Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 17 hours ago
The Vista and Fleetwood brands of transistor radios are curious in many ways. Today we're going to solve some mysteries surrounding these obscure brands, and look at this rare option.. made of wood!
For better listening. Yes, indeed. Oh and by the way,... already I'm doing a "by the way" and I only just got started. But, by the way, these globe radios are sometimes seen with the Vista name on them and sometimes they are named Fleetwood. There are several variations of these globes, mostly having to do with different versions of the knob on the top. By the way. And in the same ad are these classic transistor radios which we see branded as Vista, Fleetwood, and with other names too. There's a video on this channel about the Fleetwood version of this one, which also shows an example branded Stylecrest. It's all from the New Hope Industrial Company Limited. I like that name. But there are also connections to Panorama, Craig, and even Pioneer, which we'll look at in a bit.
The radio we are featuring today is the Vista NTR-800. It's an upscale transistor radio with its 8 transistors and its ability to play the AM radio band AND a shortwave band. Portable radios with shortwave typically have a rod antenna. As you can see, this one is missing the nut that goes on the mount for that antenna rod.
Variants abound with the Vista and Fleetwood radios. Here's another Vista with the same model number, but the dial area is metal on this one, while plastic on the other one. On the side we see that one has a single earphone jack while the other has two. What's left of the label on the back says that the jack on the left is for "Earphone External" and the jack on the right is for "External CA," whatever that means. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, or some part of it has rubbed off. But even though I'm not sure what it MEANS, I am sure what it does. When I found this radio it was right here, docked in this speaker box.
Yeah, this is the rarity I warned you about at the beginning. A Craig-800 wooden speaker unit for this Vista radio. And what a stylish thing it is too. Mid-century modern. Radios that "dock" to something else are called "convertibles" and they go back to the tube era. That's when we first started to see radios that could be used as a portable, and also docked to a main unit back home to be used as a stationary home radio. This tube model General Electric portable can be carried all over town.. then when home, docked to its.. other half.. a companion power supply with a clock.. becoming a table radio, or in this case a table clock/radio. To get the full effect, the handle here folds flat and flush.. eventually. But many of these convertibles, like our Craig, took advantage of the larger stationary section at home to house a larger speaker to improve the radio's sound. Some of these speaker boxes were nothing more than a larger speaker fed directly from the radio's earphone jack. Some of the home units had their own power, whether AC power or battery power, that took over for the radio's batteries in order to preserve them in home use. With onboard power, some of these home units also added amplification making the thing more of a real home radio. On the other end of the spectrum, some of these home units were just external power supplies with no speaker at all.. but of course still useful for saving the radio's batteries when using it at home. The Braun home unit we just saw used AC power to do that. The little Toshiba dock does that with C-cell batteries, larger and more long-lasting than the three little N-cells inside the Toshiba radio.
All the screws are still here holding on the back of this Craig home unit, so someone took pretty good care of it over the years. Inside... well, we see space for six big D-cells, providing lots of power for this 9 volt radio. And there's a nice 4-inch speaker, typical in tabletop radios of the day. But there's no amplification, no other electronics.
The Fleetwood brand we saw on radios, of course, but New Hope Industrial also used the Fleetwood brand on their other main product, sewing machines. While this may seem strange that a company would make both radios and sewing machines, recall that the American sewing machine maker Singer also put out transistor radios--and even televisions, like this cute little 5-1/2" black and white set made for Singer by Mitsubishi in Japan. But getting back to the Craig brand, I always thought Craig had something to do with Panasonic. I thought that because.. Craig was known sometimes as Craig Panorama and the first radio I ever saw with that Panorama brand on it looked to me an awful lot like a Panasonic. Maybe I was swayed by the similarity of the names--Panorama and Panasonic. But I don't know. This Panorama still looks like a Panasonic to me, don't you think? Then too, I remember some connection between Craig and Pioneer. And that's more than a guess, as these 8-track players are clearly co-branded Craig and Pioneer. And ...
