Radio Boy

Signal 500 E review, with added reference to the Melody Boy 500.

The Signal 500 E is a domestic portable radio. Launched onto the market in 1974, it was only on sale for a couple of years. Other derivatives, such as the Melody Boy 500, were introduced as early as 1972.

Over 30 years later, you may be wondering why I'm writing a review of what appears to be a fairly ordinary radio. Well, as this was the radio that really cemented my interest in both Grundig and in FM & SW radio at the age of 16, and given that memory is often blurred by the dewy-eyed, fog-filtered, rose tinted spectacles of nostalgia, I wondered if the performance of this radio was really as good as I remembered it. With a couple of modern benchmark models, the Satellit 650 and 700 to compare it with, I thought it would be interesting to see how it fared. Given the age of the radio, and the march of technology, I was expecting it to be no more than a fun exercise. I was in for a surprise!

Reception.

I sat the Signal 500 E beside my Satellit 650, and switched both to FM. the antenna on the Signal is the same as the one fitted to many other Grundig's of the era, an 8 element unit which is the same size as the Satellit 300's, but with a taller tip. It's not much shorter than the Satellit 650's antenna when that is only extended to the first stop, as recommended for FM reception in it's instruction manual. I expected to be noting the meter readings on the 650 for stations the Signal wouldn't detect. On the contrary, the Signal got them all. At the lower end of the scale (88-96 MHz) there was nothing in it. At higher frequencies (100-108 MHz) the Signal was slightly more sensitive! All stations were received by both sets, but the weaker ones were slightly stronger on the Signal. The Satellit had the edge on selectivity of adjacent weak stations, but nevertheless, for a near 30 year old radio with no great claims to price or performance, holding it's own against an acknowledged benchmark of FM performance was no mean feat. Having obtained the Melody Boy some time later, the results seem conclusive, I tried dialing across the FM band on unpacking it, and stumb;ed on a Resticted Service Licence (RSL - a 28 day temporary licence) station on 87.9 from 20 miles away that I didn't even know about! I got out the Satellit's 400 and 700 (my benchmarks) and they both got it just as well, maybe slightly better, but with age and cost to their advantage, so they should!

On AM bands, I expected the set to now reveal its weakness against such competition. But again, I was in for a surprise. The sensitivity appeared the same, give or take a fraction as you moved along the bands. And sometimes that fraction was in the Signal 500's favour! Again, reception enhancing tricks, like selectable bandwidth, MGC and so on (not to mention the tuning scale compression on the Signal, more later) worked to the Satellit's advantage, and the Signal only covers 5850-16200 kHz on SW, but still, it is a remarkable achievement for a 30 year old domestic portable.

As a test of the accuracy of the results, I tried the second Signal 500 I bought as a spare parts source, still fully functional, but not so well looked after. On FM and SW, the results were so close as to make no difference! And now with the Melody Boy, I can safely say, this design does "walk the dog". I noted slight breakthrough of the local FM station (transmitting from about 1 mile away) at the top end of the scale, around 14 - 15 MHz, which I haven't noticed on the Signal twins, but that could be an alignment issue, or maybe the location of my testing of it, being upstairs at the front of the house! Not the usual test spot.

Worthy of note: tuning SW is, as I mention later, not as bad as the short scale would suggest, but equally impressive, the radio remains locked onto SW stations with astonishing accuracy, you'd forgive it drifting with temperature changes or just sonic vibration "shifting" the tuning mechanism off the selected frequency, but you don't have to forgive it, as it doesn't drift at all! There are more modern and expensive radios than this which do not perform as well in this area.

Audio.

This has always been a strong point of Grundig radios, and this model is one from the era that established that tradition. With a 5.5 by 3.75 inch speaker as used in many other Grundig's of the era. bass is surprisingly strong, treble on FM crisp and detailed. Listening on good headphones to an FM broadcast of a CD, the sound lacks the hi-fi quality of newer high-end radios, but then this is a mid-1970's radio, and portable standards were lower then. Even so, sound quality from the output socket is comparable to the current Ocean Boy 510, and through the internal speaker, it is much better! In fact, through the internal speaker, it is better than the small Satellit's, the 300/400/500/700. It doesn't compare to the Satellit 650, but then, what does?

Line in and out is via the ubiquitous DIN socket, and the facility to use the radio as an amplifier for a tape recorder or other line-level device is switched on by pressing the FM & LW buttons together.

Ergonomics.

Controls are basic! A slider volume control, push on/off button and 4 waveband buttons are joined by a press button for treble tone control. Up is normal, down is muffled. Luckily, it isn't really needed, for the frequency response is pretty flat. The tuning knob on the side is smooth and pleasantly "whiplash" free. A rear mounted switch selects AC or battery power, the AC cord being permanently attached and housed in a compartment under the set. Given the simplicity of the set, the major user-interface is the tuning dial. It's therefore a pleasure to announce that the dial is quite simply the best analogue scale it's ever been my pleasure to use. When I say that, I'm refering to the Signal 500! The Melody Boy scale is fine, but due to styling changes, it's both slightly smaller, and more cluttered. It also lacks the Signal's superb use of colour, or a logging scale. In Short, it's OK, but the Signal, as I say, is fabulous. It's also so unique and memorable, that using it makes me go back in time to the mid-70's when I had my original. Hard to fail to be pleased by that!

