c.1959 GE P-800A
Coat pocket radio, thermoplastic cabinet
6 1/8 x 3 1/2 x 1 5/8 inches / 155.5 x 89 x 41 mm
Five transistors, four 1.5-volt AA cells
Made by General Electric Corp., USA
A nice black-and-white-and-gold cabinet color scheme that includes a decorative tuning dial as well as an on/off/volume knob set dead-center on the cabinet face. The tuning dial has a nifty bubble magnifier working as a dial pointer and also a teeny bubble magnifier highlighting the two CD markings. I haven't come across any other cabinet colors offered for this model.
The P-800A's cabinet is nearly identical to the c.1957 four-transistor P-710 series, the only difference being the dial center, which has concentric rings rather than the 800A's ornamentation. Like most four-transistor radios, the 710 series made use of a reflex circuit.
This Radiomuseum page provides the following info on the P-800A's unique speaker:
"High impedance speaker with reed suspended between pole pieces, drives paper cone with a stylus, and is directly driven by a single ended transistor collector, without an audio output transformer. One of several contemporary GE transistor radio models to employ this kind of speaker which was originally used in the 1920's because of it's high efficiency and high impedance."
|
