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This is my second B600 TransOceanic. It's lacking the owner's manual, but otherwise it's just about as nice as the other one.
For pure listening pleasure, there's no comparison between these big old tube-powered sets and their modern transistor successors. The newer solid-state sets are more reliable and have better selectivity. But these "hollow-state" radios, with ample speakers inside a wooden case, have a rich tone that the transistor sets just can't match.
My only regret concerning tube TransOceanics is that Zenith didn't add the FM band until well into the transistor era (not until the Model 3000). FM tube sets had been around since before the first TransOceanic, but I guess FM just didn't fit into Zenith's (or, more likely, Eugene McDonald's) original vision of the TransOceanic as a shortwave-plus-AM radio.
The next radio in this series marks a watershed in radio history, from the "warm" tube technology to the more efficient, but, to some ears, less friendly, world of solid-state electronics.
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