I grew up with a very similar model! Unfortunately I sold it almost 20 years ago, and I've been regretting it for a very long time - the red LEDs are perfect for a bedside clock because they don't produce light pollution the same way most modern clocks do. Really miss waking up to the radio with that clock for years and years.
@@nooneinpart That kind of stuff with modern clock radios, is why I gave up a few years ago, and got an Insignia Voice Smart Clock w/Google Assistant, that uses bluish white LEDS to show the time, and temp, and it also has a USB port so I can charge my phone which I have set as a backup alarm incase the power, and/or the internet goes out overnight while I'm asleep, and I can tell the clock to play whatever I want via RU-vid Music as my Alarm.
I never thought after 15 years I would hear you do a British accent - what a gift you've given me on this day. This is up there with "what the hell is this crap?" when you tuned into a strange radio station one time.
@@vwestlife Can you give us a demonstration of a southern U.S accent in your next video? I find your videos more entertaining when you momentarily speak in different accents. It makes your videos more edgy and unpredictable. I can do a very good Arnold Swarchznegger impression and i always impress people when i attend dinner parties - GET TO THE CHOPPA!
@@precbass English and Welsh accents are non-rhotic. And as for the Scottish accent, even MPs can't understand it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-I4k8dR04TzA.html
I just watched a guy talk about and clean a clock radio..... and enjoyed every minute of it. I had a GE that looked and functioned similarly (same red LED numbers, but GE flipped for the colon), minus the quirky language. Got it in 1982, and I think it finally gave out on my ca. 1997 or so. VERY handy devices - and increasingly difficult to find. When another clock radio gave up the ghost ca. 2010, I headed to the electronics section of the Wal-Mart in town..... and they had nothing. Had to go across the street to Radio Shack (RIP) to finally get a new clock radio. Yeah, I have a smartphone just like everybody else, but it's not allowed to be in the room when I sleep. Now the ULTIMATE clock radio is, of course, a flip clock.😉
That's cool!! Your Comment could of been mine as I still use my ge clock radio I got for Christmas 1982. Had to replace two capacitors in the power supply back in 1992. The led numerals are little dimmer after 42 years but it's still waking me up faithfully for work every weekday at 3:30am!
nice! I love clock radios! I bought one a few years ago that was a NOS version of my childhood clock radio I got from my mom. as a kid I loved the blue green VFD display and was so happy when I got her to give it to me... then I used it for a year or two and took it apart and ruined it 😇 and didn't appreciate it until I was much older. only thing more comforting is a flip clock humming along with an incandescent bulb or a neon bulb lighting it up...
I had the British model of this alarm clock radio growing up. The "slumber" label always tickled me too. I think your theory around "favourite stations on FM" is absolutely correct.
i found one of these at a goodwill year some years ago and it's serviced me very well since! I enjoyed seeing the thumbnail and thinking "hey, that's my clock!" love your channel, keep up the great work! :)
Max Goldt, one of my favourite German writers once said in a reading, which I attained, that "it is one of the essential laws of nature that radio alarm clocks never break". He is kind of right. I own a 70s digital alarm radio myself and I know a lot of people who also do.
I don't know, I wouldn't want to have a device from the 70s or 80s run 24/7, I'd be afraid one day it might burn down the place. I would just use it as a radio, but only connected to mains (how do you call it in the US, power supply?) while I'm in the same room.
Can confirm. I have Magnavox clock radio that is definitely older than the one in the video, and it's been onz tuned to NPR almost 24/7 for the past 8 years.
To add to the British/American confusion theme of these comments. Just thought I'd report it took me far too long after reading this to understand that you were referring to insects and not sports 🤣
What's so quirky about mains electricity ? We have water mains, mains sewer, a mainmast, mainsail, you contact the main office, drive down a main road, when having a meal you could have a main course, you may have to answer to the main man, it makes perfect sense to refer to the primary electricity source as mains electricity , I live in the land where we have the large 3 pin, fused mains plug which fits into the ring main socket. Rule Brittania ! Great video as always.
