Herculodge

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Magnavox Ten Transistor Vintage Radio

Thanks, Gerald:

 

This rather harmless looking late 60's magnavox looks a lot like what grandma used to listen to the swap and shop show on. don't be fooled. several years back when i recieved this radio and loaded it with batteries, i was blown away by its performance. a robust 10"x7'x3.5" it was sturdily built of plstic. no frills. no lights, no meters, just excellent am and fm tuning .

A full 8" ferrite tucked in the back. known only as the model fm-91, i have done the "pepsi" challenge with this radio against some of my heavy hitters and it down right outperformed a couple of them. heres a hint ,sangean, are you listening? only ten transistors but uses every ne of them to the max. the best analogy i can conjur for this radio is this,, imagine a little old lady next to you at the redlight in an avacado green 1968 coronet, the only thing is, there is 426 hemi under the hood. count me in the vintage over modern camp. i know its been debated on here, youll never convince me you'll see the new chinese contraptions for sale on ebay 30 years from now.

Russ Flop-Sweating Over His Purchase of the $300 Grundig Satellit 750

 

(Re-post)

I was underwhelmed by my Grundig S750 and sold it. Russ seems to dislike his as well. Today he writes:

UPS delivered the Grundig Satellit 750 today. I couldn't wait to open the box and try it out. When the UPS driver handed me the box, I thought it was empty it was so light. After unboxing the Satellit, it seemed much smaller than my expectations and it is extremely light. One reason for this is the thin and flimsy plastic the cabinet is made from.

I started to get flop sweat because I spent $300 on this thing. I thought if it performed really well, I would feel a lot better about it. Alas, the Grundig Satellit 750 isn't worth anywhere near $300. I wouldn't even pay $100 for it. 

The AM performance was disgraceful. I needed my Select-a-Tenna to clearly pick up anything I was used to receiving routinely. FM sensitivity was not much better even with an external antenna. This surprised me based on comments I have read here. The sound has also been described in this blog as being pretty good and able to sound good playing in a backyard. That must have been a pretty small yard because there is nowhere near enough power output to even come close to the performance of the Sangean Lunchbox.

I didn't even try shortwave because I had already seen more than enough. The cheap feel of the Satellit made me feel extremely ripped off and there was nothing positive about the set to change my mind. I called Amazon and talked to "Amanda" who admitted they get a large percentage of these radios returned and refunded for the same reason I am sending mine back. The perceived value and performance is not even close to being worth their price of $300. It retails at some places for $400. You've got to be kidding me!

I guess I'm spoiled by the performance of the Sangean Lunchbox and U3 along with my vintage radios which all perform much better than this thing. I'm also sure I don't have a defective unit. These things are simply overpriced junk. If this review helps someone avoid wasting their money on a Satellit 750, then this whole fiasco will have at least one positive aspect. Phooey!

Russ Defends Doing a Flash Impression

As far as one day reviews go, after 45 years of being into radios, I know a loser when I hear and see one. The lightness of the radio means that it was deliberately designed to be made as cheaply as possible which means no heavy duty or quality parts. The comment about retailers demanding lighter radios because of shipping costs is ridiculous when talking about high-end gear. A serious radio designer will make a radio that performs well and charge accordingly, including shipping charges. This argument makes sense with Coca-Cola and the change from glass to plastic bottles, but not for a $300 radio aimed at the upper tier of the Shortwave market. This radio is more at home being sold at Walmart next to the Coby and GPX electronic junk. I have to laugh at the comments about how it has metal knobs now. Oooooh! But that doesn't help it perform any better, does it? Maybe they should add a bunch of blue LEDs everywhere to attract even more clueless purchasers. I'm sorry but cognitive dissonance won't cut it for $300. The S750 has been judged and found guilty of impersonating serious radio gear.

 

Amazon Selling the Invicta Subaqua Noma III with Silver Dial for $179 and Free Shipping

 

 

 

 

This Invicta Subaqua 0779 Subaqua Noma III has a 50mm bezel and silver dial. Very nice for the price. 

Two Admirable Thinkers Give Us Two Contrary Responses to the Problem of Human Suffering

 

 

 

I teach a famous book to my college students, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, a book the argues we are responsible for adopting a courageous attitude in the face of suffering. Frankl posits that suffering is the key to finding meaning and that the primary objective in life is for us to make ourselves “worthy of our suffering.”

Frankl’s argument contradicts the sensibility of another admirable thinker, Bart Ehrman. In God’s Problem, Ehrman, a former Christian and current agnostic, says that a lot of the suffering in this world is meaningless and senseless to the point that it defies any theological formulas or apologetics. His book portrays a deep melancholy as he lays bare the journey of his soul from hopeful believer with firm answers to life’s most deeply felt problems to disillusioned skeptic bereft of easy answers.

Frankl on the other hand suffers the atrocities exacted upon prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps and he relies on his Jewish faith to make meaning of his suffering. When released from the camps, he writes:

 

At that moment there was very little I knew of myself or of the world—I had but one sentence in mind—always the same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.”

 

How long I knelt there and repeated this sentence memory can no longer recall. But I know that on that day, in that hour, my new life started. Step for step I progressed, until I again became a human being.

 

Wanting to be honest with my students, and myself, I tell them my sensibility at this time of my life is more in line with Ehrman’s, but I aspire to more like Frankl.

