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: ruclips.net/video/I4k8dR04TzA/видео.html
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 RUclips Music as my Alarm.
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! :)
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...
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 🤣
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.
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 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 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!
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".
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).
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...
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'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.
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 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."
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.
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.
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.
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. 🙂
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Why would something spec carbon zinc only? I've always thought of them as inferior to alkaline in all the ways that matter (and I can't think of anything that makes the carbon zinc a better/useful idea here). Unless it was in comparison to something other than alkaline. 🤷♂
I don't know if Alkaline batteries were very common when this was built. I wonder if they just told the user not to put rechargeable batteries in, because those have lower voltage (yes I know, not the 9V batteries, but in general) and less capacity than normal batteries. They might have just wanted to make sure that the customer was going to return it within a month because the battery "back up" didn't work simply because the battery had lost its charge because of its internal resistance or something.
I think because the zinc batteries do not leak- less anyway. Techmoan came across some 40yo zinc batteries without any leakage, fhat seems to be a good feature for a backup battery (correct me if I’m wrong, but since this is RUclips… :-))
@@JuanesJamon Was that the recent episode about the 8-track players? One had five good batteries and one bad, the other five bad and one good. 40-something year old batteries! I wasn't paying attention to what type they were, but that surprised me for sure.
@@JuanesJamon Yah, carbon-zinc batteries don't really leak, and they have a _long_ shelf life before they die of old age -- which is great for seldom-used devices, like an emergency flashlight or this clock's battery backup.
zinc carbon are superior to alkaline in low draw intermittent applications. remote controls would be best example. in things like backup for a digital clock and powering small electric clock movements the same battery may be in the unit for a long time. leak resistance is the big advantage there.
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.
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.
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
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. 😂
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.
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 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.
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.
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!
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
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 :.
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!
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.
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.
In the UK, whilst we do use the term 'mains' to refer to the supply, the term for 'power outage' is a 'power cut'. Mains Breakdown Buffer sounds like a translation from another language
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.
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
"when I approached George, rather than hearing another of his catchy one liners, he began talking about his Magnavox and how forgetting to replace the 9v battery from time to time could make your oversleep and being late for work."
@4:18 - My mind works in very odd ways: "I breakdown in the middle and lose my thread No one can understand a word that I say When I breakdown just a little and lose my head Nothing I try to do can work the same way" Alan Parsons - "Breakdown" from "I Robot".
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 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! 🙂
those look like standard tactile buttons which should be relatively easily to get. the important measurement is their height so the click point is in the right place
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?
Magnavox was bought by Philips in 1974. In the '90s they began using combined branding "Philips Magnavox" on consumer electronics, but they gave up on that idea after a while.
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.
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).
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.
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 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.
A non-rhotic "there" is the best I could pull off.
@@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!
By 'British Accent' I presume you mean English Accent? Britain is England, Scotland and Wales. All very different accents.Just sayin'.
@@precbass found the brit
@@precbass English and Welsh accents are non-rhotic. And as for the Scottish accent, even MPs can't understand it: ruclips.net/video/I4k8dR04TzA/видео.html
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.
I have three similarly unique retro clock radios I'll be listing on eBay in the next few days.
I would love a clock radio to wake me up, but I forget our radio (in the uk) is dreadful.
@@DavidB-rx3km radio 2 is not so bad, or used to be
@@nooneinpart it's my experience that almost all digital clocks in the US use the mains frequency for timing, just to save a 15¢ crystal
@@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 RUclips Music as my Alarm.
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! :)
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!
The "inspected by" label probably had initials written by hand that have faded over time
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...
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.
This is true. Until you smash the bloody thing to pieces on a cold, dark, Monday morning in January...
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.
I enjoyed the night time insect sounds near the end of the video when you were putting the battery in! Very nice and soothing!
I'm 52, grew up in Indiana... my family had a Magnavox D3240 clock radio... this video was nostalgia.
No joke when you said “By Jove! I do believe there’s been a mains breakdown!” my house had a power outage.
I love how youtube videos recorded during cricket season are absolutely full of background cricket noises.
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 🤣
I have to periodically pause the video and hear them stop to reassure myself that my house hasn't suddenly been overrun by unruly crickets.
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 bet your is branded Philips.
No doubt it nostalgia but just something about the style of 80's electronics I love!
Clock radios were huge in the late 70s and 80s. Everyone had or wanted one.
WHOA! I OWNED THIS RADIO! It was passed down to me and then got lost during a move.
9:29 Gordon Lightfoot on AM radio, that really takes me back…
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...
That's sad. I hope you could carry your teddy bear. 🐻
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.
on my philips alarm clock the colon randomly turns on and off, most of the time is off
I had a Philips clock radio which looked exactly the same as the Magnavox….
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 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!
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".
something almost calming about watching old tech repairs
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).
They all had weird names for everything on them too😂
I've had a very long day today and VWestlife is here to make things better
Still have a 90s GE. Would love a full history of clock radios
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...
Even the chip spells "TEA".
Looks nice love vintage alarm clock. I can't wait every Wednesday or Thursday BC it's Kevin video's day !
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'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.
How unique. Every other clock radio only allows you to sleep, this one lets you Slumber. I love it!
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?
