OK, so I have this 1957 Realistic tuner and amplifier. Vacuum-tube city,
don't you know?
There's also a 1952 Webcor record changer, a Bluetooth receiver, a
little utility mixer . . . and a Gough speaker enclosure built from
plans sold by Welsh speaker-designer Jabez Gough in 1961. I've been
highly impressed at the sound this cabinet gets out of a single 8-inch
driver. Now I'm doubly impressed now that I've replaced the
Electro-Voice Wolverine LT-8 triaxial speaker with an older (and
heavier) E-V SP8B coaxial driver.
YOU'D THINK a two-way driver would be a bit of a drop-off from the
three-way. In this case, you'd be wrong. The difference was marked, and
for the better. That SP8B sings in that Gough enclosure -- good high
end, great midrange presence and deep bass that's just the right amount
of low end. All this from one 8-inch two-way speaker that was a "starter driver" for
your average late-1950s "hi-fi nut" building his own speaker system. Go
figure. For me, though, it just sounds like my childhood . . . only in mono and probably a bit better than the 1962 Magnavox Stereo Theatre that defined
"good sound" for a budding Baby Boomer audio geek.
I am sure a smartphone and earbuds serve a purpose. Actually, one good purpose my iPhone often serves is feeding Internet radio to the mid-century audio extravaganza.
I likewise am sure earbuds or "smart speakers" serve a purpose, whatever the hell that might be. Really, I'm sure they're just fine.
. . . I get all excited about procuring a 1962 Pioneer FM multiplex stereo adapter to go along with my monophonic 1960 Voice of Music tuner. I did have a pretty basic V-M multiplexer hooked up to it, but the Pioneer is sooooo much nicer. And better. And you can adjust the stereo separation -- cool!
I just lost you, didn't I? My wife's eyes glaze over at "FM stereo multiplexer."
But she did perk up at ". . . and I got in on ebay for about $150 less than these things usually sell for."
If you haven't given a listen to the Christmas edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, it's not too late, you know. You do realize that Christmas isn't over until Jan. 6, right? And until then, you can find all kinds of novel ways to listen to the Yuletide version of the Big Show.
Here's a fun way to listen to the show if you're a geek like me -- one that will bring back the sounds you grew up with if you're of (ahem) a certain age.
PLAY SOME of the stuff we have on the 2012 Christmas show on a vintage hi-fi, and "Yule" soon find out that you're cooking with gas.
Yes, the Microsoft Surface and the 1956 Realistic tuner and amplifier can be friends. Yea, and the vacuum tube shall lie down with the microprocessor, and peace shall come upon the sound system.
When in doubt, replace the weak 12AX7 tube in the add-on multiplex adapter, which is much less painful of a procedure than Saturday night's project -- changing all the dial lamps in a 35-year-old Marantz receiver. The music in stereo is a little sweeter now, just as the old Marantz shines like new for the first time in years.
This geek minute has been brought to you by black wingtips and white athletic socks. Additional funding for this program has been provided by pocket protectors . . . pocket protectors, because pens leak.
This was radio once -- pictures of the mind riding electromagnetic waves through the ether, through glowing filaments in an airless bottle, out a loudspeaker and into your imagination through your ears.
These pictures are what that looked like . . . and looks like today, 83 years after this Radiola 18 originally took up residence in some 1920s radio household. Now it resides in our radio household, though what comes through the cone loudspeaker in 2011 is hardly as exotic as the offerings of 1928 seemed to entranced citizens of a newly established Radioland.
You've seen pictures like these before in this space; they were from our other Radiola 18, the console set.
THESE PHOTOS ARE from the table model -- quite a large table model, to be sure -- which rests not on a table top, but instead on a wrought-iron stand that contains the set's large loudspeaker.
As I've said previously, radio once was an art form. Radios were art installations.
Now, radio is decidedly utilitarian, and barely that. But if you look hard enough -- and find something old enough that still works enough -- the art shines forth from a fire in a glass jar. Lightning in a glass bottle. The warm glow of magic in a darkened room.
Computer chips are boring square blocks with a porcupine fetish.
Transistors are little blocks of plastic, metal and minerals.
Vacuum tubes are Dale Chihuly masterpieces of glass and wonder. The older they are, the more spectacular, these little jars of fire and light that bring the world wondrous sounds.
I WAS THINKING about that after our little video demonstration Wednesday of my 1928 Radiola 18 console. Really, that radio is so old, it was made when RCA was an American company.
A big American company at the forefront of an exciting modern world of sound . . . and eventually sight.
Magic waves flying through the ether.