 

 

 

The Best Looking Invicta Sea Hunter 0861 with MOP Dial for $320 and Free Shipping

 

 

I love the Invicta Sea Hunter, got mine for $229. But my favorite is the 0861 version with MOP dial. 

Bidding Over $230 for Panasonic RF-1150 So Far

 

 

This Panasonic RF-1150 is getting more interest than I usually see for this model. I wonder what the final bid will be. 

More surprising is a rare mint condition Panasonic Cougar RF-888 bidding only for about $122 with 11 hours to go. I'd figure this RF-888 would command close to $300. 

Gerald's Wife Gives Him the Radio Ultimatum and Now His Radio Treasures Are Braving the Outdoors

 

I wasn't kidding when I called the radio category of my blog "Radio Lovers Can't be Cured." As Gerald, who has taught me a lot about vintage radios since my blog started 5 years ago, attests:

As I was lazing about watching the S.E.C. baseball tounament this weekend, my wife stood in front of the tv and declared, it's the radios or me! It seems she was a little cramped in our room due to many battery loaded radios that occupied every suitable surface in bedroom. 

I hadn't really noticed until I pulled myself off the couch and looked in. Well, there were only 15 or so scattered about! Mostly some of my vintage favorites. I heeded her warning and reluctantly packed away most of them, leaving my Sony ICF-5800 as my bedside buddy and  few others standing sentinal and ready!

I'm happy to report to all that she is appeased for now!

Radio lovers,, we're weird. 

I've sent a pic of the radios I lugged out of my room.

 

Thanks, Herc, and I will soon feature some of my radios on your site for your readers with your permission.

 

Cheers

Gerald

 

Manly Watch Sighting: Invicta Subaqua 6210

 

 

I'm a self-confessed watch freak, prone to looking at a lot of watches, but this Invicta Subaqua 6210 really makes me short of breath. Reduce it by $200, and I'll buy it. 

Update: I've seen the 6210 sold for $269 on a one-day-sale site so that's a good idea of what price to look for. 

The Most Annoying Cliche of the Last Twenty Years

 

 

 

Cliches are by their very nature annoying (unless I say them because of course I'm being cool and therefore ironic) but the worst offender because of its sheer pretentiousness is the following:

"Never before has our world been so closely connected by technology, yet never before have people been so disconnected, alienated, and lonely."

I thought this statement was profound when I first read it in the early 1990s (Harper's magazine perhaps), but since then I've been inundated by this statement or some variation, which has become hackneyed and sanctimonious. 

The 12 Types of Irony

 

The challenge of teaching irony in a composition class is to challenge the students’ preconceptions about Irony

 

My freshman composition students have to write an extended definition essay of irony beginning with a single-sentence definition.

 

They know the common, pedestrian meaning: Saying one thing but meaning something else.

 

But we try to go beyond that to a deeper definition that points to wisdom, namely, the ability to penetrate the superficial appearance of things and to identify contradictions and reversals of expectations. Having a sense of irony makes us wry and gimlet-eyed toward the world and keeps us even keeled.

 

Here are the 12 types of irony I’ve come up with over the years:

 

1. Reversal of expectations: A vegetarian becomes a world-famous butcher. A man hates academia and grows up to become a professor. All romantic comedies are based on this irony. At the film’s beginning they hate each other and will inevitably and helplessly fall in love with one another.
2. Serendipitous irony: A desirable outcome from an seemingly undesirable situation: You fall into a toilet, you break your fall by reaching into the water, and find a silver dollar.
3. Self-Deceptive Irony: The more we think we’re rising and succeeding in life, the more we are actually falling as we become crushed under the weight of our own vanity, which blinds us and leaves us vulnerable to failure. The counterpoint is also true: When we think we’re falling in life we’re rising because “falling” often entails the development of humility and fortitude. Another example of self-deceptive irony is the persona from the song "I'm Not in Love" by 10cc. The more he says he's not in love, the more he reveals himself to be helplessly in love. 
4. Pathological irony: A man severs his foot in an attempt to rid the foot of a wart. We can call this the irony of overreaction.
5. Sarcastic irony: Saying one thing and meaning something contrary to it.
6. Satanic irony: A greedy man enjoys a long, healthy life while his innocent victims die cruel deaths and their lives are short. This type of irony refutes notions of justice.
7. Narcissistic Irony: searchers for the self lose their selves while people who don’t think about their selves find their selves. Someone goes into therapy and becomes even crazier. Or the example of Stalingrad in which the selfish die and the helpful live.
8. Jungian Irony: The more extreme we develop a facet of our personality the more extreme we develop its opposite. The macho man is also becoming more and more of a baby.
9. Materialistic Irony: You buy an expensive fur coat but the weather is forever hot so you can never wear it. You fight tooth and claw to get rich, your business partner murders you, and your wife and children are left without the provider whose millions are hidden in bank accounts, which the wife cannot access. 
10.  Short-sighted irony: You workout to impress a girl but she’s turned off by big muscles. You were looking at what you want, not at what she wants. A woman overdressed and wears too much make-up and men are terrified of her.
11. Ironic Irony: You try to be ironic because you think it’s cool but you come across as a fake and as a poser.
12.  Corruptive Irony: The more we get our hands dirty in the mess of life, the more pure we become; the more we stay away from the filth, the more contaminated we become by our lack of involvement, which is a form of narcissism.