Radiophile.com - Stewart-Warner R-1262-A

Stewart-Warner R-1262-A, 1935

Tube complement: 6C6 mixer, 76 oscillator, 6D6 1st IF, 6D6 2nd IF, 75 detector, 42 audio output, 80 rectifier.

Approximately 19 inches / 48 cm tall.

This radio offers continuous coverage from 550 kilocycles to 23 megacycles in four bands. Truly an "all wave" set.

Here's a close-up of the beautiful dial.

Stewart-Warner shared with RCA a love of applying the word magic to its radios' features. RCA had Magic Brain, Magic Eye, and Magic Voice for example. My Stewart-Warner 91-513 has a Magic Keyboard (pushbutton tuning), and this fine radio has a Magic Dial: The dial scales slide vertically into view one at a time as bands are changed, an idea copied by General Electric a year later for their new line of radios (see the 1936 G-E A-82), and copied again two years later by Zenith with its "shutterdial" sets (see the 1938 12S267).

(My Stewart-Warner 07-513 has a Magic Dial too. By 1940 all it took was a lighted pointer to earn the magic label.)

This is the magnificent chassis, Stewart Warner no. R-126.

Every so often I come across a radio that is a superb, above-average performer. This is one such radio. This set has neither RF amplifier stage nor push-pull audio output, but it outperforms many designs that do. It does have separate mixer and oscillator tubes, which perhaps account somewhat for the solid, communications-receiver character of the tuning, all the way up to 23 megacycles. And its two IF stages are what give it superb sensitivity and selectivity, no doubt. Not bad for a consumer radio designed in 1934.

When I received it, the 76 oscillator tube had an open filament, so the radio was completely dead. I'd guess that this failure is what caused the set to be taken out of service by its owner, and stored in an attic, perhaps, for a few decades until it came into my hands. I wonder when the failure occurred? The 1940s or 1950s maybe? If it was replaced with another radio, I doubt that the owner enjoyed performance anywhere near what this radio offered. But then again, maybe the new radio had FM, and the owner didn't care about AM or SW performance anymore. Or maybe, just maybe, it was replaced by one of those newfangled television sets, and its owner, mesmerized by the vacuous thrill of sound with pictures, never gave another thought to tuning the AM or shortwave bands for faraway stations.

This is the model-number label affixed to the inside of the cabinet. For those who are really detail oriented, note that the model-number label itself has a number: Form 6192.