Radio royalty

[gary_crutchley]

Hi all,


I thought I would share a photograph of a radio that I spotted today, some of you may already be aware of it.

Today my wife and I visited Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, former home of the Queen's cousin, Patrick Lichfield the Fifth Earl of Lichfield. A year or two ago they opened Patrick Lichfield's private apartments, I have visited before but haven't photographed the radio that is on display.

I have attached a photograph for your interest, it is a Murphy but I didn't see a model number on the front. No doubt someone will identify this set.

Best regards,

Gary

[AlanBeckett]

It looks like an A684 but no doubt the Murphy Collectors will correct me.
http://www.murphy-radio.co.uk/dungeon/Du....html#1960

Alan

[Tedzed1]

It's A murphy A684

http://www.classicwireless.co.uk/Murphy_A684.htm

[Refugee]

It looks like quite a nice set and in good condition too.

[Yorkie]

A nice looking set which wouldn't look out of place today. 

It's interesting to note in the write-up that there are two additional holes for a push pull output stage when the chassis was used in the radiogram version. It looks to me as though there is a vertical magic eye at the LH end of the tuning dial, though no mention in the write-up or valve line-up unless I'm mistaken.  I must check out the circuit.

I see that the tuning knob has fallen victim to the 'lost  knob-bright syndrome' which afflicts Roberts R200/300s etc. 

[Yorkie]

Just checked the circuit, and  yes, it does have a magic eye tuning indicator.

luckily, a cheap and plentiful, (as in two NOS from the orient for under a tenner post free), EM84.

Apologies to Gary-C for not saying 'welcome to the forum'!

(It's very comfy and relaxed here).

[gary_crutchley]

A nice looking set which wouldn't look out of place today. 

It's interesting to note in the write-up that there are two additional holes for a push pull output stage when the chassis was used in the radiogram version. It looks to me as though there is a vertical magic eye at the LH end of the tuning dial, though no mention in the write-up or valve line-up unless I'm mistaken.  I must check out the circuit.

I see that the tuning knob has fallen victim to the 'lost  knob-bright syndrome' which afflicts Roberts R200/300s etc. 

It was interesting to see the set in Shugborough, but I can't help wondering if it is simply a prop. Would he really have kept it around for so long? Unlikely I would have thought, unless he was a vintage radio enthusiast too. You never know.

[Yorkie]

It was an expensive radio in its day, but then all electrical appliances, records and what not were expensive, due in part to the high rate of Purchase Tax.

It was commonplace to advertise anything which carried Purchase Tax at the net of tax rate. In 1960, the '684' cost £25.7s.11d + PT. Just as now, there re arguments about what level of tax on purchases should be, and what category of goods an item falls into. (Nowadays, food is zero-rated but 'snacks carry 20% VAT - more of that below).   Back in the 1960s, furniture carried a PT rate of just 5% as it was considered a necessity, whereas electrical goods were considered 'luxuries' and carried 50% rate of PT. Hence, a radio cabinet ('furniture') carried 5%, but the chassis inside it carried 50%. If the radio had a BFO, it was considered not a domestic receiver, but a communications receiver, so was zero rated. Electrical 'instruments' - an amplifier for example - carried half the 'luxury rate' - 25% PT.

The upshot of this is that we can reasonably assume that the '684' would have had near enough 50% PT added, which would have upped the retail price from £25.7s2d (say £25.40), to £38. Accounting for the effects of inflation, that equates to £760 today. The cheaper plastic cased '674' with an identical chassis but only one speaker, was £21.7.s11d plus PT = £32.00, equating to £640 today. Certainly more than two weeks wages back then - few ordinary people would have bought such a radio outright, but on HP.

I can't really recall what other sets were on the market in 1960 to offer competition, but yes, I do think this set was towards the top end in terms of features and price, and might well have caught the eye of royalty. Let's not forget that even today, Roberts Radios have the Royal Warrant, and despite the affection that some hold for them, they're unexceptional.   As well as FM, the '684' had a magic eye, partly rotatable ferrite rod so the set didn't have to be angled for best reception, and a built in FM aerial on the back panel. In addition to a large elliptical speaker, it had an extra 4" speaker. Oddly through today's eyes, it had an input from a tape recorder. I can't recall tape recorders that didn't include a built-in amplifier, but I guess there must have been. At almost 2 ft long, it's quite an imposing set.

