Radios I Have Known

Zenith Royal 72 AM/FM radio

Zenith Royal 72

This one's an auction purchase, probably from the early 1970s, by which time Zenith had offshored almost all its radio manufacturing to Hong Kong. Zenith was famous for manufacturing TV sets in the United States long after all other TV-set manufacturers stopped, and it was slower than other radio manufacturers to take production out of the United States. Even in the early 1960s, though, some small Zenith portables were made in Hong Kong, and I believe the Zenith Royal 76, circa 1967, was the last portable made by Zenith in the U.S.

It has an attractive metal finish combined with a black plastic case. Look at that FM dial: 109 MHz? Really?

It does seem to tune up there. The FM section in this radio, as with Zenith portables of a similar vintage, is prone to front-end overload, and there are resulting images up there around 109. Front-end overload can cause problems for an otherwise sensitive radio. For example, at my Oakland home, it's hard to get San Francisco's KALW because it's a lower-powered station and it's at a spot on the dial where a bunch of reception images cluster, creating a noise floor that's hard to break through. The FM section of this radio actually seems to be moderately sensitive, but the poor resistance to overload is counterproductive. So there's no "high performance" there.

What about the AM band? Things there are a little more promising. This radio seems to have better than average sensitivity. For example, it was able to bring in KZSF from San Jose at 1370, a station that in May 2011 was broadcasting at a lower power level as a consequence of a transmitter fire several months earlier.

At the same time, the radio is not all that selective. I can manage to hear Sacramento's KFBK at 1530 wedged in between locals on 1510 and 1550, and there's not a lot of splatter, but the radio still is desensitized by the two strong local signals.

That low selectivity is odd, considering the fact that the radio's audio starts rolling off at about 3600 Hz, which should indicate a sharper cutoff than the typical 4 kHz in most radios. But I suspect the rolloff is gentle and not steep.

It shows in listening: this is a radio that is very pleasant to listen to, despite the slightly lower rolloff. While not bassy, it's not "tinny" at all, either.

Of course, FM was already on the rise in the early 1970s so this radio may have been a little bit anachronistic even as it was being made. The FM section is passable. Even so, it's a pleasant-sounding radio, with dials and a tuning knob that turn very smoothly. Though not a DX machine, it goes for reasonable prices on eBay and is worth considering by those who listen mostly to AM.

Posted May 3, 2011