A new lease of life for a MK1 KB FB10 'Toaster'

[Yorkie]

Great job, as always, David.

I like the look of these sets but would really want one of the VHF version.

— Joe

Thanks Joe, and Lawrence for your kind comments!

It's a couple of years since I went to Harpenden and there were two FB10s on a stall - one LW/MW, the other FM.

The LW/MW one sold quickly, but the FM one didn't sell till lunchtime and I think the asking price was only £7.00. I can only assume that the reason was that people are put off by a set which - whilst it has FM, doesn't have AM. It has the rather odd facility of being able to be used as an 'FM adaptor' whereby it could be switched to feed into the pickup socket of an AM radio. Not really sure quite why anyone would want to do that, but it must have been a selling point at the time. There was a four valve and a five valve version, both of which used a metal rectifier. It had an internal 'plate aerial' which I suspect wouldn't have been very effective except for strong local stations, but I suppose  it enabled KB to claim that it was 'transportable' from room to room in an era when few homes had more than one set.

I guess they're nothing like as commonplace as the AM versions - I've only ever seen that one at Harpy.