1948 British Marconiphone P20B Personal Portable Radio

Here’s the other personal portable that Marconiphone brought out, the Model 20B.

This one plays AM and LW stations.

Bandswitch is a little flaky, could use a cleaning.

Got this in a trade with Bob Thompson. He has the website roberts-radios.co.uk, and it has reproduction battery covers available for collectors.

Uses a B114 combination battery pack.

Duration : 0:4:35

[youtube 6pMzxXejDis]

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 7:16 am and is filed under portable radios. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “1948 British Marconiphone P20B Personal Portable Radio”

batterymaker on December 31st, 2009 at 7:16 am

Pretty much because …
Pretty much because of the output tube–it has a little oomph, but not a lot, due to battery-saving measures. Plus, they don’t have very large speakers, so that’s another disadvantage they have.
vwestlife on December 31st, 2009 at 7:16 am

I like the styling …
I like the styling of these little tube portables, but I noticed the sound is often distorted even with fresh batteries and a station properly tuned in. Is that just because of the limited current the low voltage tubes are able to put out?
batterymaker on December 31st, 2009 at 7:16 am

Might have been– …
Might have been–the hispanic station has all sorts of comedic bits, and Gawd knows where they get their material….

All of my batteries are adapters, or holders, designed to hold the batteries in place while lending the appearance of the original design.
When the batteries wear out, you remove them and install new ones.
Lachlant1984 on December 31st, 2009 at 7:16 am

Did I hear what …
Did I hear what sounded like music from Mario Kart 64? I like these personal radios, I’ve never seen one before, and of course getting batteries for one would be a problem unless you want to pay a lot of money or make your own as you do. With the battery packs you make, do you make them so you can easily swap out the cells when they go flat, or do you solder them in place?

Radios