Philips BX732A Radio (1954)

This is one of the earliest Dutch radios with FM reception. It's FM band covers 87,5-100 MHz. Anything above 100 MHz was forbidden territory for civilian radios of that time. The FM IF is 10.7 MHz. It boasts 13 valves, including a 10 W push-pull output stage with two EL84's, 2 IF stages, separate RF pre-amplifiers and oscillators for FM and AM bands, an EM34 "cat's-eye" indicator tube. Two EZ80 rectifiers are needed to power all this. According to the service manual, it consumes 110 W.

This must have been quite an expensive radio. In my childhood, it was owned by our neighbour, a retired policeman. The first time I saw the radio was when our neighbour asked me to fix it. I must have been 15 years old at the time and was frequently doing repairs. At that time, it turned out to be some bad contacts in the bandwidth control switch. 10 years later I inherited the radio. After this, it has been gathering dust in the attick for years before I gave it a better place in my hobby shack. As you can see, the varnish does not look very good any more. But the inside looks ok.

The AM reception had disappeared again, though, and FM did not work too well, either. In summer 2003 I decided this radio was too large, so I swapped it with a collector for a Philips GM2307 LF generator.