonderful experience back then. 
 

Maynard

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14 hours ago, mr clean said:

I still listen to AM at night sometimes. I have a cc radio and a ge superadio.


 

Those are terrific dx radios!  Do you use them for that or just local listening?  In the 60s I lost many nights of sleep chasing dx on the broadcast band and have a few hundred verifications, including some from excellent catches.  It was a great hobby.....

 

 

Maynard

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9 hours ago, Mighty Favog said:

I bought a couple Tivoli Model One's years ago for the kitchen for breakfast and one for the office. Only problem I had with one of them was that it drifted off station a lot. Turns out to be a common problem. It got so bad the factory sold me another unit for half price.

That drifting was caused by the strings that hooked the tuning stuff to the knob. Well my memory is going but it could be something else like the LO.

JJK

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3 hours ago, tube fanatic said:


 

Those are terrific dx radios!  Do you use them for that or just local listening?  In the 60s I lost many nights of sleep chasing dx on the broadcast band and have a few hundred verifications, including some from excellent catches.  It was a great hobby.....

 

 

Maynard

I used to chase DX on AM and Shortwave. Also a little  on TV. Not been doing much and not alot on shortwave left. I still listen at night sometimes on AM mainly. Like catching an old radio show or local DJs. Very few good one left. Always wanted a Sony 2010.  Or a JRC or Drake. Had a few decent Shortwaves like Sangean 818, and  a DX-398. 

 

nrd240.jpg    Ats909.jpg

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Once upon a time in Los Angeles, KMET was a rock station ... a really good rock station. In LA, you were either KMET or KLOS and all the cool people listened to KMET. 

The fact that KLOS still exists and KMET is no longer rock-n-roll is proof that the world is a messed up place that settles for mediocrity. 

 

KMET_upside_down.jpg

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This is a pic of my rock station as a kid. It was WJPS and it was in Evansville Indiana. I have fond memories of playing with our Aurora AFX race track, and listening to a small transistor radio, with my buds Mark and David. Later on my buddy bought a Sony AM/FM radio. We thought that radio was the so cool! This was back in the mid 70s. Both my friends have passed and this is what my station looks like.

 

wvhi-bldg.jpg 

 

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when i was a young teen, i had an old drive-in movie speaker hooked up to my radio. The speaker then was hooked onto the headboard of my bed. I thought that was so cool. Back in the 70s, on Sunday night, KMET played the Doctor Demento show -- a cult classic show for sure. Anyone else here ever listen to Doctor Demento?

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2 minutes ago, BigStewMan said:

when i was a young teen, i had an old drive-in movie speaker hooked up to my radio. The speaker then was hooked onto the headboard of my bed. I thought that was so cool. Back in the 70s, on Sunday night, KMET played the Doctor Demento show -- a cult classic show for sure. Anyone else here ever listen to Doctor Demento?

 

Funniest song I ever heard on there was "I'd Love To Say I Love You, But, Everyone Says You're A Slutt".

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5 hours ago, BigStewMan said:

when i was a young teen, i had an old drive-in movie speaker hooked up to my radio. The speaker then was hooked onto the headboard of my bed. I thought that was so cool. Back in the 70s, on Sunday night, KMET played the Doctor Demento show -- a cult classic show for sure. Anyone else here ever listen to Doctor Demento?

Haha....I remember that crazy program, came on Sunday night?

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