Sound Quality of the GF-777z - The Good, The Bad & the Muddy

[Michiel]

Boomboxes were built with America's cultural tastes in mind. We were the biggest market for them. Not Europe or Asia.

Are there any American build boomboxes? Would love to own an American build box, as the only American build audio device I have is an Astraltune walkman.

 

[Reli]

I don't know of any transistor radio made in America

 

[Beosystem10]

I don't know of any transistor radio made in America

.......

.......were all made in the USA as far as I can tell by looking at the labels in the cabinets of my TOs and various other models, including a brace of "owl eyes" shirt pockets. Very well screwed together the TOs and Royals were too; no PCBs used in their manufacture with solid aluminium chassis, socketed transistors, easy to align because the cores were solid cuts from the rod and not dust packed. Quality on the inside yet they still managed to make them look as crude and borstful as the dashboard of a Kaiser from the external view. Can't get enough of the things over here!

 

[Reli]

OK but where were the chips and caps made?

 

[Michiel]

Thanks John, Zenith goes into my eBay searches Yeah like my Astraltune.... It's American, but the entire deck they used came from Sanyo.... Japan

 

[Beosystem10]

OK but where were the chips and caps made?

OK, so let me have a quick look at what's in the 1964 Zenith Royal, a small but heavy thing with a solid leathern cabinet, that Birmabright chassis and some familiar looking yellow ceramic caps at a time when domestic UK stuff was using waxies..

Plessey electrolytic caps were made in Plessey, a village by Cramlington in Northumberland (UK). Thae yellow ceramic PIO caps are Mullard, made in Plymouth, right down there in the south west of England. Devon if my memory is correct on its political geography. Then a few high value PIOs are the distinctive black pitch ones as made by Philips, somewhere in the home counties by London.

No "chips" in anything Zenith before around 1969 when a TAD100 served as mw/lw I/F & R/F amp and lw/mw local oscillator, but their transistors were all Mullard ones, shipped somewhere to have their AF11* numbers scraped off ( ) and replaced with "cold cathode" labels such as 0C71, which would have been supplied through GEC or EdiSwan to the overseas markets. Reason for Mullard changing to these labels was so that [Mullard] wouldn't be the ones taken to court in the states by NASA when tin whisker syndrome caused the AF11* equivalents to kill comms between ground control and the fellas in some mission involving the moon and some kind of spacecraft. You might find that it was soon after that episode that the USA started using its own transistors..