Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 21 hours ago
Today, we're looking at convertibles... Not car convertibles,... RADIO convertibles.
A radio convertible does not have a top that comes down. No. It's a radio for the home that can be "converted" for use as a portable. Now of course any portable radio can be used at home. The point here was a radio that would look APPROPRIATE at home, that didn't look like it was just left there, but that it BELONGED there on the table.. between the candy dish on a doily and that cigarette lighter from Atlantic City. Radio convertibles all have two components: the portable radio itself, and the other part variously called a "home unit," "speaker box," "dock or docking station," "cradle," "charger," "stationary section," or that thing on the table over there next to the candy.
This Nipco convertible from Japan is a handsome, sleek design. The radio protrudes from the right side of the home unit. To maintain symmetry, there's a matching protrusion on the left. And not just for symmentry: it ejects the radio. And what a radio. I especially like the easy to reach and use knobs. The grille, perforated with little square openings is something seen on other Nipco-made radios.. like this. These folks made some nice looking radios and some stylish ads too... Here's a view of the speaker unit from the rear with the back cover off. I took this off so you can see the eject mechanism--a pure, unfussy, mechanical system, uncomplicated by superfluous electronics and solenoids and such. Unusually, the back of this radio has an inset panel covered in leatherette. I don't know why. I've come across--and solved--a lot of mysteries with these radios over the years, but this one's got me stumped.
And Nipco may have made this Omscolite, with its wooden speaker box that sports a handle and an amusing little column under the radio. Why Nipco? Because of this other Omscolite which we also see sometimes branded with the Nipco name. Note the screws visible on the front of this radio,.. and this radio. Such screws weren't unheard of, but they weren't something often seen. Most manufacturers went to great lengths to eliminate any visible screws, but the Omscolite folks did not. Visible screws on a product are, in my opinion, not the eyesore designers seem to think they are but are.. simply.. honest. I much prefer them to the hidden clips and mystery fasteners that have infested almost all product design for almost sixty years now. Such design traffics in the pretense that the object is held together by magic. And more often than not, getting the thing apart means breaking it, and having to get another one, which I suspect is the designers real goal. Inside this speaker box is one big speaker, relatively speaking, and.. nothing else. No power, no amplifier.
Here's another plastic one, this great-looking Columbia. We also see this one with its original equipment maker's name on it, Grundig, as their "Micro-Boy" radio and speaker box. It's made in W-hyphen-Germany. That's West Germany, back when that was a thing. There's a lot going for this one including the underpainted dial on the radio and those little legs on the front of the speaker box, looking very much like 1950s modern furniture. As with the first two we looked at, this one is from around 1959 or 1960.
This Zenith radio and home unit are both in "as found" condition. This is what we say when we don't want to clean something. Sometimes with things this rare I opt to just leave them as I found them and not clean or polish them at all. That's my excuse anyway. This could sure benefit from a bath, but, I don't know, I guess I'm a little afraid I'd rub something off or make something worse. So.. it is what it is. Now, admittedly, this Zenith Royal 50 radio isn't all that rare, but the "Converta" home unit for it certainly is. Zenith was fighting back against the imports with this sticker on the back of the radio, "American Made Zenith Quality Radio--Quality Built in America by Highly Skilled, Well-Paid American Workers." Inside the Converta home unit is a four-inch Zenith speaker.
All of these we've looked at have had "home units" with little more than larger speakers in them and could rightly be referred to as simply "speaker boxes." But there were more kinds of convertibles than that, as we shall see. Some such home units also had their own power, whether AC power or battery power, that took over for the radio's batteries when the two halves were mated,.. in the living room next to the candy dish. This preserved the radio's batteries when using it at home.
A couple of examples of convertibles that ONLY provided power are these. The Braun Exporter, featured in another video on this channel, docked to a base that plugged in for use at home. And this little Toshiba has its own video too. Toshiba made several of these very small shirt-pocket radios with similar chasses, all using three little N-cell batteries and having this mysterious jack on the bottom. When I was lucky enough to ...