An entire world flooding your parlor at the flick of a switch.
It was the birth of the first "golden age" of mass entertainment. The birth of the "network." The birth of a truly mass culture.
THIS OLD Radiola represents an age of technology that looked a lot more like art. It represents an age, too, where life was more Chihuly and less commodity.
I WAS born into the last echoes of that age -- the age of wooden cabinets and shiny metal trim and tail fins. The age of RCA and Zenith and Philco and Silvertone. The age of flying by the seat of your pants and artistic statements.
The age where radios meant a warm, orange glow in a darkened room, a certain "ethereal" aroma and friendly voices from far away on a summer's night.
I was born into the age of vacuum tubes. And I miss it so.
When this radio was new, Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States.
The Jazz Age was in full swing.
Flappers were flapping in speakeasies, and everybody was swilling bathtub gin. Wall Street was still flying high, and brother most certainly could spare a dime.
Not that you'd need him to. Yet.
This is an RCA Radiola 18, most likely in a custom cabinet. This is what you call heavy metal.
If you love vacuum tubes, this is your radio. See the big tube in the back? That's the rectifier, and it appears to be original to the set, manufactured sometime between summer 1927 and 1929. It's one of the earliest radio sets to run on "lamp current" -- that's 120 volts AC to you and me.
IN 1927, the norm was for your home radio (assuming you could afford one) to operate off of a couple of batteries -- one of them a big wet-cell not so different from what's under the hood of your car. That changed with the Radiola 17 and Radiola 18.
In 2011, this Radiola 18 still works just fine. A little arthritic, maybe . . . but aren't we all?
If you're not duly impressed (and I add that, as far as I know, this old girl has never been restored), let me ask you something.
Do you think your iPod will still be functional in 2095?
Seven decades ago this summer, Philco rolled out the new radios for the 1942 model year.
This was one of them.
Oh, the things it's heard -- Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt, D-Day, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, peace, war again, the space race and everything from swing to rock.
And 70 years later, it still has its antenna perked . . . listening for the next big thing. For it endures.
Let's see how your iPod's faring in 2081.
Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.
UPDATE: OK, here's a fancy, studio-ish photo of the old girl, taken just a while ago for your further edification.
I am leaving Mississippi in the evening rain These Delta towns wear satin gowns in a high beamed frame Loretta Lynn guides my hands through the radio Where would I be in times like these without the songs Loretta wrote?
When you can't find a friend, you've still got the radio When you can't find a friend, you've still got the radio Radio . . . listen to the radio Radio . . . listen to the radio
Try going back to the fall of 1935. You'll find some heavy metal nestled inside the art-deco wooden case of the Zenith 5-S-29.
This heavy metal, though, was made to fill a room with dance-band remote broadcasts. With soap operas and farm reports. With news, and with exotic broadcasts from across the sea.
Today, an iPod will give you music. Yesterday, this old Zenith filled your house with magic.
I know. I sound like a broken record (another lost metaphor only fossils like me get). But if you ask me -- and you didn't . . . tough -- one of the tragedies of our age is the absence of magic.
Where is the magic in an iPod? Where is the magic in YouTube? Sure, YouTube is a great tool . . . and, in some cases, a forum for all manner of tools.
And sure, You Tube can offer up stuff you never could have imagined -- or perhaps imagined that you'd never see again.
But it's not magic.
Kind of like the iPod, a zillion websites, Facebook, Twitter and whatever they'll think of next. All useful. All interesting. All with the potential to while away countless hours.
But magic? No, not magic.
MAGIC IS a multicolored dial glowing in the dark. Magic is the five tubes inside an old Zenith tombstone radio casting a backlight glow, silhouetting the angles and curves of a wood-veneer case.
Magic is the rich sound of a six-inch speaker fed by heavy metal and hot filaments.
Magic is the smell of ozone wafting through the room
Magic is sitting by yourself, listing to mellifluous voices on distinguished radio stations in distant cities, each with its own distinctive "sound." Each beaming the life of a far away place, a distinct local culture into the ionosphere and then back to earth, into a long-wire aerial, through the circuitry and out the cone speaker of a 1936 model-year Zenith radio set.
Made in the U.S.A.
Sitting in a darkened room. Singing into your ear and speaking to your soul.
Your soul -- where the magic lies.
Messages from the souls of men and women of the mellifluous voices in far-away cities speaking into microphones and putting turntable needles into the grooves of discs filled with music. Wonderful music.
Once, there was music in the air. Once, real people played it. Once, real radio stations communicated to "radio neighbors."
Once, magic ruled the air. Once, magic came to you on a Zenith "long distance" radio.
