| Hello and welcome, My name is Paul and vintage radio collecting is my hobby. It provides an escape from the high-tech world of my career into a realm where everything is much simpler. Through this hobby, I have developed an immense respect for the early pioneers in the field of radio. Many of the techniques they evolved eons ago still provide the foundations for the discipline today. The methods of implementation may have changed drastically but many of the design principles (e.g. the super-heterodyne) still reign supreme. I started my current collection of vintage radios in May of 2001 and since that time have amassed several hundred sets. My main interest is in models of the late 20's through the early 40's, the years affectionately known as the "Golden Age of Radio". My collection has a bias towards Philco, but I am also partial to Sparton, Zenith, RCA, Majestic (Grigsby-Grunow), Emerson, Echophone and just about any other collectible make. As a teen I used to search out old sets to either repair or use for parts to build radios, audio amplifiers or simply to fix-up other radios. It was these early experiences that set me out on a path to the engineering profession, one which lead away from vintage radios for over twenty five years. The radios I once had are long gone but more recently I've rediscovered these wonderful old treasures. I am when all said and done a collector and seek out restored and original examples of radios. Given a choice, I prefer an original set but if it's a collectible model that's scarce, I'll be glad to restore it myself or find one that someone else has restored, providing it was done right. When I restore a set I believe it should preserve the original appearance of both the cabinetry and electronics to the greatest extent possible. That said, I don't feel any compulsion to restore the electronics of all models I own. For starters, I have just too many to ever expect to find the time to fix them all. Secondly, I have more than enough working radios to listen to and feel there is no problem in leaving many original as found. In some ways this is preferable, since when the time comes to pass them on, I know that many serious collectors will seek out examples that are electrically untouched. For me its just comforting to know that a vintage radio is complete and restorable should I feel inclined to undertake the work. I started this web site with the objective of sharing my collection and the experiences I've had in assembling it, together with whatever I've been able to learn about the general history of the radios displayed. It is a work in progress and I plan on adding to the pages as my collection grows as well as updating the existing material as I learn more about the radios already featured. As time's gone on, I've found that electrically restoring old radios has mostly lost its challenge. That aspect has instead been replaced with one of researching and discovering the history of the makes and models I own. The act of piecing together this history from spatially and temporally scattered information fragments turns out, for me, to be a deeply satisfying one. I live just North of Boston with my wife Dianne. I hope you enjoy your visit to my site, Paul BSc, PhD P.S Feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or suggestions that you may have. I don't promise to always be able to find time to respond, but I will endeavor to read whatever you send to me. Do note that I cannot provide a valuation service - it would take too much time & there are too many variables to do this on an ad hoc basis. |
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