Radiophile.com - Admiral 7T09-X

Admiral 7T09-X, ca. 1948

Tube complement: 6SG7 RF, 6SA7 mixer/oscillator, 6SK7 IF, 6SQ7 detector, 6V6 audio output, 5Y3 rectifier, 6U5 tuning eye.

Approximately 17 inches / 43 cm wide. Those beautiful wide vertical bars on each side of the front have a paper finish. Instead of using expensive real wood veneer, that burled-wood look is just a picture printed on paper, glued over a cheap base wood and covered with lacquer.

This radio is unusual, and somewhat of a mystery. It's an odd hybrid of a mass-produced "consumer" style radio and a shortwave communications receiver. It's like a communications receiver in that it has a chassis-mounted fuse, a "twist lock" AC power connector, and five bands with slide-rule tuning. It's like a regular broadcast radio because it has no BFO, bandspread or other communications-receiver features. Its exact date of manufacture is unknown. I'm only guessing 1948, primarily because its schematic is in the 1949 Riders volume.

Here's a closeup that shows the tuning eye glowing behind the clear plastic dial.

On the left is the fine Admiral chassis, and on the right is a closer view of the permeability tuning gang. It was a chore to align. This radio has 26 adjustment points in total: 10 adjustable inductors, 12 adjustable capacitors, and the normal four adjustments in the two IF cans.


In as-found condition, the radio worked, but reception was weak and distorted. All these parts, mostly capacitors, were bad. Instead of the ubiquitous tubular paper caps sealed with wax, this type was used.		The name 'Randy' is stamped on the speaker cone in white ink.