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Then there were the department store radios and house brands. Sony/Panasonic/Grundig could be considered the big three of the genre. Grundig made many multiband models, some of very high quality. National Panasonic made some great radios that probably equaled the top Sonys, but they had fewer models. They never made ham gear, but they made some incredible portables, both performance wise and design wise, and they were probably largely responsible for pushing Zenith out of the radio business. The kingpin manufacturer of multibanders is probably Sony, “the one and only”. It was made in Chicago before the Japanese radios began to dominate the marketplace. There were earlier Trans-Oceanics, both tube and solid state, but they didn’t have FM. I’m no expert, but first radio of the genre might have been the Zenith Trans-Oceanic Royal 3000, which came out around 1965. If you take one apart, they can be hard to put back together, and even simple stuff like cleaning the controls with deoxit can be difficult. They have a lot of stuff crammed into a small box. They can be hard to take apart and work on.The back side is where they usually look cheap. Often times, the side panels were padded with leatherette to hide the plastic. The cases are plastic, not much metal was used, as they were made to be carried around. Build quality is worse than ham equipment.Most multibanders are not considered to be great shortwave radios. It’s not really possible to make a radio that works well on all bands with a single built-in antenna, so many had “dead” bands that barely worked.That’s not even mentioning the crazy names of the Grundig “Boy” series (City Boy, Concert Boy, Elite Boy, Melody Boy, Music Boy, Ocean Boy, Prima Boy, Yacht Boy, and so on). A few memorable names of multibanders that spring to mind are Astronaut, Earth Orbiter, Jet Stream Patrolman, Senator, Symphonette, Trans-Oceanic, Wayfarer, World Monitor, World Ranger, and so forth. They had some of the greatest model names in the history of marketing or electronics.You just had to them on, extend the antenna, and start listening. Because they were all-in-one, they required very little effort to install and use.Many had beautiful tuning dials, sometimes multi-color, they can be eye catchers. Even if shortwave didn’t work well, they were sometimes better than average AM/FM radios.They could play fairly loud and had a decent speaker. There were usually the TOTL of portable radios and because they were larger and more expensive, they sounded better than most portables radios.I’m sure some people collect them, but it’s probably a niche genre. Vintage multiband portables are not hard to find, I see them at hamfests, and most are not very expensive. In the glory days of CB during the 70s, some also added CB as a separate band. Many also added the VHF police and air bands, and some even added a VHF TV band. At a minimum it should be able to receive AM/FM, plus at least one shortwave band. I’d classify a vintage multiband portable as a solid-state radio with an analog tuning dial, a built-in telescopic whip antenna, a carrying handle, and the ability to run off batteries. I appreciate all of the information that is shared here.īeen into SDRs lately, and after you use an SDR, it’s easy to forget about using all the other radios you ever had, but their wide tuning range, basically DC to daylight, has made me think about the vintage multiband portables that were commonly built in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Have been reading these great forums for years.
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