Some guys use old (tube) car radios for DX (long distance) station listening at home. Good ones have a tuned RF stage and are very sensitive and selective.

The idea with DX listening is to log as many distant stations as possible, the farther the better. I can pick up WBZ here in Iowa at night, WLW, and Shreveport, LA, of course WSM in Nashville. Western stations are tougher, I can get KSL out of Utah sometimes. Once logged a California station but they are tough. Modern car radios are OK, but they often use cheapest ICs. A quality solid state radio will run rings around most of the old tube radios, but a good tube radio is a lot better than junk sand.

People who lived in the sticks in those days needed better, more powerful radios and televisions to pull in the stations they wanted. If you live close enough to a powerful station, no radio is needed, sometimes you can hear it buzzing on the barbed wire or through your dental fillings.

 

You're right but I've never seen a sand radio that can beat the super fringe 8 tube in my '54 Ford Crestline sedan, AM in sand radios now are JUNK, even the Bose Wave I thought would be so good is nowhere close to the power of my '54. I'm in central Minnesota, I can go out, sit in that car and listen (barely) to WHO in Des Moines ... try that with a sand radio and this is in DAYTIME, not at night.
There were ten and twelve tube radios that will pull in most any AM station but these are rare and now collector expensive.
warren e
I'll do my best, keep 'er betwext the ditches ....

 

AM can sound pretty good actually, there were limits placed on broadcast high frequencies at one point, there's no technical reason they couldn't be near FM quality, tho mono. Digital IBOC today or somesuch means a lot of side splatter and that ruins reception for a lot of stations. Just about every consumer electronic device emits RFI so AM inside buildings is tough. Flourescent lights, washers and dryers, TV, internet, lots of stuff isn't shielded so it causes interference. My oldest radio is a 1937 Coronado, a console. Uses push-pull 45s. I haven't restored the electronics on that yet.

I fixed up a General Electric wood console for a fellow once, a cat had trashed the grill cloth and he wanted that replaced and the electronics restored. I recapped the power supply and the rest of it and aligned it, and that thing was LOUD, I couldn't believe it, could hear it booming a block away. Just a few real watts and a good speaker, tuned cabinet.. I restored a Philco 89 for another guy, that thing was a PITA, if I would have charged the actual hours I had in it he would have stroked out. It was a real challenge. It worked pretty good when I was done. I like the tube Trans-Oceanic portables, they can be had pretty cheap and were a deluxe consumer set at the time. The early 60s AM/FM/SW sets are chrome beauties that sound excellent. Unfortunately SW is about done too, hardly any countries have foreign broadcasts anymore.

 

Gees no input for the old little crystal radio kits.. I use to pickup Wolf Man Jack Out of Texas at night in the 50's as a kid living in Los Angeles Ca.

Aw the good old days care free when your a kid 10 yr old kid an not worry about batteries going dead. Just used a 40' horizontal copper wire on the roof.

Ok so got a little off topic

Orich

 

Yeah, we pretty well zoomed this thread. Not. My. Fault. ha ha.

Gramps made a crystal set with me when I was a wee lad. I barely remember him winding the tuning coil and counting the turns. They always worked best with a good ground I remember that. I discovered that the metal finger stop on a rotary phone made a good ground?

It used a piece of galena embedded in Wood's metal, and a "cat whisker". Some people use crystal sets for Hi-Fi use when listening to AM, they are supposed to have the best and cleanest signal.

 

I've got a 1930 Philco, on legs and works but the big caps' are no good, someday I'll replace 'em with a big alum' cap', that should do it fine. Farm here was wired in 1928, they bought this radio soon after.
Might be a guy north of here that can fix my '68 truck radio, I have no knowledge or interest in solid state. I should learn I guess.
warren e

 

Pretty common around these parts was the Wincharger, charge batteries for farms and homes on the 32 volt system. They made all kinds of 32 volt DC accessories and appliances. They were headquartered in western Iowa I think. Lots of old 32 volt "farm" radios get smoked by the unawares today, because the plug looks the same as 110. They plug it in to "see if it works." Oops.

I think Zenith might have bought 'em out, they sold a lot of 'em. Not very many left, part of the deal with rural electrification was all the 32 volt equipment had to be destroyed.