Radios I Have Known

Montgomery Ward GEN-1454A AM/FM/VHF radio

Montgomery Ward GEN-1454A

Earlier this summer, after months of patiently waiting on eBay, I finally got this unassuming four-band Wards radio. It's the same model my mom bought sometime around 1973. It definitely has that understated, even bland look. It certainly looks like nothing special. Why did I want it?

This is the radio that helped me learn Spanish. When I was in high school, I'd often tune to Mexican stations on this radio. In particular, I would try for the "Noticiero Carta Blanca" on 500,000-watt XEW, at 900 kHz on the AM dial.

As the name implies, it was a nightly newscast sponsored by the beer of that name. Always immediately preceding the newscast was a little jingle for another emblematic Mexican brand: Bimbo bread.

The noticiero was supposed to start at 7:30 pm, but often didn't. At the time, XEW was still programming in a style that hadn't been heard most places in the United States since the 1950s: lots of block programming, radio dramas, and long newscasts. There may have sporting events (such as futbol/soccer) during the day that pushed the schedule around. Or it could have been other things.

I don't know. I remember, though, that the Noticiero Carta Blanca always started out with some stirring march music, followed by an announcer reading the names of each Mexican state and their capital cities.

Then came the international news, with every story preceded by "Carta Blanca" followed by the location. After a five-minute break, there was a brief commercial for the beer, "Exquisita, Carta Blanca". Then came the domestic news, doubtless somewhat self-censored.

Still, it was a great way to learn how to listen to, and understand, Spanish. I have been told that I still speak the language with something of a Mexican accent. I don't know how much credence to put in that.

Anyway, what's the radio like? I consider the AM section of the radio to be very good, almost comparable to that sleeper, the Westinghouse H950PN10. Bandwidth rolls off at around 3.4 kHz, making it more selective than, say, a Zenith. It seems quite sensitive: for example, it could pick up Monterey Bay-area station KKYA (the call letters of that station have since changed).

On FM, it has a curious mix of very good sensitivity and only fair selectivity at best. It can pick up some of the lower-powered educational-band stations and some of the South Bay signals, but not all of them. Those weaker signals are almost swamped by stronger San Francisco signals. It seems comparable to my Sangean portables but it is more resistant to front-end overload than the Sangeans. It's not entirely immune, because there are a few images at each end of the FM dial, but it's not enough to drown out actual stations.

I didn't check out the air-traffic or VHF public-service bands. Except for National Weather Service broadcasts, I don't have much interest in those bands.

Overall, the balance of AM and FM performance is very good. This is not one of those radios that's great on one band and awful on the other. It does pretty well on both.

The radio is economical with batteries: it just needs 4 "C" cells, and also came with an AC power cord. That power cord is easily lost, but, fortunately, the radio I bought at auction still had its cord.

Also of interest: the radio has a microphone input, so you can use it as a miniature public-address system! The amplifier and speaker are surprisingly powerful for the radio's size: this radio can be loud, but not unpleasantly so.

I remember that an extra speaker was available for this radio, plugging into the earphone jack. That wouldn't have yielded stereo listening, of course: the tuner's all mono.

There are similar models out there. For example, there was a higher-end model with more bands and color-coded controls. From my memory of Wards catalogs, I recall yet another model that had a tuning meter where the "FM/AM 4 BAND" plate would be, just to the left of the tuning dial.

I don't know the manufacturer made this model. The radio was made in Taiwan.

This radio was almost as good as I remember from Mom's radio, which I sold in an estate sale after she passed away. I should have kept the radio!

On balance, I think I can consider this radio to be a sleeper and a keeper.

Posted September 20, 2011