On the Signal, the FM section of the dial faces upwards, and is clearly marked with the frequencies and the old German channel numbers, marked as "kanal". The AM bands face forwards, and have LW at the top, then MW, then a logging scale from 1 to 100, each single step having a marker, and the markers extend across to include the Grundig script rather tastefully. Under this is the SW scale, with frequencies above the meter bands. All apart from the logging scale are in a bold and attractive green, which looks nice on the shiny black background. The dial pointer is a clear plastic bar with a matching green insert. It not only looks good, it works excellently at indicating the frequencies within the limitation of the radio. That limitation is that the whole of the SW range of this radio is covered in a mere 8 inches of scale. Hardly ideal for easy tuning, but only to be expected at the price range of this set. It's therefore lucky that, as I said earlier, the tuning knob on the side is smooth and pleasantly "whiplash" free. Tuning FM is not as hard as it could have been. The Melody Boy has FM and SW on top, MW and LW on the front, with lots of MW station names listed, many of which are no longer around, and the tuning pointer is a boring silver and black affair. Does the job, lacks the panache!

So, given the limitation imposed by the short SW scale length, I have to say there is only one tiny criticism of the Signal 500's scale: It deserved a dial lamp! It would have looked superb at night. Still, given the plain styling of the radio, and the fact that the dial is the focal point, I have to congratulate the designer. No unnecessary information, no distractions, no unnecessary station names, the tuning scale is, in effect, perfect! Another advantage of its simplicity is that it allowed the set to be marketed anywhere without different versions. I've owned a UK market Signal 500, (my original one back in the 1970's) a US and a German one (both used for this review) and they are identical. Indeed the only way to tell a US version 500 apart is to look at the type plate. It omits the various marks next to the "double-insulated" symbol that European version has.

Eu type-plate, as opposed to the US version:

Incidentally, as shown in the instruction book, SW coverage is 5.85 to 16.2 MHz. I tuned the better condition, US sourced Signal 500 to the low end stop, 5850, and there was Radio Canada International, confirmed by my Satellit 700. Not bad alignment for a radio over a quarter of a century old! I tried this with the "spares" Signal 500 I obtained from Ebay.de, and it would only go down to about 5854, how disappointing! (I'm kidding!) and the Melody Boy goes down to about 5845. so on average, these radios appear to be pretty good at keeping scale alingment.

Facilities.

Basic, and all covered above. It's a 1970's domestic portable! It's just that performance wise, no one has told it that it's working too hard!

Sum-up.

I set out to write this review merely as an item of interest, not a serious review. After all, this is a 25 years+ old radio, and not easy to obtain anyway, what use would a serious review be? Besides, there was no reason to suppose that it would be as good as I expected it to be. I was 16 when I first had one, and although it was clearly better than radios my friends owned at the time, that hardly allowed me, with no experience of high end radios, to assess how good it really was.

However, I can say now, after testing it beside acknowledged standard setters, that it really is far better than anyone has a right to expect. I always felt, back then when I had my first one, that somehow this set really epitomised all that Grundig stood for, in terms of quality, design purity, and performance. Now, I feel I was spot on in that assessment. This is a benchmark for radios of it's type and price bracket, it's as simple as that!

So, I'd recommend this model to anyone. However, there is a problem. In the 4 years between me first watching Ebay to the time I got this first Signal 500, I only saw 2 other Signal 500's, one of which wasn't available outside the US, the other had parts missing. (Curious that the day after this US auction ended, the other one was listed on Ebay Germany! As I said above, I bought that too, as a source of parts, and particularly the volume knob, which was missing from the good one.) There is a solution however, if you're willing to forego the styling and the superb tuning scale. Other radios of the same era from Grundig use the same circuitry: Elite Boy 500 and 600, & as covered in tandem here, the Melody Boy 500 are technically identical, and the Party Boy 500 will do if you are willing to live without SW.

At least one other variant exists, the TR310B, an FM/AM(MW) only model, and I obtained one via an Ebay auction of "for spares only" radios, back in 2003 at a cost of £3.21 plus postage. When the radio arrived, it worked perfectly, barring an intermittent cutting out of audio, which I finally traced to a bad solder connection of a transistor. It now works fine, and is our kitchen radio, which we only ever use on FM anyway, it sounds superb, and if it gets broken, at £3, who cares! Interestingly though, the scale is backwards, and the tuning capacitor is a poly type, not the good old metal and air-gap type used in the other models detailed above. So, a very "cost-cutting" model that omits other facilities such as a built in AC unit and a DIN socket, but for kitchen use, it is fine!

I was so impressed by the performance of the Signal 500 that I have decided to set up a Yahoo Group just for the Signal model range, (100/300/500/700/2000 Radio Cassette). To join, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GSR/