Becker Brescia auto radio

[Osvaldo de Banfield]

Here are some photos of my Becker Brescia auto radio, appears to be manufactured between 1958 and 1961. It is working pretty fine, the black central bar is an automatic station searching engine based on a mechanically chain of gears that act in the 3 coil (antenna, RF and oscillator) cores. Pressing it, the dial starts going to the upper side of the band (and audio is muted), and when a station is find, the mechanism stops and audio is listen from the speaker. When the dial went to the extreme right, a powerful solenoid catches a core and it reloads the system to the left side and continue seeking at a AGC level set in 3 steps by the switch under the dial knob, the right ones. At the left, the volume (and power switch) and tone (3 fixed tones, bassy, normal and trebbly).

This is entirely working fine. The other photo watch the vibrator power unit, (a 115Hz unit), and also, inside it, is the EL84 audio power stage.

More than 50 years has this jewel! I only recap the unit, and repaired a bunch of wires that some stupid cut off that carry connections between electronic side (At the back of the unit) and the electro-mechanical frontal side.

[Mosquito]

This unit must be pulled off from a Mercedes of that same age , I think. Good catch!
It's FM stereo?
What speakers are connected to?

[kevinkr]

It appears to be medium wave, i.e. broadcast band only. FM stereo was still sometime in the future particularly for car radios. (I don't know of any FM stereo tube automotive receivers, I assume by the time FM stereo broadcasting was common the conversion to transistors was complete.)

[Osvaldo de Banfield]

For Kevin, yes it is only covers AM broadcasting band, no short wave nor FM. But it does pleasantly. I get the electrical circuits from this set, and it is very complex.

For "Amigo" (friend) Mosquito, I found that this radio was used in some deluxe Mercedes Benz cars about this time. There are some data in Internet. But any thing is tell how it performs, and another is listen to it. The speaker is a old 6" in a bass reflex unfinished. The only SS device is the selenium bridge rectifier in the secondary of the power transformer.

[Palustris]

Years ago I worked in a auto sound store and removed a Becker Europa from a Mercedes. The customer didn't want the old radio so I put it in my BMW 1602. It was the transistor version of your radio and didn't have the nice tube output stage but it did have FM and shortwave.

I will never forget driving home from work and listening to NPR giving updates on the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. Susan Stamberg was literally in tears as she reported on the event. I was able to tune in a Canadian short wave broadcast for an entirely different perspective on the event.