I'm surprised to see 1974, too. I wonder if one will surface that outlasted Whitlam?

Hopefully, TV Collector will update his post #41 to include radio # 46591.

An uphill battle there, even the Governor General didn't outlast him - probably the only promise Whitlam ever kept.

I mean as in the Whitlam government.

As I understand it, Whitlam himself is 97 not out.

Whitlam did keep his promise to pull our troops out of Viet Nam.

I'm also surprised to see the 11-99 still selling in 1974! I guess the cost of what were now superseded parts made them cheap enough to make compared to the transistor equivalents.

To the average consumer, the radios looked similar enough to any other AC mantle set of the period. Aside from the warm-up time for the valves it would be hard to notice that it was a valve radio.

I've also updated my list of known serial numbers matched to dates that I posted earlier.

To my ears most transistorised AM radios don't sound all that good. There's barely any audible bandwidth or tone clarity even in those made today, yet many valve models seem to overcome this to a greater degree. Perhaps this was one of the things that kept the 11-99 going for a bit longer than anticipated.

It would be interesting for a Kriesler employee to pop on here and let us know when production of this model ceased and whether the reason for this was because the radio finally became unpopular or simply because it may have been seen that continuing to produce valve-powered receivers was considered anachronistic.

Kriesler 11-99 serial number update.

Hope I'm not flogging a dead horse here, but this morning at a Trash & Treasure I scored a beige 11-99. Date on the power transformer, 16-06-1974 & serial number, 47210. We still haven't outlasted Gough yet!

Hope I'm not flogging a dead horse here

Not at all. Keep it going by all means.

The manufacturing date of the 11-99 has been asked and guessed at elsewhere over the years and nobody came up with anything like the range of years being recorded here.

Hopefully, TV Collector will add 47210 to his list.

I too have recently picked up another one, 45967. The date on the power transformer is 6 March 1974.

A couple of notable items on this one is that the dial has changed to silver lettering on a black background and the stock of wax papers appears to have finally been exhausted, it has factory fitted mustard caps. It also has a pair of 47μF 160v electro's instead of the 40μF and 20μF 200v specified in the circuit. These too also appear to be factory fitted.

Apart from a weak 6AN7 which caused the volume to fade after 5 minutes all other components including the caps tested fine.

I've been curious about the colour range. I have the beige, brown and orange and post #1 mentions a salmon. Does any one have other colours?

I suppose the next trick will be to find out when the last one was sold. People will need to dig into that shoebox of receipts for that. If production went through to the end of 1974 there is a chance that a few of these were sold in 1975.

Here's the updated serial number list with the two newest finds added.

Serial Numbers:
189 - 6 Aug 1965 on transformer
16310 - approx Mar 1969 - 6V4 rectifier and caps marked 059 and 079, ARTS&P label AA 879187
17412 - 6V4 rectifier, wax caps marked xx6 and ARTS&P label AA 998629
20893 - 18 Nov 1969 on IF can - silicon diode rectifier
24787 - 4 Aug 1970 silicon diode rectifier
34968 - 24 Mar 1972
38406 - 19 July 1972
45967 - 6 Mar 1974
46591 - 25 Apr 1974
47210 - 16 June 1974

So far we are pretty close to a 9 year production run. It will be interesting to see if we can crack 10 years! It is amazing that they were still making these in mid 1974. At this time Kriesler were working on developing their first colour TV the 660-1 which was all solid state with integrated circuits used extensively.

My new 11-99 dial has the silver lettering on the black background and Philips mustard caps. I have another two 11-99's. One is orange, serial no. 46364 and dated 16-04-1974 on the power transformer. This also has the black background dial & the Philips mustard caps. The other is brown, serial no. 30098 and dated 28-06-1971 on the power transformer. The 1971 model has the silver dial with black lettering & paper caps, but still with a silicon rectifier.

I'm also curious as to what other colours these 11-99's may have come in.

Scraps, when I mentioned "salmon" in the first post, I meant the salmon coloured panel on the front. The rest of the cabinet is cream.

Chris

So far we are pretty close to a 9 year production run. It will be interesting to see if we can crack 10 years! It is amazing that they were still making these in mid 1974.

It's truly amazing when you stop and think about it. No wonder 11-99 sets keep popping up on eBay, etc.

I'm hard-pressed to think of any other radio, or electronic product generally, that had such a run basically unaltered during that period, especially when you think of the inroads that Japanese transistor sets had made by the 1970s.

It was a classic case of running the gauntlet I reckon. There would have been people who thought that the radio bristled with the latest solid state technology (and in the case of the rectifier in later versions it did) and others who just bought it because it was inexpensive and sounded better than a transistorised model of the same size. Kriesler most likely thought to themselves - if it sells we'll just keep building it. It's funny that this model continued to sell well right up to the collapse of the tariff wall and perhaps just beyond that period in history.

Were any valve radios being sold in Britain or the US in the early 1970s?

Out of curiosity, has anyone had any luck finding a Kriesler 11-99 from 1964 or 1975?

Chris