Wartime Civilian Receiver (1944) SOLD

WARTIME CIVILIAN RECEIVER (1944) SOLD

Better known as the Utility set and was designed by Dr G.D.Reynolds of Murphy Radio Ltd. It was an effective but basic single waveband (MW) receiver. The design resulted to minimise raw materials and labour and was manufactured by over 40 different company's, identified only by a U followed by a number on the back. This radio was built by The Gramophone Co and therefore has U4. Even the valves were given special codes just to make it interesting !. During the first twelve months from June 1944 over 175,000 of these sets were produced to eradicate the shortage of wireless sets at the time and costing £12 3s 4d including purchase tax were still costly.

So if you would like to by into a little of our second world war history, this is the one for you, the case made out of pine finish is all original and has not been touched, the chassis is in fine class condition with the IF's realigned and to remind you the on/off switch was fitted to the rear of the set. Surprisingly the idea of design was to keep materials down so to help the war effort so why use a large AC mains transformer rather than a basic AC/DC concept, perhaps we will never know. Small in size at only 12 inches wide, 6.5 inches in depth and 13.5 inches high, and of course to use this an external wire (supplied) as an aerial is required, comes complete with 6 month guarantee which is the same when offered new. This receiver has had only one owner , in the 1950's there was a repair carried out, this was to replace the smoothing capacitor and a replacement I.F valve. All the others are original and are perfect. Due to the fact the early repairer fitted the rear cover the wrong way round, its like new as can be seen in the photo's. All components as standard have been replaced and re-aligned and works brilliantly.