[Doug Houston]

I supp[ose that this tale can be told of any TRF set of that era. The RCA sets made those years, used the same tuning condenser on several models. By the time of the Radiola 17 (predecessor to the 18), the performance of those beasts was amazingly good, and people bought them like getting free beer! They, Atwater Kent, Bosch, Philco,and severa others used the new AC tubes, and showed the public just what a radio could do. I talked with a guy who had worked for a furniture store in Detroit in 1928. He said that the store received a carload of Radiolas 18 at Christmas time, and sold them all out. Do you wonder why they're still common as dirt?

One little tip. These sets were made for a high impedance speaker (about 2000 ohms), as the magnetics were. Try a modern PM dynamic speaker, about 10 or 12 inch, with a matchng transformer on one of those sets. You'll be amazed at how good they sound.