I've said it a couple times, usually in online comment form and it sounds natural, but I've never heard anyone in America say it. We indeed say water mains, referring to the main distribution pipe. In home, nothing gets referred to as mains, which is where the difference lies - calling the 240 at the wall (or 120 for us) "mains".
We do use terms like water main, gas main, sewer main, etc. in North America, but always singular, not plural (mains), and I don't think I've ever heard "power main". Electricians call the power line going into your building the "service drop" or "drop feed". Canadians who get their power primarily from hydroelectric generation call it "hydro".
Just awesome that you still own it after 37 years! I loved my LED clock-radio (birthday gift in 1981) - it had 4-band radio and lamp, but it and many other things were left behind because my mother moved around a lot and I could only bring what I could carry...
I still use a Sony Dream Machine from 1988. My parents got it for me for Christmas when I was in elementary school and I still use it to get up for work.
I have this exact same model and use it to this day! Yes the controls are a little funky but I’ve gotten use to them over the years! And of course, another fantastic video!
Quite a neat clock radio, almost borrowing General Electrics design from around the same time period. The spray noise at 6:28 that was too good, actually laughed quite hard. You described it perfectly!
I worked in GE Consumer Electronics in Singapore back in the 70s. The factory manufactured all models of clock radio from page display clocks to digital nixie tubes display. All were exported to USA.
they existed in the vacuum tube era, but with mechanical clocks and timers. I had one as a kid that I fixed from my grandpa (had a stuck motor). unfortunately I took it apart later on when I got bored and killed it...
I'm a big fan of the old style clock radios, lord knowns I've gone through a few over the years after countless midnight water glass spills, but I prefer the red display and waking up to a crackley radio in the morning to anything else. Also the word Slumber gave me the giggles for some reason.
Whoa, had one of these back in the day...it was the only reliable alarm clock in the house for a long time. Whenever someone had to set an alarm it was my job to set it for them in their room.😅 Very nostalgic vid for me.
My grandpa had a very similar one as well. It was originally out in his backyard shed he used to do his welding job in, but eventually it moved into his and my grandma's kitchen, where they would always use it to look at the time, and rarely play the radio on it. It eventually died several years ago (the LEDs in the clock were always kinda faded near the end anyways, I don't know if that was intentional or some brightness setting), but they've always had an alarm clock there since (hell if I know why). It's funny because stuff that was made by Magnavox from the 80s or earlier seems to have held up really well over the years, whereas stuff made by them since then (especially when it was co-branded with Philips) has routinely been terrible and not lasted long, even if it lasts a few years (case in point being this Magnavox boombox my dad bought himself back in 1994, judging by the manufacturing sticker on the back, which he eventually gave to me when I was born, and used quite heavily from the time I was a baby to just about six months ago, when it finally started to not work properly, probably because age had caught up to it and the fact until recently I had always used it on its power cord plugged into a nearby outlet, even leaving plugged in and sometimes running during lightning storms and power outages, only to wonder why the prongs on the plug suddenly started to look rusty).
I have a GE 7-4675A, and it's somewhat similar to the "quirks" of this Magnavox Clock Radio, such as having to fast forward/slow to set the time rather than set it manually by the traditional "hours and minutes" buttons. However, if you overshoot it, there is a switch that allows you to rewind the time to get it to where you want. However, I am glad that the "Snooz" that's on my clock wasn't misspelled (I haven't seen that either) and this clock doesn't have the colons either. Glad to know my clock wasn't faulty when I got it from the thrift store all those years ago and questioned the missing colons and the misspelling of the "snooze."
