Trying to identify a transistor radio I saw in a film...

January 30, 2007 9:33 PM

I'm trying to identify an old transistor radio, given a screencap from a movie...

The picture is here.

It's a screencap from this movie.

I actually looked at every single radio on this site hoping I'd be able to narrow it down, but really, none of them look close enough to be it. I realized that there are far too many transistor radios in existence to find it by looking at collector websites. I would have to find some way to narrow it down.

The only identifiable text of interest is a logo that looks like it might be sTc (which might refer to "Standard Telephone and Cables Ltd", although their logo looks different, and none of sTc's radios I found look like this one). For reference, the other text is "X100KC" (which just means "x100 khz") and "8 transistor" (which is common text for a radio like this).

Any ideas? I know nothing about transistor radios, so I was hoping that maybe there were some clues in the photo that I missed.

posted by helios to grab bag (3 comments total)

Tough one...I thought I saw an Emerson logo instead of sTc, but none of the Emersons on the site you referenced matched up, although the tuner dial looks similar.

Since the movie is set in Hong Kong, I suspect the radio is Chinese-made. That makes the search more difficult!

No real help here...next?
posted by omnidrew at 10:06 PM on January 30, 2007

I think your correct about the logo belonging to Standard Tel & Cable. It looks identical to the one on this radio.

You could try and contact the production company who made the film. IMDb lists both a production designer & an art director you could try to contact.
posted by toftflin at 10:15 PM on January 30, 2007

Judging by the "solid state" on the face, the plastic speaker grill design, and the fact that it's AM only, I'd guess it to be early to mid 1960's. the sTc logo in that design is consistent too.

STC had names for a lot of their units in the 40's and 50's like "rambler", "bantam" and "pixie" so the tag on the left would be helpful if it were a bit more in focus. Like omnidrew said, there are a lot of radios from that era and unless you stumble upon a hardcore catalog site or an owner photo, it's not likely that you'll find it easily online.

Sorry I wasn't really helpful.
posted by jtoth at 10:26 PM on January 30, 2007