Motorola Model 52L1A Tube Portable (1951)
Top-mounted controls give this Motorola portable a sleek
appearance. The power/volume switch is on the left and the
tuner to the right. The rotary dials are integrated into a large,
brushed-steel top piece that carries the Motorola name and
also anchors the folding handle. All of the lettering is
lightly incised into the metal.
Thin rotary controls of this type
can give a nice design effect, but I find them a bit
inconvenient (a complaint I also have about my
Zephyr AR-600 transistor.) There
isn't much control to grab onto, and since the tuning dial
connects directly to the shaft of the tuning capacitor,
you have a "direct drive" tuner that's finicky to use.
The silver-colored grille is painted on, not a metal piece
as you might think at first glance. Nestled in a recess in the the
far upper right of the grille is a "battery saver switch." According
to instructions inside the cabinet, you move the switch one
way when close to a station, the other way when far from
the station.
Inside are four tubes, 1R5, 1U4, 1U5, and 354. Like my Motorola
5P21N and 55L2
models, this one has an "upside down" chassis.
The chassis is mounted at the top of the case, and the
tubes hang upside down rather than standing upright as in most tabletops.
The chassis is enclosed on all sides and it appears to be
plated with copper. The radio runs either on AC or on DC (two
large 1.5-volt A batteries and one 67.5-volt B battery).
When running on battery power, you need to plug the AC cord
into a plug on the chassis, a feature in common with my
Arvin 852P portable.
This radio isn't listed in the Bunis collector guide or in The
Portable Radio in American Life. The technology is definitely early
1950s, however. And since the dark green color and gold serpentine "M"
logo are identical to my 1951 Motorola 51M1U,
I'm going to call this a 1951 radio until somebody tells me otherwise.
Now that I've aroused your interest, I have a confession. I bought
this radio just to get change! I was at a radio swap meet and happened
on a set that I really wanted. The seller wouldn't take a check and
couldn't make any change for the bills I had. So I dashed over
to a nearby table, found this one for $5, quickly concluded the
transaction, then returned with the right change to buy the first radio.
This radio has a few boo-boos, so $5 was a fair price. A small
triangular chip is broken out of a bottom corner of the back.
Somebody left the old batteries in the case a few decades too long.
They're
still present in the battery clips, with a handsome coating
of rust around all the edges. And, someone amateurishly replaced
a couple of capacitors. Instead of replacing them in situ, long
leads were run outside the chassis and the replacements were
fastened on the ledge of the battery carrier with a couple of turns of
electrician's tape!
Definitely something I'll need to correct before I try out this set.
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