What amazes me is that after all these years, it still works & even picks up the radio stations. The buttons may be worn, but it actually works. And now it has been fixed up. 🙂
I think I had a Philips alarm radio that had similar electronics in the early 1980s. It also didn't have the colon but I found out that the display actually had LEDs populated for the colon, they just weren't connected. I connected them with a resistor and they worked the rest of the time that I owned it. The blinking 12:00 goes to 12:01 and back if you let it blink for a minute. Apparently the internal clock runs when it's in blink mode, but every "blink" cycle resets the time to 12:00 but doesn't reset the seconds counter. After a minute, the seconds counter adds one to the minute counter but the blink logic resets it on every blink. I think it's a hardware bug. By the way it's probably very easy to replace those pushbutton switches with new ones.
Magnavox were bought out by Philips (whose name was deemed to be too close to Philco for the American market) in 1974 so most of their products were the same. The same model was sold in white as a Philips in Europe with the D3240 model number. Most Philips products were designed in a way that made you think they had never looked at any competitors products which in some cases was true. Remember Philips was the company that gave you the N1500 VCR, Laserdisc, and Video 2000.
I've definitely seen several radios with number displays like this in the UK, and some of that "weird" terminology. Maybe the UK got a lot of stuff from Malaysia?
i had that same magnavox back in the 80s. mine was also a handmedown, but it was broken and it only told the time. the speaker didnt work. so i opened it up and connected the wires to my boombox speaker and it was great. just the alarm clock function really was loud. it woke everyone up.
Holy crap. We had one of these at the old house. Sadly it was tossed when it started humming bad. It was well before I knew anything about electronic repair.. Wish we still had it, the AM reception was pretty good.
Kind of off subject but You know what's funny is I have a Magnavox camcorder that has the similar look of my late grandmother's Panasonic camcorder which was from 1980s I'd say about 1982 to 1986 era. Anyway when you mentioned about the manufacturer for the clock radio . the battery charger for my Magnavox camcorder States N.A.P as well. At least now I know what that means thanks to this video. At least you gave it a try to repair it. The camcorder I mentioning about actually works like it was brand new. The only thing that I think gets finicky is the backlight button it has to be semi-dark for that feature to do what it's supposed to do. Plus what's cool is they still make the batteries for those. I'm sure lgr would be eyeing this because of the wood grain which I have to agree myself I like the way that the wood grain looked.
Whenever I see these old radios, I always expect to hear old radio broadcasts coming out of them, not current day stuff. Although this time it wasn't as easy to tell.
I had the same clock radio through middle school and into early high school, it had been my dads, in the late 90's, in like my junior or senior year of HS, I got a CD/clock-radio, which is still in my bedroom today, though I don't use it as an alarm anymore, just like the dim red LED clock on it, not blinding at night. I will have to dig around, I might still have the old Magnavox packed away in one of my storage totes somewhere, I never throw anything away that might donate fun electronic parts to a project LOL
there were a ton, I remember looking at them in the store as a kid who liked clock radios and electronics and staring at all the different display styles... they were so easily thrown away over time though.
Had this exact radio got it for Chrstmas in 86 or 87. Used it till the early 90s when I gave it to my Mom because I upgraded to a GE model with a built in cassette deck. ;-) Both are still around and Mom is still using the Magnovox. Never really thought about it not having : between the hour or minutes until I was looking at yours.
Looking at the switch setup I would presume the foam is only present to prevent the buttons from rattling. The foam making it easier or harder to operate is probably more a function of the angle the force is applied.
I've been using a very similar simulated-wood GE model from the 80s since saving it from the curb in the early '00s, thought it has green LEDs. The low-efficiency ones from back in the day are perfect for a bedroom clock if ya ask me; newer ones are usually too harsh, and who wants to fumble around for a phone to check the time if you wake up in the middle of the night?
I have a Westclox LED alarm clock that I put in a box for about 20 years; I brought it out about 10+ years ago (in the e- and i- era), and it is awesome. It works, and I can see it. Buttons are bad, but I eventually get it set.
I had an MQE 1970s style alarm (without radio) that operated in much the same way. Got it from my dad that bought it new as a university student. The colon between the hours and minutes only showed when the alarm was set on that model. Strange indeed. Will try to get a picture of it next time I see it.