The Vista and Fleetwood brands of transistor radios are curious in many ways. Today we're going to solve some mysteries surrounding these obscure brands, and look at this rare option.. made of wood!
For better listening. Yes, indeed. Oh and by the way,... already I'm doing a "by the way" and I only just got started. But, by the way, these globe radios are sometimes seen with the Vista name on them and sometimes they are named Fleetwood. There are several variations of these globes, mostly having to do with different versions of the knob on the top. By the way. And in the same ad are these classic transistor radios which we see branded as Vista, Fleetwood, and with other names too. There's a video on this channel about the Fleetwood version of this one, which also shows an example branded Stylecrest. It's all from the New Hope Industrial Company Limited. I like that name. But there are also connections to Panorama, Craig, and even Pioneer, which we'll look at in a bit.
The radio we are featuring today is the Vista NTR-800. It's an upscale transistor radio with its 8 transistors and its ability to play the AM radio band AND a shortwave band. Portable radios with shortwave typically have a rod antenna. As you can see, this one is missing the nut that goes on the mount for that antenna rod.
Variants abound with the Vista and Fleetwood radios. Here's another Vista with the same model number, but the dial area is metal on this one, while plastic on the other one. On the side we see that one has a single earphone jack while the other has two. What's left of the label on the back says that the jack on the left is for "Earphone External" and the jack on the right is for "External CA," whatever that means. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, or some part of it has rubbed off. But even though I'm not sure what it MEANS, I am sure what it does. When I found this radio it was right here, docked in this speaker box.
Yeah, this is the rarity I warned you about at the beginning. A Craig-800 wooden speaker unit for this Vista radio. And what a stylish thing it is too. Mid-century modern. Radios that "dock" to something else are called "convertibles" and they go back to the tube era. That's when we first started to see radios that could be used as a portable, and also docked to a main unit back home to be used as a stationary home radio. This tube model General Electric portable can be carried all over town.. then when home, docked to its.. other half.. a companion power supply with a clock.. becoming a table radio, or in this case a table clock/radio. To get the full effect, the handle here folds flat and flush.. eventually. But many of these convertibles, like our Craig, took advantage of the larger stationary section at home to house a larger speaker to improve the radio's sound. Some of these speaker boxes were nothing more than a larger speaker fed directly from the radio's earphone jack. Some of the home units had their own power, whether AC power or battery power, that took over for the radio's batteries in order to preserve them in home use. With onboard power, some of these home units also added amplification making the thing more of a real home radio. On the other end of the spectrum, some of these home units were just external power supplies with no speaker at all.. but of course still useful for saving the radio's batteries when using it at home. The Braun home unit we just saw used AC power to do that. The little Toshiba dock does that with C-cell batteries, larger and more long-lasting than the three little N-cells inside the Toshiba radio.
All the screws are still here holding on the back of this Craig home unit, so someone took pretty good care of it over the years. Inside... well, we see space for six big D-cells, providing lots of power for this 9 volt radio. And there's a nice 4-inch speaker, typical in tabletop radios of the day. But there's no amplification, no other electronics.
The Fleetwood brand we saw on radios, of course, but New Hope Industrial also used the Fleetwood brand on their other main product, sewing machines. While this may seem strange that a company would make both radios and sewing machines, recall that the American sewing machine maker Singer also put out transistor radios--and even televisions, like this cute little 5-1/2" black and white set made for Singer by Mitsubishi in Japan. But getting back to the Craig brand, I always thought Craig had something to do with Panasonic. I thought that because.. Craig was known sometimes as Craig Panorama and the first radio I ever saw with that Panorama brand on it looked to me an awful lot like a Panasonic. Maybe I was swayed by the similarity of the names--Panorama and Panasonic. But I don't know. This Panorama still looks like a Panasonic to me, don't you think? Then too, I remember some connection between Craig and Pioneer. And that's more than a guess, as these 8-track players are clearly co-branded Craig and Pioneer. And ...
