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Murphy Radio 1960

Well the heyday of Murphy Radio was over by the 1960s, but these pages will display a selection of sets from the Murphy range through the decade.

1960 saw Murphy updating the existing range. VHF receivers continued to form a major part of the Murphy range, and indeed many of the sales were as a result of people upgrading their existing MW/LW table sets to enable them to receive the higher quality VHF transmissions. For that reason the quality of the new sets had to be extremely good to encourage the public to invest in a new set when their existing set was perhaps working fine. Most of the sets incorporate push-button wavelength selection, and the 1960 season saw the introduction of separate bass and treble tone controls. Shown above is the U572 from 1960. As can be seen the cabinet colours are becoming bolder, in keeping with the flower-power era about to emerge. This cabinet is brown bakelite sprayed red, and the radio was later also available in beige. A trend had also developed in the 1960's for radios to be "long and low", and that design is typified in this receiver. The resultant effect of the receiver chassis situated in a low cabinet is for the valves to be relatively close to the roof of the cabinet. When the radio was used for prolonged periods this meant the bakelite got very hot which eventually led to cracking etc. For this reason the card back has been folded such that it continues into the roof of the receiver, between the top of the valves and the bakelite, the idea being that it might absorb the heat rather than cracking the cabinet. (See picture above, set is the right way up, and it can be seen how close the valves are to the roof of the cabinet) Also notable is the emerging printed circuit board technology, which can be seen utilised side by side with the more traditional chassis. Valve line-up was 10L14, 10C14, 10F18, 10LD12, UABC80, 10P18, U381.

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