Alarm clocks and Protons 😂
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."
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.
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!
They most likely are the same, made in the same factory with just a different name on it.
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.
AM 9.185 has been a personal favorite for a long time now
6:30 - Whoa, Green Brook Electronics is still around??? I remember going there as a teenager in the 80's.
Yes, they are. www.greenbrookelectronics.com/
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.
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. 🙂
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.
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.
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.
The fast/slow and wrap around time is pretty much how every clock radio used to work back to the late 1960s as far as I can recall.
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?
We do indeed call the grid electricity "mains" in the UK. I've never heard "mains breakdown" though - that would be a power cut.
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.
My dad has this exact model and still uses it to this day! I'm hoping it'll eventually end up with me lol
My GE 7-4680A has no colon in the middle. The thing's *massive* by the way. It also has the fast/slow controls and SNOOZ.
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.
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.
"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.
😂😂 The fact that I STILL use this clock and that this video was recommended to me is absolutely amazing.
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.
good video clock radios are cool..so many different models....hope you cleaned the case too!
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.
@@volvo09 thats true
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.
The great news is, it still works.
Why would something spec carbon zinc only? I've always thought of them as inferior to alkaline in all the ways that matter (and I can't think of anything that makes the carbon zinc a better/useful idea here). Unless it was in comparison to something other than alkaline. 🤷♂
I don't know if Alkaline batteries were very common when this was built. I wonder if they just told the user not to put rechargeable batteries in, because those have lower voltage (yes I know, not the 9V batteries, but in general) and less capacity than normal batteries. They might have just wanted to make sure that the customer was going to return it within a month because the battery "back up" didn't work simply because the battery had lost its charge because of its internal resistance or something.
I think because the zinc batteries do not leak- less anyway. Techmoan came across some 40yo zinc batteries without any leakage, fhat seems to be a good feature for a backup battery (correct me if I’m wrong, but since this is RUclips… :-))
@@JuanesJamon Was that the recent episode about the 8-track players? One had five good batteries and one bad, the other five bad and one good. 40-something year old batteries! I wasn't paying attention to what type they were, but that surprised me for sure.
@@JuanesJamon Yah, carbon-zinc batteries don't really leak, and they have a _long_ shelf life before they die of old age -- which is great for seldom-used devices, like an emergency flashlight or this clock's battery backup.
zinc carbon are superior to alkaline in low draw intermittent applications. remote controls would be best example. in things like backup for a digital clock and powering small electric clock movements the same battery may be in the unit for a long time. leak resistance is the big advantage there.
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.
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.
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
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. 😂
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.
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 swear everyone that had an internship at Philips back in the day was tasked with designing an alarm clock, they had so damn many.
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.
"mains breakdown buffer battery" sounds like a space shuttle accessory.
British friend: We have a MAINS BREAKDOWN!
Me: Huh? You mean power outage?
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.
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!
I knew it! I had a Phillips more modern version of this, same functions and everything!
Love the videos!
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
My dad STILL has one of these!
Excellent content and channel. Keep up the good work 👍
The word "magnavox" always reminds me of the Magnavolt scene from Robocop.
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 :.
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!
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.
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 had this model as a kid as well, when it was new in the 1980s.
In the 70's a high school buddy had a digital alarm where the time display changed gradually. He loved that thing.
Jolly good, Kevin!
I've got a very similar alarm clock from Panasonic. It's also got the "Fast" and "Slow", and instead of "Snooze" it says "Doze". The LEDs are green.
In the UK, whilst we do use the term 'mains' to refer to the supply, the term for 'power outage' is a 'power cut'. Mains Breakdown Buffer sounds like a translation from another language
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.
They’re the same style buttons I just replaced in my Atari 7800. At least in the Atari they’re a known fail point it turns out.
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
I had one of these when i was growing up brings back some memories.
"when I approached George, rather than hearing another of his catchy one liners, he began talking about his Magnavox and how forgetting to replace the 9v battery from time to time could make your oversleep and being late for work."
@4:18 - My mind works in very odd ways:
"I breakdown in the middle and lose my thread
No one can understand a word that I say
When I breakdown just a little and lose my head
Nothing I try to do can work the same way"
Alan Parsons - "Breakdown" from "I Robot".
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 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! 🙂
Loved the sound effect for the contact cleaner.
My grandma had the same radio.
those look like standard tactile buttons which should be relatively easily to get. the important measurement is their height so the click point is in the right place
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?
@@gregornu Yes am and pm is common. The military, police and other occupations use the 24 hour format.
The only way that thing could get more 80's is if you used the alarm to remind you it's time to watch a VHS copy of the 1984 Dune movie.
This guy can make a video of pumping air into a bicycle tire and make into an exciting event to watch.
Then you should watch my thrilling video of formatting a floppy disk!
@@vwestlife I HAVE!!!!
Philips might have been confused with Philco, so I think that's why they used the Magnavox brand in the US, and Norelco as well.
Magnavox was bought by Philips in 1974. In the '90s they began using combined branding "Philips Magnavox" on consumer electronics, but they gave up on that idea after a while.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Spiffing video old chap, well done!
Cheerio Cire my old boy
@@pyeltd.5457 What ho! old bean, jolly hockey-sticks and all that. Ta Ta!