"Homer J Simpson" ) writes:
"Michael Black" wrote in message
...

Who knows. But early transistor radios, that would have used germanium
because there was no choice, were not cheap radios. They cost significant
amounts at the time. Even later, one could still get decent transistor
portables that would have cost a fair amount at the time. I once found
a Sony portable from the early sixties, and it has metal casing and is
quite heavy, complete with the large speaker. People would have been
having those repaired, there's no way they'd toss them if they stopped
working.

The cheap transistor portables came later. Likely they were less likely
to be repaired, but circuit wise they weren't that different from the
expensive portables.

We had a popular Philips model that had a transistor audio output stage
(OC71s and OC72s) but still had tubes for the convertor and IF. Later they
came out with the OC44 and OC45 and went fully solid state.

There was that whole period where transistors were available commercially,
but not very good. I can't say I've heard of hybrid portables before,
but of course car radios that used tubes but a transistor audio amplifier
were quite common.

And I seem to recall that some of the Motorola "lunchbox" style transceivers
used some transistors in the IF stages along with the subminiature tubes
that provided the active elements at higher frequencies.

Michael