On Tuesday, April 24, 2018 at 11:09:59 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Tuesday, 24 April 2018 19:32:13 UTC+1, wrote:

Euro radio:

a) Never use one part when four-or-more would do.
b) Let's make the controls very, very fussy, with lots of moving parts.
c) Let's make the chassis an integral part of the cabinet (case) including wires, springs, tuning mechanisms and speakers.
d) Let's make services as simple as changing a dial lamp the work of several hours.
e) And after all that, let's make just about every radio look the same, but make very sure that there are no interchangeable parts but-for the tubes - and not all of those.



your lists don't represent the euro valve radios I've worked on by any means



NT

I have to agree with Peter, but maybe it's just that the only German radios we saw imported were the high end models. Really, the AA5 was so simple, reliable, and performed so well that imports really couldn't compare in a consumer driven market.

When I was an early teen, I was given all the tube radios to work on at the family shop, and I always hated the Grundigs, Emuds, Blaupunkts, etc. because they were a pain in the ass to work on as opposed to the AA5(6) or FM versions of the same. I remember spending a whole afternoon changing out the piano key switch assy on several. Hated them. They performed well and sounded fabulous, but that didn't concern the guy on the bench. The good news was that Sams rewrote the schematics to put them in the familiar layout that we were used to on this side of the Atlantic, so that helped.