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In its day, Valsts Elektrotechniska Fabrika (VEF) was the major leader of the Soviet electronics industry, employing some 20,000 people. Today, however, very little of the original company remains. One of VEF's chief competitors, at the time, was Radiotechnika. This employed 16,000 people, and later went on to buy out all rights to the VEF trademark.
At the peak of production, Spidola transistor radios were being produced at the rate of 1 million units per year, accounting for 40% of VEF's total productive output. The particular set shown here was given to me by my parents as a 14th birthday present in 1967. The innards, however, don't appear to be any different to those I've seen of sets dating from around 1960. Whilst the innards of this set are original, the plastic case, having suffered much wear and tear during my youth, was replaced in the early 70s with one of a slightly newer design - this having been purchased as an empty cabinet from one of the many surplus outlets on Tottenham Court Road (Proops I think). Owing to an unknown fault, the performance of this set is currently below par (it lacks gain), but my recollection is that it used to be exceptionally sensitive, especially on the SW bands. The set contains 10 transistors and a plethora of IF and RF cans (many more than one might expect to see in your average design). There is no denying that these sets have a horrible, cheap looking, plastic construction - not at all helped by the use of a crude turret tuner arrangement rather reminiscent of those used for band switching in old TVs. Yet despite this, to me the set still has some special appeal, but that could easily be put down to sentimental attachment. The circuit is actually well designed and contains some interesting features. For example, it is fitted with separate oscillator and mixer stages, the mixer being followed by a 3 stage bandpass filter, and no less than 3 stages of IF amplification! Finally, the audio output consists of a refined 4-transistor design, yet for all of this the loudspeaker is incredibly small for this size of set! |