Some thoughts from Lileks.
I was struck by the prices of those old AM radios. I hadn’t realized how expensive they were back then. In today’s dollars, you’d be paying two or three hundred for an AM radio, though it would probably have much better sound quality than a modern one. The tubes have their own audio quality that remains hard (and expensive) to replicate with solid state. Of course, they were also built to last, and unlike a modern device, repairable.
I gotta go with the hardwood consoles that had radio and phonograph. Those were the days when radio was furniture… and you could get away from it.
Those old vacuum tube radios and TVs required a lot of manual labor and were expensive. I remember when my parents bought their first color TV back in 1968. It was in a wooden cabinet and had, IIRC, a 21″ screen. The box had many vacuum tubes in it (all transistor TVs were still rare back then) and mechanical tuners for VHF and UHF channels. Every time you changed channels, you had to tweak the fine tuning to get a good picture. The TV cost $800. According to the BLI inflation calculator, that’s $5,296.07 in 2012 money.
Integrated circuits and automated production changed everything. Today’s TVs are superior in every way (unless you really like wooden cabinets) and cost a fraction of what that 1968 TV cost.
Yes, we didn’t get a color television until the early seventies. But I remember building a solid-state Heathkit with a friend in the mid-seventies.
IIRC, the first all transistor TV was the Quasar made by Motorola. The commercials talked about the “works in a drawer”, meaning you could slide all of the electronics for accessability. This came out around 1970 although I can’t find any info online.
Of course, I may be wrong. This site claims the first American solid-state TV was sold my Zenith in 1966. This site claims it was an RCA in 1968.
In today’s dollars, you’d be paying two or three hundred for an AM radio, though it would probably have much better sound quality than a modern one. The tubes have their own audio quality that remains hard (and expensive) to replicate with solid state.
Pfft.
They’d sound “warmer”, because tubes distort in a way that solid state amplifiers don’t. But “better”? Probably better than a $10 radio, sure. But buy $100 receiver/amp combination and you’ll beat the socks off of anything from the 50s, guaranteed.
(And “built to last”? Well, in a sense – but you’ll have to replace tubes when they fail out. Which they will.
A standalone solid-state AM (/FM) radio, rather than a pocket radio, should last for decades – mostly they’re disposed of because nobody wants them anymore, not because they’re broken.
Indeed, I’ve got a receiver that’s well over 20 years old and not showing the slightest sign of wear that I can detect…
I prefer not-needing-repair-and-basically-free to repairable-and-expensive-and-needing-regular-maintenance.)
Anyone who says that these old tube type systems were more reliable never had to work on them. I did, A LOT. Everyone had a can of tuner spray at home to spray into the channel knob when they got tarnished as this was part of the RF section of the whole TV.
Tubes had to be replaced regularly, the picture tube had to be degaussed regularly, and the color balance had to be readjusted about every three to six months.
Made it great to be a TV repairman back then.
The audio systems, unless you had a high end MacIntosh, Bang & Olfsen, or one of the other high end vendors, did not sound all that good because the speakers sucked. That is unless you paid a LOT of money for good speakers.
Early transistor high powered audio systems suffered from shot noise problems, and the final transistors were crap and blew out at the slightest excuse.
Systems today are orders of magnitude better quality than what we had then. I made a lot of money as a kid repairing this stuff.
I think the main difference in perceived quality is where the technology is in the innovation/refinement/quality-control cycle.
I’ve had a flatscreen TV for 5 years now and it’s already showing “red snow”, which I understand is from a broken mainboard part that will cost $200 – $300 to fix. But flatscreens were still relatively new then. My Mom’s CRT TV from the mid-80s is still working fine, because after several decades of making CRT TVs all the systems had been thoroughly debugged. Flatscreens made 10 years from now will be much better than ones made 10 years ago.
Generally though I agree with the guys that technology is better now. Even computers. I have an old computer that works great. All I do is (1) save all personal data to an external HDD, and (2) periodically wipe and reinstall from the system image CDs I created. It’s not the hottest, most recent hardware, but so what? I’m not doing high-end work of any sort, and Word and Excel from a few years ago do all the same things the new versions do (as far as my needs are concerned).
I consider the old radio bars to be the ultimate in geek furniture.
Philco radio bars
Beautiful and dual functional!
My younger son, a musician and recording engineer, just bought a Mesa Boogie Mark Five amplifier. It’s all tube. Amazing workmanship, even more amazing capabilities.