The 80’s, how I miss them so! It’s not nearly as quirky, but I still have this blue digit GE brand clock radio (with the fancy “soft touch” keys) in my bedroom that I got as a teenager in the late 80’s somehow I just can’t part with it!
My mother had this exact same alarm clock. She told me she got it as a gift and kept it until it died in 2003. I remember sleeping in my parents room on the floor and hearing it brings back memories. I wondered why hearing both alarm and radio going off together i couldnt never tell if the alarm or radio was volume controlled.
I have a GE clock radio from the late 70s with a red LED display that didn't have a colon either. I remember as a kid I thought it was weird that it was missing and thought it was just burnt out, but years later I got another exact model and sure enough - no colon LEDs.
When an alarm clock changed to the exact-minute mentality. A wind-up one on a dresser (that you must remember to wind up daily) sets a whole different perspective of living.
Makes me want to repair my 1983 GE clock radio. It has decided to go off whenever it feels like it, had to unplug it because I was tired of waking up to AM radio static at midnight
Another consistent quality vwestlife showcase! What a beautiful finish . My father had a silver model it also had the “slumber” button. I remember finding it somewhat amusing.
Awesome video! It's cool that you can fix things, great knowledge you have. I have a different type of clock radio from the mid 90s with a CD player. The only thing that works is the LED display but I still keep it around for nostalgic reasons.
I like so much what you do. A couple years ago I found in my basement an old radio alarm clock designed by my grandfather who worked for a subsidiary of Telefunken in my city: it looks very similar. He still has his own and uses it; I’ve done the same until some months ago when I found a deal for a Philips cassette alarm clock, which has the “slumber” button as well. Needless to say that I recorded Aphex Twin in it. Those things are so cool to wake up to, I’m never using my phone again!
That's a nice review of a clock alarm. Even in Peru, the Phillips brand has been used for a long time ago and in terms of boomboxes and TV's, they're still in a mid quality. However, the fact that most of the Phillips products were sold as Norelco and Magnavox still surprises me, and with that weird clock radio with British stuff blows me up. Curiously, the Latin American editions of Phillips products were always using the North American English functions tags instead of British ones due to the high prescense of US brands, and I didn't see any boombox and/or clock alarm of the 80's made by Phillips that uses that British function tags. Also, the touch buttons are sincerely infamous by gets wasted to be heavily used. I have a late-2000's Phillips boombox that have the same issue that your clock radio, and it's almost impossible to fix that issue unless that you replace that awkward buttons.
They couldn't use their own name for a long time due to Philco objecting that it was too close and would confuse people, so Norelco. Then the electronics were Magnavox once they bought them, keeping Norelco for the shavers (Still sounds better than Phillishave if you ask me). Eventually they bought the remnants of Philco from Ford just to obviate the problem.
Nearly every brand of these for a decade or longer had the wood look (oh sure fooled me, I thought it was real wood) and flat design. I had a GE (dad worked for GE so every gadget we had was a GE) and I had a varying school and work schedule, so nearly every day I had to change the alarm. I hated the time advance one direction feature, so got really good at stopping on a dime to get the correct wake-up time. Now I just use my phone alarm, but as a back up I got a cheap Emerson that has two alarms, permanent battery backup, you can move the time in both directions, and it knows the date and daylight savings. The LEDs are blue and so bright I turn the clock face down at night. Nice to see you are taking care of this family heirloom. 👍👍 The original analog clock radios with the easy to set alarm time were fine and are now collectible. Snoozing was illegal in the olden days. The alarm went off, and you darn well better up and start chopping wood and milking the cows.
I guess that woodgrain look was particularly popular in the US market. Just like the first versions of the Atari 2600 and cars with woodgrain look sides. Is it still common to use am/pm in the US instead of the 24 hrs time scale mostly used in Europe?