Today, we're looking at convertibles... Not car convertibles,... RADIO convertibles.
A radio convertible does not have a top that comes down. No. It's a radio for the home that can be "converted" for use as a portable. Now of course any portable radio can be used at home. The point here was a radio that would look APPROPRIATE at home, that didn't look like it was just left there, but that it BELONGED there on the table.. between the candy dish on a doily and that cigarette lighter from Atlantic City. Radio convertibles all have two components: the portable radio itself, and the other part variously called a "home unit," "speaker box," "dock or docking station," "cradle," "charger," "stationary section," or that thing on the table over there next to the candy.
This Nipco convertible from Japan is a handsome, sleek design. The radio protrudes from the right side of the home unit. To maintain symmetry, there's a matching protrusion on the left. And not just for symmentry: it ejects the radio. And what a radio. I especially like the easy to reach and use knobs. The grille, perforated with little square openings is something seen on other Nipco-made radios.. like this. These folks made some nice looking radios and some stylish ads too... Here's a view of the speaker unit from the rear with the back cover off. I took this off so you can see the eject mechanism--a pure, unfussy, mechanical system, uncomplicated by superfluous electronics and solenoids and such. Unusually, the back of this radio has an inset panel covered in leatherette. I don't know why. I've come across--and solved--a lot of mysteries with these radios over the years, but this one's got me stumped.
And Nipco may have made this Omscolite, with its wooden speaker box that sports a handle and an amusing little column under the radio. Why Nipco? Because of this other Omscolite which we also see sometimes branded with the Nipco name. Note the screws visible on the front of this radio,.. and this radio. Such screws weren't unheard of, but they weren't something often seen. Most manufacturers went to great lengths to eliminate any visible screws, but the Omscolite folks did not. Visible screws on a product are, in my opinion, not the eyesore designers seem to think they are but are.. simply.. honest. I much prefer them to the hidden clips and mystery fasteners that have infested almost all product design for almost sixty years now. Such design traffics in the pretense that the object is held together by magic. And more often than not, getting the thing apart means breaking it, and having to get another one, which I suspect is the designers real goal. Inside this speaker box is one big speaker, relatively speaking, and.. nothing else. No power, no amplifier.
Here's another plastic one, this great-looking Columbia. We also see this one with its original equipment maker's name on it, Grundig, as their "Micro-Boy" radio and speaker box. It's made in W-hyphen-Germany. That's West Germany, back when that was a thing. There's a lot going for this one including the underpainted dial on the radio and those little legs on the front of the speaker box, looking very much like 1950s modern furniture. As with the first two we looked at, this one is from around 1959 or 1960.
This Zenith radio and home unit are both in "as found" condition. This is what we say when we don't want to clean something. Sometimes with things this rare I opt to just leave them as I found them and not clean or polish them at all. That's my excuse anyway. This could sure benefit from a bath, but, I don't know, I guess I'm a little afraid I'd rub something off or make something worse. So.. it is what it is. Now, admittedly, this Zenith Royal 50 radio isn't all that rare, but the "Converta" home unit for it certainly is. Zenith was fighting back against the imports with this sticker on the back of the radio, "American Made Zenith Quality Radio--Quality Built in America by Highly Skilled, Well-Paid American Workers." Inside the Converta home unit is a four-inch Zenith speaker.
All of these we've looked at have had "home units" with little more than larger speakers in them and could rightly be referred to as simply "speaker boxes." But there were more kinds of convertibles than that, as we shall see. Some such home units also had their own power, whether AC power or battery power, that took over for the radio's batteries when the two halves were mated,.. in the living room next to the candy dish. This preserved the radio's batteries when using it at home.
A couple of examples of convertibles that ONLY provided power are these. The Braun Exporter, featured in another video on this channel, docked to a base that plugged in for use at home. And this little Toshiba has its own video too. Toshiba made several of these very small shirt-pocket radios with similar chasses, all using three little N-cell batteries and having this mysterious jack on the bottom. When I was lucky enough to ...
