04-25-2025, 10:06 PM
France
Excelsior-52 threw me off track. It was too far outside my established idea of what a household radio receiver is. Even despite the knowledge that it was a direct predecessor of Zvezda, nevertheless, not only a completely unique design, but also purely radio-technical filling significantly differed from familiar Soviet and American schools.
This interest prompted me to expand the French collection and acquire a couple more fairly bright representatives of a very specific French view on radio.
In the process of their restoration, the already established stereotypes about the peculiarities of the French nation were fully reinforced. Which is more than clearly seen in the example of these devices, which I will present from all angles.
To begin with, also a link to a detailed gallery of my first Frenchman - the famous Excelsior-52 prototype of the no less famous Zvezda-54, ripped off from it in design one to one.
Star-54 - Excelsior-52
Peculiarities of national character.
Excelsior-52 threw me off track. It was too far outside my established idea of what a household radio receiver is. Even despite the knowledge that it was a direct predecessor of Zvezda, nevertheless, not only a completely unique design, but also purely radio-technical filling significantly differed from familiar Soviet and American schools.
This interest prompted me to expand the French collection and acquire a couple more fairly bright representatives of a very specific French view on radio.
In the process of their restoration, the already established stereotypes about the peculiarities of the French nation were fully reinforced. Which is more than clearly seen in the example of these devices, which I will present from all angles.
To begin with, also a link to a detailed gallery of my first Frenchman - the famous Excelsior-52 prototype of the no less famous Zvezda-54, ripped off from it in design one to one.
Star-54 - Excelsior-52
This is how these two nice Frenchmen arrived to me.
Small, cute and big-eared Frenchie JS Radio Paris.
And another one, without ears and bigger - Sonaphone Prélude P6.
If the first one was a solid four, then the second one was a three at most, both externally and internally.
So we begin to bring both representatives of French radio design to a form as close to the original as possible.
The first one will be JS - the eared one. The second one will be Sonaphone Prélude P6.
Let me remind you that both receivers are completely different. Different companies, different class of devices, released with a difference of 3-4, or even more, years, the baby on finger lamps, the nameless on rimlocks, the baby's speaker already with a permanent magnet, the big one still with a magnetization coil. And yet, it seems that they were made on neighboring workbenches on the same day, and by the same crooked hands the chassis and assembly, and by a half-mad artist from the Seine embankment the body and the entire appearance.
So let's start to analyze.
So we begin to bring both representatives of French radio design to a form as close to the original as possible.
The first one will be JS - the eared one. The second one will be Sonaphone Prélude P6.
Let me remind you that both receivers are completely different. Different companies, different class of devices, released with a difference of 3-4, or even more, years, the baby on finger lamps, the nameless on rimlocks, the baby's speaker already with a permanent magnet, the big one still with a magnetization coil. And yet, it seems that they were made on neighboring workbenches on the same day, and by the same crooked hands the chassis and assembly, and by a half-mad artist from the Seine embankment the body and the entire appearance.
So let's start to analyze.
![[-]](https://philcoradio.com/phorum/images/bootbb/collapse.png "[-]")
