Long ago when transistor radios were not considered collectable, and most collectors were chasing after lovely consoles with turned legs, I found collecting transistors from the 1960's and 70's rewarding. They were common place at the markets and cheap.

I liked valve radios too, and had a neighbour whom worked for the local council and he would bring me numerous valve sets from the tip where he worked. That was in the early 1970's.

But one could not attach a valve radio to the handle bars of your push bike. Picture that in your mind! So I ended up with a
National Panasonic, three band transistor radio attached to the handle bars of my bike.
It operated on three, 1.5 volt D cells, and was quite large, but it sounded great, (of course it did, I listened to 3XY back then), and unlike pocket radios, its speaker was big enough to play music loud with out having the sound from its speaker distorting.

I still have a fond place in my heart for transistor radio's that have their tuning dials marked in Mc and kc, rather than the 1975 and later sets with their dials marked in MHz and kHz.

I had much fun and gained much knowledge working on those radios.
One rarely sees a transistor with an open frame tuning gang anymore.
The battery life of the National Panasonic sets was, and still is incredible. Which brings me to the reason for this posting.

On the 29-4-2023, my workshop radio, a National Panasonic RF-526 which runs on two D cells began to sound rough. It was not the voice of Ray Hadly, but one of its D cells had failed. Damn. I had only just replaced them in November 2018. The other D cell is still alright but I changed the two anyway.

Exceptional battery life from a well designed set is not uncommon and I regularly get five years or more from the batteries in my workshop and my bathroom radios.

My dream transistor radio? The one I would kill for to have in my collection. I wont say what it is so that I do not jinx myself, But I do have a couple of pictures of one (radio porn), and no. It is not a National Panasonic.

What is your favourite/dream transistor radio?

Wayne.

It must have been an absolute game changer especially in portable sets when they emerged in the 50s. I do love my Astor HPN, an early model that performs well and I still use today. A nice National T-46T is high on my list of wants but ultimately I would love to get hold of a nice Astor P2A, but I don’t like my chances.

Wayne, the holy grail of Australian transistor radios would be the model of the AWA Radiola that used a PLASTIC outer case.
Sorry about shouting but every person I have mentioned this to says a PLASTIC outer case NEVER EXISTED.
Sorry I'm shouting again!

The case on my wife's little AWA grey Radiola was NOT the stitched Leathette that every other model had in the 60's.
How I wish I had kept it!!!
It got put away and superseded with a Jap unit like a National.

The PCB would up as the tuner in a lounge room record player and the rest just disappeared in clean ups.
I have all sorts of Radiolas with B series model numbers but all have "leather" stitched cases.
Some of them look like "cardboard leather" but they are still stitched.

Ours was seam welded grey plastic with the stock set inside.
I have never seen another.

Fred.

I have an AWA transistor radio, most likely from the 1970s, still brand new, in the box with an earphone and leatherette pouch. The pouch has a small crack in one part, understandable due to the age but apart from that, not a mark on the whole setup. It has also never been powered up, which means no horrible blue and white powder inside the battery compartment.

I can't remember where I purchased it but I got it very cheap - I think around the $20-30 mark, though I am not 100% sure. I thought it would be a unique item due to never being used but for the most part I've never considered it a central part of my collection due to my preference for valve radios.

I am unlikely to sell it though, as solid state radios are coming up in the world and there may be some value in it down the track.

When I can remember where I have put it I will take a couple of photos. Even the white plastic is still white.

Hi Fred, I once had a small Radiola with a welded grey plastic case, but the case can get fragile with age; the strap was missing on this one. Do you want a photo?

Hello Sue, yes that would be nice.
This is the first I have heard of someone else having a plastic case Radiola.
Send photo to my email or send to Brad to clip to this thread.
cheers, Fred.

First transistor radio I had as a youngster was a Sanyo with a telescopic antenna..
It was quite small with a leather surround which it slid into.
It had short wave which was fascinating to me.
What were all those funny sounds it picked up.
Wish I had it now.

One of the only things I have that my great grandfather bought is a National Panasonic R-357 he bought and brought back from a trip to Japan in the late 60's. Still sounds fantastic! Though the electrolytics are starting to go. It did have the front end transistor short at some point in the past, but I replaced it and made a post about it on this site some time ago now.

The Germanium transistors used in them would be as rare as rocking horse poo now.

You can replace pretty much any small germanium transistor (Mixer, IF or audio) with a BC557, usually with a gain in performance.
Unless it's an NPN (rare) in which case use a BC547.

"What about the 0.6V vs 0.2V B-E drop?" I hear the cry. Well, transistors in those days varied widely in characteristics and a radio had to be designed to allow for this. So RE is normally big enough to handle the adjustment.

The only exception is the class B output transistors. You may need to adjust the bias up a tad to eliminate crossover distortion but the BC557 (45 volts, 100mA, 300mW) is more than up to that job too.

I might have to try that Ian. Do a retro fit out of an old set and see what happens.

First time I tried it was on an English transistor radio from the late 50s. All the OC169s and OC170s (mixer, IF) were open circuit. Not unusual I've heard.

With nothing to lose I replaced them all with BC557s. The radio was very lively after that, more sensitivity than you could use.