Philips

This model of Philips radio is unusual in that it was only produced for a limited period for Philips 50th Birthday. It has a unique cabinet shared with the Mullard Eleven Eleven, with each having a slightly different design. The Philips badged model having the flutes top and bottom , the Mullard having them each side of the grill. The tuning dial water transfer also has different branding details. Although I can find no price, I image this would have been relatively expensive both to produce and buy.

It has an 8" speaker and sounds magnificent.

This one is a bit grubby and is missing the back. The person I bought it from said it was his grandfathers and had sat in his shed for many years until he died.

In 1952 Philips released the 140k, which while visually similar, it shares the Bakelite case and control panel, has a number of differences. The dial Perspex is different covering the whole face, and the chassis is a slightly modified 125.

The chasisis is fairly run of the mill Philips layout with five valves. The control knobs also follow the then current Philips layout.

Where the radio does change the mold slightly is the "band spread" feature. This expanded the tuning dial for the 25m (11.4 - 12 MC,   MegaCycles or MegaHertz) and the 31m (9.4 - 10 MC.) bands. This made tuning much easier within those ranges.

However, this is still a fairly basic set by European standards. Philips European radios already had "magic eye" tuning, treble and bass controls, fine tuning, etc. Things that the Australian market would rarely see on sets this size.

This example was bought in a "junk" shop in Tyab and was claimed to belong to the shop owners grandfather. It was in a fairly sorry state having been put in the shed for 50 years.

It has cleaned up quite well, though it still need some cosmetic work, such as repainting the highlights on the cabinet and knobs, as well as scrubbing or replacement of the grill cloth. It also needs a back.

It required a full set of capacitors, including many mica caps, and quite a few resistors were well out of tolerance. Fortunately, the coils were good, but the output transformer was open.

Performance is very good, although it is very susceptible to electrical noise, more so than most valve radios. This has been reduced, if not eliminated by a noise filter on the power cord.

The set is in daily operation in my lounge room.

Page last updated: 9 June 2021