A Rosebud Radio is the one from your childhood that recalls radio bliss. Here's Ed describing his:
This was my first Transistor radio that my parents gave me on my 10th birthday in 1960. It's an Eldorado (Hitachi?) 6 transistor AM/SW radio. It cost $75, probably hundreds in today's dollars. I enjoyed it for months until January 27 1961, 51 years ago today, when it fell out of my pocket on a snowy day. I was devastated.
Move forward 45 years and I found the same model selling on eBay, and I finally found my long lost "rosebud" radio. It still works well, by the way.
Toshiba 8TM-300S which I bought new from a convenience store in Cote St. Luc in 1960.
I carried it on my bike while I did my paper route in the early morning in Montreal, listening to KMOX, St. Louis or Radio Moscow as I flung rolled-up Montreal Gazettes into flowerbeds and under stairs.
Posted by: ace | January 27, 2012 at 09:30 AM
My Rosebud radio was a bright Red Panasonic R-1029, I got it for Christmas in 1974 when I was 10 yrs old. It's an AM radio which I think ran on 2 AA Batteries. used it to put me to sleep daily - listening to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater on 50K Watt WHAM 1180. Daytimes it was top 40 on 1460 WAXY, then later 950 WBBF.
You kids these days have no idea... Back then AM radio was how you found out what was happening... No cable TV, no computers, no cell phones, no texting, no internet - Yup - no nuthin. It was you, your AM radio, and 3 channels of B&W TV. Long forgotten - dinosaurs still roamed the countryside in the mid 70's - honest.
This radio also started my MW DX fever, a fever that is sometimes suppressed, never cured, and flairs up often. I remember one cold winter day searching for some far away city in the family atlas (remember - this was before the internet) dumbfounded at how far away the place was. Long forgotten, it was someplace in Ontario Canada, about 700 miles away.
The actual radio is long since gone, no idea what happened to it. I occasionally search ebay looking for a replacement, they come up occasionally however usually in too poor a shape for me to pull the trigger.
Posted by: Gregory Mosher | January 27, 2012 at 11:54 AM
Yes, these old AM radios were every bit our iPods, our Internet, and our form of social media. They held thousands of songs and dozens of stations and voices in the night that connected us to the larger world. There was something magical about sound coming through the thin air. And there seems to be something magical about the age of 10-- so if you know a kid that age, it couldn't hurt to give them a little radio. Who knows, it might start something.
Posted by: Ed S | January 27, 2012 at 04:26 PM
My rosebud SW receiver is the Nordmende Globetrotter. Dad found it at a pawn shop in around 81 or so, brought it home, and was hooked. I must have listened to WWV that night for 5 hours straight just completely facinated - drove mom nuts.
The comment about 3 TV channels reminds me: I was born in 1970, so we had color but my first TV in my bedroom was a small B&W Sears TV.
I swear to this day, that attaching a flat piece of tin foil to the telescopic antenna really did help reception...
Summers were a blast with that TV when I would TVDX and not even know that what I was doing had a name.
Posted by: Dan | January 27, 2012 at 05:01 PM
Review: Q2 Internet Radio
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/blog/2012/01/23/review-q2-internet-radio?cmpid=enews012712&spPodID=020&spMailingID=4361690&spUserID=MTE1NTU1NTIyMDUS1&spJobID=261620076&spReportId=MjYxNjIwMDc2S0
Posted by: vimal oberoi | January 27, 2012 at 09:53 PM