1963 Saba Radio Automatic Freiburg 14 Continental 410US

Saba stands for Schwarzwälder Apparatebau Anstalt August Schwer und Söhne, and is located in the Black Forest town of Villingen in Germany. It is Germany's most inventive and leading radio manufacturer from the 1950's and 60's, that is the time of the "Deutsches Wirtschaftswunder", the German Economic Miracle. Saba dwarfs all of the AEG, Blaupunkt, Graetz, Grundig, Koerting, Loewe Opta, Nordmende, Schaub-Lorenz, Siemens and others, not necessarily when it comes to styling but surely when it comes to technical performance. Saba "Automatic" radios are the most collectible and most expensive sets, because of Saba's famous motorized automatic station scanning and automatic frequency control, that allows remote control not only of on/off and volume, like others but also remote station tuning. Deviations from optimal reception cause a motor to steer the tuning knob which itself is connected to the tuning capacitors through a clutch, that switches between AM and FM. Both the associated mechanics and electronics are complicated, but failure prone as everything vintage electronic, and therefore require a lot of handwork and advanced equipment like a frequency generator and an oscilloscope, to restore them. A handful of capacitors, resistors and transistors were "kaputt" as the Germans say, and caused the whole radio to not work at all. The stereo decoder is transistorized and uses early Germanium pnp transistors in metallic housings. These transistors develop the famous mystery hair disease, that is they develop shorts between their electrodes, caused by tin or zinc whiskers, and have to be electro-shocked or replaced. Sometimes a powerful 1000 Volt arc can evaporate these whiskers without destroying the transistor. Electrolytic capacitors exposed to even only small voltages, can develop leakages, that paralyze the proper function of the decoder. The radio has been restored in long days and nights by taking care of all these issues. The 14-tube radio with two tuning eyes now works as a charm, and finds and settles on stations on all bands, up and down the scale and plays back your iPod, cell phone or record player.
The radio is documented and for sale at radio-antiks.com