Drifting right off at a tangent - as we can and sometimes do on here - digressing from radios to taxation, it's interesting (to me anyway) to note how tax on consumer goods has changed over time. VAT was originally a French idea, started in the 1950s. Britain introduced it as part of its condition of joining the European Economic Community. All countries joining the EEC had to replace their indirect taxes with the VAT. In the UK it replaced the Purchase Tax, which was a fairly complex system that had many different rates.  In the early days (as some of us will recall) it was a relatively low level of no more than 10 per cent, with the exception of petrol, and briefly, electrical appliances, which were still deemed in the 1960s to be 'luxuries' and hence, subject to a 25 per cent rate.  However, Heath's Government, when in opposition, had always promised that key essential items, such as books, would not be subject to VAT.

The EEC took a dim view of this but allowed some goods, including books, nearly all food, and utility bills to be "zero rated". This was technically a "transition measure" and some experts believe that Brussels could still insist that these zero-rated items carry VAT, as they do in France, where it 's levied at 7 per cent on books and 5.5 per cent on food.  Since its inception, VAT has changed frequently. In Baroness Thatcher's first term in office, the luxury rate was scrapped and merged into a higher standard rate of 15 per cent, then raised to 17.5 per cent in 1991. In the run up to the 1992 election Sir John Major promised not to "extend the scope of value-added tax", but he did raise utility bills from zero-rated to a new 8 per cent reduced rate. This lower rate was subsequently reduced to 5 per cent by Gordon Brown.

The zero-rating has thrown up endless confusion. Snacks, for instance, carry full VAT because they are deemed to be non-essential. But a peanut in a shell is deemed to be a food, because the consumer needs to "prepare" the nut by shelling it. If a manufacturer has done the shelling for you, it's a snack - 20% VAT.  The two most famous rows have involved chocolate covered treats: Jaffa Cakes and marshmallow teacakes.  HMRC believed that they were both chocolate-covered snacks, but lawyers successfully argued that were both actually cakes - and therefore zero-rated for VAT. (The current tax legislation handbook runs to 3,200 pages just on the subject of VAT).

None of which has anything at all to do with the Murphy A684, which I rather like. If ever I spot one in half decent condition at a sensible price, I'll buy it!

Waffled and dribbled Yorkie, who needs to get out more!

[Mark Hennessy]

Purchase Tax had some interesting effects in the hi-fi world. One example I know about is the Spendor BC1, which started life as a 2-way unit. A super-tweeter was added reasonably early on in its life, which filled in the response above 13-14kHz - it perhaps didn't make a huge difference in the context of the programme material of the day, but it did help with identifying 15.625kHz line whistle! But the addition of the super-tweeter affected the level of PT charged because 3 way loudspeakers were deemed to be professional products.

http://www.markhennessy.co.uk/rogers/spencer_hughes.htm

[Paul_RK]

The upshot of this is that we can reasonably assume that the '684' would have had near enough 50% PT added, which would have upped the retail price from £25.7s2d (say £25.40), to £38. Accounting for the effects of inflation, that equates to £760 today. The cheaper plastic cased '674' with an identical chassis but only one speaker, was £21.7.s11d plus PT = £32.00, equating to £640 today. Certainly more than two weeks wages back then - few ordinary people would have bought such a radio outright, but on HP.

Oh, I don't know about that - attitudes to credit were different back then, and still in the late '60s, when I became old enough to notice, a frequent constituent of conversations between my very "ordinary" parents and of their gossip with neighbours of similar values was the habits of one or two families whose desires so exceeded their incomes that they wound up buying things on the "never-never"!

With the photo showing a mixture of items from a gramophone to a VHS tape, I'll not hazard a guess as to whether they were among the Earl's possessions or the result of a quick trawl of a "collectables" emporium.

Paul