The N.Z. Vintage Radio Project

Site Objective
The site was created to preserve the history of NZ radio manufacturing, the brands, the companies and in some cases the characters behind it all. Where possible the idea is to photo-document as many models as possible, with as many details as possible - ideally this will include the schematic, IF frequency and valve compliment so that those servicing or restoring a particular model will have the basic info at hand - of course, for this we need your help. If you have photos, information or service info for a particular model and can share it, please get in touch

Images
* Photos have all been resized to a reasonable size in order to allow those with slower connections to use the site. This may change in the future. Some schematics are hard to read in the confines of the site, but if you right-click and choose open in a new window or tab it should open slightly larger. Where the schematics are just too large to fit these confines with reasonable readability there should be a high-resolution PDF download version.

Dates
Dates are NZ-specific so, for example, the introduction of HMV at /brands/hmv shows a date of approximately 1926 - this is when HMV (New Zealand) Ltd. was formed - not HMV itself, which goes back much further.

Search
This is (poorly) implemented in a very basic way. Sorry, it will get better in time...

• First it looks to see if what you looked for is a model code for a radio, and if so it will take you straight there. If there is more than one match then you'll get a list, with exact matches shown in bold.
• If you are searching for a specific radio, it can be helpful to leave off the end part of the model number. For example if there are three model 5150 variants - 5150P, 5150A and 5150AB (hypothetical) then searching for 5150 will bring all 5150 models up (unless there is only one, or none).
• If nothing matches a model number then it will follow the same process but with brand names. It can find brands most of the time but only when you use a single word ("Columbus" or for multi-word names like La Gloria just use "Gloria").
• It can also do very basic brand and model matching - eg: "Columbus 14" - but again, only with single-word brands. Anything beyond this is too hard and you'll likely just get the "Not Found" screen.