Magnavox 1961 smaller tube console

[TC Chris]

Possibly due to a good relationship between Edwin Armstrong and Zenith.
I have some early AM/FM table radios by Motorola, Westinghouse and Philco.
The FM performance is awful on those and CU reports on table radios bear this out.

Remember that early FM radios were intended and expected to tune very local stations. Sensitivity was not viewed as a necessary goal at first. They didn't usually have a tuned RF amp, just enough IF stages to keep the adjacent channels out mostly and the noise down. Most of my old FM radios have little two-gang tuning caps.

Chris Campbell

[Motorola minion]

Most of the Zenith FM sets used three inductors for the tuner, that and a 12AT7 dual triode seemed to be enough for a decent tuner. I guess nobody else wanted to copy Zenith.

Below, a 1960 Magnavox 55-series tuner I restored for a friend's 2-piece console performs so much better (than the "'muntzed" 59 series tuner in the 2ST259 back at left) The 55 and 57, then 77 series used a 6U8 and RF amp 6CY5 - like a TV tuner with three tuned circuits! The 55-01 performed so well in my basement shop with just rabbit ears and built-in AM loopstick, did not even need IF alignment. The AMP-175 was easy pie to restore as well, caps reformed and I used two 1N4007 in place of the 5U4 which went sparky from a bad socket. I tossed in two Russian 12AX7 for free. A fuse and CL-90 surge limiter in series mitigates the solid state rectifiers supply of full DC on startup. Its all a freebie in exchange for refinishing a TV cabinet, something I cant do nearly as well.

There is a fellow on another forum who picked up a 47 Magnavox Berkeley, and I posted what a fabulous AM-SW chassis and amplifier CR-198 is but, the CR-206 FM tuner is a disappointment. He was looking for that tuner and surprised how rare it is. There is a classic case of early FM, poor sensitivity.

I restored a GE model 42, aka the Musaphonic, but could not get the AM-SW to work, but the FM worked pretty well for a late 40s set. I never saw such a strange looking tuner though. Wikipedia credits GE with FM multiplex stereo, which I thought Zenith had developed.

[electra225]

I've heard that Zenith actually developed FM stereo, while GE developed the hardware. GE had a full-stereo Tuner in their 1960 model T-1000 stereos. There must have been some inside information, since Magnavox started equipping their 1959 model tuners for stereo compatibility, then furnished MPX adapters starting in February 1961. The FCC didn't approve the final version of FM stereo until June 1961. My mom worked for Sarkes Tarzian. They gave an FM stereo demonstration at the Hillside Drive plant in Bloomington in the summer of 1958. ST was working on FM stereo, maybe tuners?

[Firedome]

GE was considered the leader in developing FM multiplex broadcasting due to their industry leading Broadcasting Equipment Division in Schenectady NY. Zenith came up with essentially the same theoretical mpx system (but had no separate broadcasting hardware division) on their own almost simultaneously, so much so that when final standards were announced GE's and Zenith's systems were so similar that they were considered essentially identical in concept, consequently a unified GE-Zenith system named System 4-4A was formally approved by the FCC in April 1961 as THE standard for stereo FM broadcasting in the United States, and eventually most of the world.

Multiplex using the 4-4A stereo FM system was approved to start June 1, 1961 and given GE's mpx FM broadcasting equipment experience WGFM in Schenectady was the first station in the world to go fully online broadcasting in stereo at midnight Eastern time (various experimental broadcasts were done starting in '58). WGFM was fully owned by General Electric and was associated with GE's Radio Broadcast Equipment Division labs in Syracuse, about 2 hrs from Schenectady (and near me!) and as primary co-developer of the multiplex standard it was first to develop the equipment to broadcast in stereo.

BTW GE also had a significant Audio Division in Auburn NY (again near me) at the time that developed and produced GE's excellent separate components they produced that were meant to do battle with the biggies like Scott and Fisher, and I believe much or all of their console electronics (until around 1963/64 when things went SS and they discontinued separate components) were designed if not produced there. Here'a 2 1959 ads from GE's Auburn component division. I believe their component FM stereo tuner also had full mpx on board by 1960/61, one of the first. Not sure I agree that those components actually "look better though"... that happy wife would be pretty atypical if she does agree, and I know that from first hand experience!!

[electra225]

My wife wouldn't let me smoke my pipe in a suit in the living room. I might drop ashes or get some on my clothes........

[Motorola minion]

That is a fascinating story about FM stereo and GE being a co-inventor to Zenith.

We hide components inside classic furniture, don't smoke a pipe or dress well just to hang around the house. International knick-knacks and art were in all the ads and sales brochures as if to say "explore the world, in Music"

[Firedome]

Evidently the modern international style was meant to convey a certain worldly sophistication to appeal to the typical Hi-Fi buffs of the time, often engineering or professional types with disposable income.

I too prefer hiding the stuff in furniture, don't dress up (flannels are a favorite), but as to the pipe, do still smoke mine a couple times a year, (a guilty pleasure, always outside). First job out of college summer '72 waiting for the Civil-Service exam to be processed was 4 months spent in a Tobacconist shop in downtown Baltimore. Quickly picked up the habit (tobacco was free, pipes at cost, cigars were also free but never cared for them as much and wife hated them). Never smoked much after that but still have 4 or 5 pipes and enjoy an occasional pipe of Balkan Sobranie (a copy mix, the original long being NLA) once in a blue moon.

