From FB group Vintage Transistor Radios
OMG, that was so long ago, I could never sort out which one. See, I was born with a soldering iron in my hand, and I fixed so many radios, I could never remember which one was one that I had. Most of the electronics I was given were vacuum tube sets, including several TVs. Cathedral radios and some old floor model radios, too. Many cheap AA5 sets, too. Most of them were beyond repair, their owners may have decided to buy a new one instead. So I scrapped most of them for parts. If I had a transistor radio, it was a portable that had been dropped and broken beyond repair. And all of those were cheap ones from Asia. However I built several kits for others, mostly Heathkits, but an occasional EICO.
I had never seen a Zenith TO until the ’70s, when I bought a carcass at a yard sale for a few dollars. I didn’t even know that Zenith made anything cheaper until I joined this group – that’s why I’ve turned into a Royal 500 and below fan. I think transistor radios played a minor part in my life compared to TV. Newton Minow was right!
DING!
Update! A light just went on in my head. I now remember my first Transistor Radio. It was a Superex kit. It had a fixed capacitor and a slug tuned coil with a threaded shaft and a knob. It was a crystal set with two transistors as an audio amp and a piezo earplug. It was useless during the daytime because there was a high power AM station a few miles away in the middle of the band that wiped out the other stations. At dusk it shut down, so I could hear a few other stations, but it still had poor reception.