The PHILCO Phorum

I'll post it in the 'phinds' thread later, but today I scored a beautiful, already restored EMUD table radio from my buddy up in Canton. He had it redone, but failed to sell it at his shop over this past year, in spite of the price probably being less than what it is worth!   Anyways, I caved and brought it home, then figured it would be fun to do a little side-by-side comparison of it compared to my still unrestored, but working, Zenith C845Y.
The stats:
EMUD is restored, larger than the Zenith, has three speakers, 7 tubes (if I counted right), has a transformer, includes shortwave, and uses a 6BQ5 as an output.
Zenith is not restored (I only cleaned it up and replaced the two FM tubes), has two speakers (though one is a whopper for a table radio!), its about three quarters the size of the German radio, no shortwave, eight tubes, and uses a 35C5 as an output. Oh, it DOES have AFC for the FM, which the EMUD lacks.

Ok, after playing both radios separately and comparing their performance, I am really surprised how much the Zenith holds its own against what would seem to be a superior German counterpart. The EMUD is more forgiving about the modern FM bass frequency response than the Zenith is, but you can get more bass out of the Zenith at the lower volumes. The Emud can get a good bit louder than the Zenith without distortion on FM, but the Zenith can get close by simply turning the tone control completely over to treble. At normal, daily listening levels, it's almost a wash and I kind of give the Zenith a tiny bit of an edge there. Also, being there is no transformer to overheat, the Zenith is the type of radio you can turn on and practically leave on all day. Don't get me wrong, I love the German radio as well, but once again, the plain, boxy Zenith proves that we shouldn't judge all radios by their covers.  

Hope you all like my little comparison I did for fun.

This is without recap?

No recap to the Zenith at all. Still on original capacitors and Selenium rectifier. Yes, I want to get that stuff done soon, but right now it plays as well as a restored radio from the late 50's. I think the issue with the EMUD is that the tweeters fire out the sides, leaving most of the sound towards the front handled by the main speaker whereas the Zenith has both the main speaker and tweeter facing forward.

Emud is a solid set, not a Grundig, or Telefunken. So it very much equal to the Z. Interesting to do these things though, thanks for sharing. 

Paul

No problem. It was for a bit of fun in any case. Now, since it sat in a back room through our humid summer, I decided to give the controls on the EMUD some cleaning as the treble controls and band select buttons had become scratchy again. After doing that and doing the tube sockets as well, I would say the EMUD has a tiny edge now over the Zenith. It can definitely get LOUD and is a hot performer on FM and really works well on shortwave with just the internal antenna. Definitely amazing as I realized it is really only a six tube unit with the 7th being the eye tube. Of course, performance varies channel to channel and I just cranked the Zenith on our local station and it can still keep up with the EMUD. Also, the Zenith definitely beats on late evening, AM listening. I noticed the EMUD loses pep on AM when the channel power goes down, but the Zenith can actually get our local station clear, something all my radios struggle to do. I guess what I am trying to say is I am rather amazed at what Zenith managed to do with that little 35c5 tube in the C845Y and it's family of table radios. Also, I have $150 in the EMUD, which is restored and only $25 in the unrestored, but still rather good working and looking Zenith.

It's a great idea to do tests of radio receivers from different countries. On my channel in You Tube, I made a series of comparative audio tests of American and German radio. Everyone can get acquainted with the results of my experiments.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...MkwN6P8HGk

Many of the older North American FM sets have had a cap added to the output circuitry that really impedes the bass response, makes them sound almost muddy, but if you remove it they really liven up. I'm not sure if the 1959 and later brand Zs have this or not since they were aiming for a Hi-Fi market.
Regards
Arran