[TC Chris]

We hide components inside classic furniture, don't smoke a pipe or dress well just to hang around the house. International knick-knacks and art were in all the ads and sales brochures as if to say "explore the world, in Music"

I'm always amused by the ads that show a young lounging in a semi-reclined position on the floor, surrounded by bare LPs strewn about. Who flings their LPs on the floor, anyway? And why would any sensible woman put herself in such an uncomfortable position to listen to music? She'd be in the chair, "deleted", not half-reclined on the floor. But yeah, as long as you don't ask questions, it does look sort of sophisticated to somebody who was as completely unsophisticated as I was in those years. Advertising, which is just a form of propaganda, had a huge effect on our expectations.

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

I smoked until it almost killed me, but I loved smoking and still would if I could drag on one. I smoked three cartons of Salem 100's and a box of King Edward cigars a month for over 30 years. I lit a cigarette before my feet hit the floor in the morning. My wife was a chain smoker as well. We didn't smoke in the house. We had a little porch we smoked on. She could tell when I was coming home. She could hear the turbochargers scream on my old Mack when I shifted to third around Wilson's corner, could hear country music on the stereo in the truck and she could smell my cigar. My last smoke was on October 20, 2003, the day the doc told me I had Stage 4 throat cancer.

[Firedome]

That'd be enough to give anyone pause 19 years later it was clearly a good decision!
Apparently I never smoked enough 'baccy to give long term concern, and 5 yrs or so of '60s college pot smoking before the kids came along are purported, by the studies at least, to be safer, but still I always wonder. The rare occasional pipe now I don't inhale, so mouth and throat cancer would be the worry, but I suppose not much given the extreme infrequency.

[electra225]

My grandpa smoked all his life, died when he was 106. He grew his own "terbacky" and rolled his own cigarettes and cigars. There was no chemicals or preservatives in his tobacco. The chemicals in the tobacco and paper are what causes cancer. I was an idiot. I could roll my own and strike a match between my fingers when I was seven. Grandpa always bragged how I could do that and thought it was cute. I have always wondered how cute he thought it was seeing me go thru cancer treatment.

[Motorola minion]

I still associate the smell of a pipe with my grandfather in Florida (long ago) and my first employer in the TV shop, who liked Borkum Riff, a Swedish blend.

Cigars remind me 100% of my friends dad who smoked mostly El Producto, all his parts in the barn shop were in cigar boxes painted gray. Even the GE tube manual I was given by Mr Marshall still smells faintly of them 45 years later.

Cigarettes do no such thing because I quit when I was 30, yet I don't mind smelling that smoke either. Moderation at the very most, which few can muster with any tobacco product.

[electra225]

I would LOVE to be able to smoke a "King Ed' again......

[TC Chris]

I smoked until it almost killed me, but I loved smoking and still would if I could drag on one.

Somebody was quoted in a news article on this subject and it has stuck in my brain. The subject was quitting. The person said that if he learned he had an absolutely incurable terminal disease, the first thing he'd do is start smoking again. It resonated.

For 30 years I'd head up to Canada in the spring with some buddies and fish for a week, camping out. I'd buy Canadian cigarettes and smoke for a week and then go through withdrawal for a couple days when I got home. Sometimes when I pass a smoker on the sidewalk I get a whiff of the smoke and feel a real nostalgia. If I lit one up now my cardiologist would excommunicate me.

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

I quit cold turkey. The oncologist who pronounced that I had cancer also told me, that since I had indicated no proclivity to quit smoking, that it was going to kill me, so why should he expend any effort at saving my life? I put my current pack of Salem 100's into the pocket of his lab coat, then said I was done, period. He said he'd believe it when he saw it. He passed away in 2014. I can't smoke anymore, but I'm also not dead.....

[Firedome]

Soooo, now that we've all revealed our sordid histories (or not) of smoking...

Back to Dave's Little Maggies - so how did they turn out on the workbench?
I understand that one or both are now done and back to the customer?

[electra225]

I'd like more details on how they came out myself. This isn't the first time we have gotten a tad off the rails on this forum. It's kind of a tradition, started on Vintage. Part of what makes us unique......

[TC Chris]

And think about it. Smoking is one bad habit we sometimes share with our electronic devices.

Chris Campbell

[chazglenn3]

I love this forum!

[Firedome]

It's all part of the fun. Dave mentioned to me offline the that one of the lil' Mags had already gone back to his customer.

He's always knee-deep in projects, I wish I had 1/10th his energy, I'm lucky to just get out of bed half the time these days. Polymyalgia is an energy sucker, osteo-arthritis doesn't help, and now my Doc is trying to wean me off steroids which makes it worse to try to get moving. My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went it seems.

I dug out a GE SE 6AQ5 project and am trying to figure it out as none of the schematics available for it actually match up with it. It needs caps replaced, and inputs & outputs figured out.