Having just wrapped up recapping and repairing a classic RCA X-1 “All-American Five” AM BC receiver, I’ve decided to tackle a few additional BC receivers that I have accumulated over the years.
Two of these are Detrola 571Bs, identical to the one shown at right, though the case is dark brown instead of white.
The Detrola is mid-1940s version of the All-American Five AM broadcast receiver. This design hit the market in the mid-1930s and was produced about 30 years. They were popular for a couple of reasons.
For manufacturers, they were relatively inexpensive to build. They did not have a power supply transformer, which allowed significant savings. Over the years, manufacturers found ways to reduce costs further by eliminating more parts, and by the late 1950s, many manufacturers eliminated the metal chassis by mounting parts on a single circuit board.
The Detrola has a stout chassis, uses loctal base tubes and is a solid performer. All-American Five receivers worked very well; there were 4-tube and 6-tube versions manufacturered, but they didn’t sell as well — the 4-tube versions didn’t perform as well, and the 6-tube versions were more expensive, and consumers didn’t spring for the extra tube.
The line cord has rotted off the Detrola I have in the shack, and I’m going to start out by ordering new caps for the rig … actually, I’m ordering two sets of caps — I have an identical Detrola that was a wedding gift to my parents when they married in the summer of 1945.
The Detrola they owned was our kitchen counter radio for umpteen years, but by the time I was a young boy, the radio shared a bedroom with me and my brothers. It played 24 hours a day, nonstop, for years. We left it on, only turning the volume up when we went to bed to listen to the clear channel AM station WHAS in Louisville, Ky.
My Dad repainted our Detrola to match whatever color the kitchen walls were, so its got several coats of paint over its bakelite surface. Listening to the radio as we went to sleep was a fixture of my childhood. I recall hearing the news reports after the assasinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and of the Apollo 13 moonshot mishap.
I have a love affair with radio because I guess I literally grew up with it. After I was married, it took quite a while for me to be able to go to sleep without the radio on.