I have a Lectra CR 901 clock radio that i think is from the late 70´s, my mother bought it new but i have been using it since the 80´s myself. It has the same quirks with the fast and slow setting of the time and alarm and also date setting/display. It seems it had to have been a somewhat higher end clock radio since it is a stereo clock radio and of course has dual speakers for the stereo sound, it also has headphone and speaker outputs and the snooze button is a long flat metal bar that is the integrated upper front part of the clock radio front panel, the bar is touch sensitive so just a light touch is required its not a mechanical button at all and doesnt move, to me thats a typical 70´s feature. The words on the panel is in Swedish (im from Sweden) like it used to be back then, the clock radio is in black and silver so it actually looks pretty ok as well. This is the clock radio that i still use and it works ok, the volume controls are of course a bit scratchy, the buttons works fine still, its very old but still works ok even the radio even though i have never really used it as a radio myself.
I have a very similar unit (mine's a Philips D3142, in all its (awfully yellowed) beige glory, though it also existed in orange-ish red, black and I've even seen a pastel pink one online) I've got it from the curb 10 odd years or so and it's still been going strong since. It's just as quirky as this ol' Magnavox. Though it too definitely shows its age as it's yellowed like there's no tomorrow.. It has the same layout as your alarm clock, just on mine the case is much more compact. 4:08 - interesting that yours has "Mains Breakdown buffer" written on the battery cover, on mine instead of bearing the "power back up" logo, it just has "MB BUFFER" written on the display lens.. I've always wondered what it meant.
I grew up with a similar clock radio, but I retired it when my father gave me my first cell phone. Amusing video! Calling it quirky is an understatement. 😂
My dad used to have an old clock like this, but I think it was a slightly newer model. It's amazing how power hungry they are. At 12W this clock's usage is compareable to the CPU in some small laptops
For those curious about George - "... saw George come in ..." This is from the radio show "This American Life" "Road Trip" Reporter Margy Rochlin recalls a trip she took with 92-year-old George Burns and his tiny entourage.
I have two alarm clocks from that era, they don't have radios but they both have the fast/slow time set buttons and both have the problem with the time set switches needing to be pushed really hard.
"One night years later, I was sitting in a restaurant in West Los Angeles when I saw George come in...." is almost as bad as: "A n4ked blonde walks into a bar, carrying a poodle under one arm and a 6 foot salami under the other. The Bartender says, 'So, I don't suppose you'd be needing a drink?' The blonde says......" Interesting clock, and amazing it still works that well after all these years.
Aww, I’d lowkey you’d solder in new tack switches for those two :) the foam job works well enough I suppose. Very cute and quirky clock radio though! I actually quite like the missing colon in the time display. The control panel layout is certainly a bit esoteric.
The font on the top controls and on the tuning dial is very Philips. I think "Slumber" was their thing as well. So, probably just a European model given even less of a cursory localization to the US than usual. Might even explain the lack of a :.
When I was but a wee lad, we had a similar Philips clock radio in the kitchen. The button design was different, but it also was very slim and had a small speaker. Unfortunately, there was no provision for a backup battery, so I had to set the clock every time there was a power outage (which was a common occurrence in ex-USSR in the 90s).
2:35 I'll can only guess that by using the spacings they chose, there was room enough to make the markings more accurate without crowding them. Not that that would make much difference with the way most inexpensive radios were aligned. I have an RCA "Lindsey" table radio from 1954 with an FM dial that's marked up to 109, though the FM range marked on the bottom is 88-108.
I've recently got the European variant of this exact model (complete with original box) which is named here the Philips D3342, sold in 3 different colors : White, Dark Blue and some kind of "Goldish". Unlike the Magnavox model, the Philips one has been entierly built in Malaysia. This is a model that were popular since it's fairly easy to find those in the aftersales market. European model comes with the Longwave band which replaces the "Log" line in the bottom.
This was my grandmother's clock radio. I thought the colon had burned out, but I guess that model just didn't have one. I remember the buttons not working well on that one either.
