Regentone

Regentone sets have a reputation in some quarters for being low quality and badly made. Certainly, the sets I have seen seemed to confirm this.

However Chas E. Miller disagrees. He said:

In the Trade Regentone sets did not have a reputation for being cheaply and badly made. They were certainly competitive in price compared with many makes but since the chassis were made by Plessey, an excellent firm that also supplied Marconiphone with certain chassis, the workmanship was generally very good indeed. It is a matter of record that the Plessey 12" television chassis used by Regentone, Defiant and other firms was markedly more reliable than many higher priced makes.


A121, U121, A141 and U141

Wavebands - SW, MW, LW

Valves (A121 and A141) - 7S7, 7B7, 7C6, 7C5, 7Y4
Valves (U121 and U141) - 14S7, 7B7, 7C6, 35A5, 35Z3

Date - 1949

Status - Repaired an A141 for a customer

The A121 is shown on the right. The valves used in these set do not appear to be readily available now, so repairs could be a problem. However even when working this set is rather a disappointment, so it is questionable whether it is worth bothering to repair it at all! The build quality is rather sloppy, and the circuit design is fairly basic. The tone control, for example, is a three-position switch, which adds capacitors across the output valve anode circuit. The sound quality is mediocre too.

The U121 is the AC/DC version of the A121. The circuit is very similar, and I would imagine the performance would be too! The chassis fixing bolts are accessible from the base of the cabinet. Since the chassis is connected to one side of the mains this is a highly dangerous situation. The Trader service sheet suggests covering the bolt heads with insulating tape, but this approach is clearly inadequate to comply with today's safety standards. Probably the best approach would be to make up some small hollowed-out wooden blocks to fit over the bolt heads, which are then fitted in place with separate screws.

The A141 and U141 are electrically identical to the A121 and U121 respectively. They are built in a Bakelite cabinet having wooden cheeks that overhang either side of the front, as shown in the left photo. This is, I think, somewhat smarter than the 121 models.


BT16

Wavebands - MW, LW

Transistors - OC44, OC45, OC45, OC81D, OC81, OC81

Date - 1961

Status - No longer in my collection (sold at Autumn 2001 NVCF)

One of the number of trannie radios I bought in a single lot from a Radiophile auction for about £8. This is a rather ordinary six-transistor model, powered by two PP7 9V batteries. Most of the resistors are mounted on two small PCBs mounted vertically on the main PCB.

My set is missing the handle and is fairly grubby. It crackled when the volume control is adjusted, but doesn't receive anything. However this turned out to be one pole of the power switch so only one battery was connected. Some contact cleaner sorted that problem then the set worked reasonably well.


BT22

Wavebands - MW, LW

Transistors - 2G417, Y159, 2G417, 2G317B, 2G374B, 2G374B, 2G381A, 2G339A

Date - 1963

Status - In my collection

Another set from the same lot as the BT16 above. This set is in fairly tidy condition, however the white trim is becoming detached and needs gluing back into place.

The use of an eight-transistor circuit should give good performance. It also uses a transformerless complimentary output stage. My set suffers badly from crackly controls and general crackles whenever the PCB etc. is touched, but when it can be nudged into working it does sound good.




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Last updated 14th April 2006.