I found this site looking for info on an old radio my parents had long ago.
I had seen a similar but slightly smaller radio for sale at a fleamarket recently that reminded me of that old radio
I no longer have that radio and have no idea what ever happened to it.
What stands out in my mind were a few things about it. First, it was a tube radio, with FM band, and I could have sworn it was AM/FM Stereo?
It had five knobs on it, they were clear plastic each one about 1 1/4" in diameter with gold centers.
The AM and FM dials were separate on opposiste sides of the dial on top. It had a maple finish with a burlap with gold specs in it for a speaker cover.
As a kid it was off limits, we weren't allowed within arms reach of that radio. It sat on the kitchen counter near where pop sat each morning.
The story I was told was that it was a wedding gift to my parents in the early 60's from my mother's boss. She worked for Philco from some time in the 1950's till the early 60's in Philadelphia.
Both my parents are long gone these days but after doing a rather long search online I couldn't find another one just like it.
Over all the years it was on that counter I don't think it ever had any issues, my dad would get up each morning, turn on the radio and let it warm up, start his coffee and head for the shower. He'd listen to the weather and news before heading out to work every day around 5am.
The radio at the fleamarket had a label with E976 on the back, the split dial is what reminded me of the one my parents had but the one in question was larger, probably 18-20" wide or so. I also believe there were gold script style "Stereo" and 'Philco' emblems on the front grill.
Because mom worked for Philco before meeting my dad we had Philco everything, the TV, several clock radios, the refrigerator, and just about anything else that Philco made back then. The cabinet from the old console TV we had in the 60's is still here, my dad converted it to a side bar storage cabinet in the kitchen by adding three doors to it and a back. Its where they locked up the liqueur from us kids then. The one portable TV is still in the attic from the 1950's, it was put away there when it got fuzzy in favor of a new color TV in sometime in the late 70's. For a while, it lived inside the shell of the old console unit which had died in the late 60's and after several repair attempts they had combined the old portable and the console to save money I suppose.
I looked through various model lists and pics but found nothing that matched the radio we had back then, does anyone remember a top dial am fm table radio or know a possible model? I'd love to have one of those now just for kicks.
Note that FM stereo was authorized by the FCC in April, 1961, based upon the systems proposed by GE and Zenith, which were very similar (more than a dozen systems were proposed). I do not know when Philco might have first manufactured stereo receivers - someone else here may know.
Unfortunately, the Gallery does not have a color photo of this model. (Neither, for that matter, does Radiomuseeeeeeum.) A few color photos of this model may be found online through some diligent searching. Here's a link or two...
The G978 had four knobs, not five. And it did not have FM Stereo (this did not become common until after the FCC approved the GE-Zenith FM multiplex system in 1961). This is the only radio Philco made, that I am currently aware of, which had a top-facing dial with split AM and FM dial markings.
Radiomuseum is where I saw the E-976 model, I didn't see any wood radios with a flat vertical dial. The knobs were similar is style to the E-976 but larger and clear or amber in color. The sides were taller than the top dial face by about an inch, and beveled inward to a point. The front was styled the same but with a full off white cloth grille. Looking at the measurements of the E-976, its similar in style but probably not in size. The dials on the E-976 looks shorter and more compact from what I remember.
On the back there were two sets of terminals, one set of three for the antenna, and four for adding remote speakers. I seem to remember my dad bringing home a pair of somewhat matching bookshelf speakers and setting it up in the bedroom with those speakers.
I do remember that the remote speakers would play along with the two in the cabinet.
I found one of those speakers in a box in the attic the other day. The speakers were not branded but actually looks pretty well built. They were new enough to be vinyl over particle board but had canvas looking grill covers with metallic threads throughout.
Of course I'm going off memory since the last time I saw that radio was close to 50 years ago. It got displaced on the kitchen counter when my parents bought their first microwave and after that the kitchen radio was a tiny portable that hung on the wall. The last thing I remember listening to on that radio was the Nixon resignation, but by the time the world series came in Oct. I remember listening to the report of the A's taking the last three games from the Dodgers on a tiny portable that my dad had gotten where he worked. That portable still sits in the same place.
I can't say for sure if it was stereo or not but I do remember it having two badges on the front, one was Philco in script the other was either Hi Fi or Stereo or something to that effect.
That G978 looks really close. The back panel looks different from what I remember, I know the one that was here had screws for speakers opposite the side which had antenna screws. two of those bakelite strips, one marked L, one marked R. I also seem to remember more vent holes. I remember as a kit peering into the back at the glowing tubes inside.
For some reason I remember details like that. The color was most like the first link on Worthpoint, maybe even lighter. The bevel sides look right but for some reason I remember more than four knobs. The knobs were also really hard to turn, but then again I was a little kid then. For some reason that radio is part of my memories of my father then, thinking back it had to be before I started school for the most part because at some point I started going with dad in the truck and I remember being too small to climb up into the cab on the old Ford cabover. The radio was new enough that my mother, who at the time still looked at that radio as new didn't want any of us kids anywhere near it. It was something she got from where she worked before having kids and she let us know that touching it meant trouble.
There's a good many old Philco clock radios around the house, mostly packed away in the attic after being replaced by something modern in the 80's or so. I remember the slow wind up when one of those old clock radios went off and slowly warmed up and gained volume as it played. I also remember having a pale blue one that had split nearly in two but had been fixed with some bright gold foil tape, which was grandpops go-to fix for things around the house. We had a record player that he had trash picked that was made from all bakelite but it had been dropped or worse. He glued and taped all the pieces back together and got it working again and gave it to use to use. I remember that if you accidentally touched the needle you got a bad shock. We would trick friends into getting zapped all the time. I think that was also Philco but there wasn't much left of what ever it looked like new by the time we got it. It was missing what ever cover it had, and most of the case was gold tape. The 45 adapter was a wooden dowel he had cut to fit and covered in that foil tape, and the arm didn't match at all, it was newer and got replaced several times over the years with generic tone arms that he bought from a guy he simply referred to as the 'radio guy', not to be confused with the 'tube guy' who from what I gathered fixed only TV's but had a huge assortment of tubes. Both were on his way home from work somewhere. He didn't own a car and walked to work. When he came here, he'd come with a brown bag of tools and parts for what ever needed fixing. He passed away in '73 and worked as a machinist all his life for an oil company making tools and parts. He had a good understanding of old radios, TV's and things mechanical. If it broke, he fixed it, if he wasn't sure about something, he brought a buddy who was and it got fixed.
I've also got a huge floor radio, likely from the late 30's or early 40's, that's buried in the attic. It worked good till sometime in the 70's and then it started to lose the ability to lock onto a station. The dial seemed to expand, one station would take up 1/4 of the dial and the higher number stations were gone. The shortwave though didn't seem to be affected but it got packed away rather than getting fixed. That was sometime after 1969 or so. It was gone by the time dad bought a new car in 1970. The excuse was that it didn't fit in the new car so it didn't get fixed. When it needed repair before that, the old Ford had enough room in the trunk for it to lay down flat. It was his way of saying he's not spending any money on it I suppose. I can see it in the attic but its pretty buried past a ton of boxes. When I get back to it, maybe I'll start a post here and see about figuring out what is wrong with it. Its likely not been powered up though over 50 years.
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