My Mom owned this exact model for years and years. She would probably still own it but it was eventually lost/left behind during a move or something. She used to make me set it because she would always overshoot the time and it would drive her nuts lol
I'm British and I can say that without a doubt we love to say 'mains' *"Oi! Dow B runnin' that drill off da' batteries! Run it off da' mains ya' knob'ed"*
Even if it hasn't been in your family for so long it still would have made a great video, that thing is just full of crazy quirks! Mine's been in the family forever too but it's just a dime-a-dozen GE 7-4634 lol. I think the digits on the radio dial are like that because those frequencies are common for radio stations.
I have a Philips branded clock radio from roughly the same era, and it’s similarly made. It also had the same issue with the buttons not registering. I was able to determine that the foam is not the problem, rather, the issue is that the small dome-shaped metal disc that makes up the tactile portion of the buttons becomes heavily oxidized over time. Spraying contact cleaner doesn’t help either, because it has a layer of adhesive holding it in place, so it’s difficult to get any kind of liquid inside to clean it up. The only way I could get mine to work properly again was to desolder each tactile push button and remove the adhesive, then clean each metal disc, before reapplying adhesive (I chose to use Kapton tape) and affixing them in place again. It’s a tedious process, and probably not really worth the time, but in my case the clock radio belonged to my grandparents, so I put the effort in for sentimental reasons. Best of luck! 🙂
I prefer my clock radio. It's a GE from the 70s. Wood grain on top, silver front, blue LEDs, and a cassette deck that works as one of the selections for the 2 alarms. I have 2 of these, identical, except one has a rotted cassette belt and I don't know how to replace it because the screw that holds the tape deck in is hidden somewhere I can't find.
I have a 1978 GE clock radio with the same fast-slow setup, but it has a much bigger clock chip which failed about 10 years ago. I could replace it for $20, but life is too short for that, and the radio still works. My favorite quirky features are a nap timer, which GE featured in the 1980s, and a slow-wakeup feature, which, I think, Panasonic used in the 1980s; it slowly increased the volume of the radio instead of blasting it the moment the alarm time was reached.
I've always preferred green numbers on my own clock radios, ever since I was gifted a Sony cassette player clock radio (with dual alarms -- radio/tape and beeper, which you could set for different times) as a kid in the early 90s. And that first one lasted me a long time -- until the circuit board literally cracked off under the "clock" button in the 2010s. I replaced it with a newer, more basic Sony model after that (radio with dual alarms -- and much bigger numbers), which I still use today. And the "new" clock was the last thing I ever bought at Sears -- since Target only had it in white, and I wanted it in black. (My brother still uses his identical cassette player clock radio, which has yet to break. And he nabbed my old broken one too for his garage.) As for vintage clock radios, I never had one quite like this one. But I did use a flip-clock one at my grandma's sometimes, and my other grandma's guest room had one a lot like this with red numbers and slow/fast time setting -- though with more conventional labeling than this one! And my parents did put a different flip clock radio in the basement laundry room -- until Dad got a CD player clock radio, and put his old Sony VFD one down there in its place. (I'm not sure what happened to _our_ old flip clock after that; think it might've ended up in Dad's workshop, though I wouldn't swear to it.)
I've always been fascinated with the weird pulley system you see in a lot of the tuning knobs in clock radios from this era. I dunno why, I just love it. I guess because I always figured it used gears. Probably slathered in lithium grease.
I have seen (and still own!) a clock radio with no colon. It's a 1976 GE electronic digital clock radio, top of the line for its day. I don't remember the exact model. Mine isn't in great cosmetic condition, but it's still fully functional and works great. It is rather odd hearing the old school 60Hz "alarm" coming out of an electronic clock. I also swapped out my 1990 GE cassette recorder clock radio for a similar 1983 model, and while I gained wake-to-tape, I did lose backwards time adjustments. Over the last month I've gotten pretty good at setting the alarm without having to do it over again. Interestingly, the _motor_ was bad, while the _belts_ were still good.
