GE Clock Radios of the 80s

[ssetta]

I have mostly thought of GE as a cheap brand of radio. But I heard that GE made some very high-end clock radios in the 80s, with a lot of interesting, and weird features. I know there was the 4-7880 and 7885 programmable clock radios. You could actually PUNCH IN the number of the station you wanted to listen to. Like you would push 1-0-4-5. I don't think there has been a radio like that since then, and I wonder why. But I've heard that the main thing about GE radios is that the sound quality wasn't very good. Do you think GE clock radios in the 80s had good reception and sound?

 

[KeithE4]

I have mostly thought of GE as a cheap brand of radio. But I heard that GE made some very high-end clock radios in the 80s, with a lot of interesting, and weird features. I know there was the 4-7880 and 7885 programmable clock radios. You could actually PUNCH IN the number of the station you wanted to listen to. Like you would push 1-0-4-5. I don't think there has been a radio like that since then, and I wonder why. But I've heard that the main thing about GE radios is that the sound quality wasn't very good. Do you think GE clock radios in the 80s had good reception and sound?

I bought one of those clock radios in about 1981 or so (I forget exactly). And I wouldn't call it "high end." IIRC, I paid about $80 for it - not cheap, but not top-of-the-line either. That radio was one of the best for AM DX I ever had - CBL, WSB, WJR, and WABC came in decent in NW suburban Chicago even with WBBM and WGN within 10 miles of where I lived.

Unfortunately the electronics lasted far longer than the buttons. They corroded in about 8 years, making them unusable. I finally junked it when I moved to Arizona in 1994 after many attempts to repair it. The radio part worked the whole time. I just couldn't tune it.

 

[4dude]

Older radios were made MUCH BETTER for am reception and i loved them!!

Todays crap sucks,they assumeno one likes AM radio so they dont add anything to it

 

[WDAE-FM101]

I've got a GE Clock Radio Model 4885 since 1986. You can enter the exact frequency. I haven't seen too many clock radios today that allow you to do that. Reception is excellent.
In Issaquah WA (15 miles E of Seattle) I can get KVI on 570 and KPQ 560 from Wenatchee without much interference. Can get most California Stations KGO, KNBR, KNX regularly.

FM is a different matter -- since I live so close to the Cougar and Tiger Mountain transmitters - I get lots of harmonics and bleed across the entire FM band.

 

[radiorob2.0]

GE was always known for a good AM radio back in the day. The cathedral radio replica introduced back in the eighties not only had a good sound but excellent sensitivity and selectivity. I always purchased their clock radios and was always pleased. Of course, there is the GE Superadio. I have the "II" and love it.

 

[chrish]

The GE clock radio you are refering to is called "The Great Awakening" model 7-4880
When I was the CE of WXKS-FM "Kiss-108 owned by Heftel Broadcasting our
morning show was called the "Great Awakening" Congressman Cecil Heftel saw one
in the window of a Peoples Drug in DC and sent what he could find to Boston.
The station did a promotion with GE and gave away thousands, I still remember the pallets wrapped in plastic. I still have two, one still in the original box.

 

[ssetta]

The GE clock radio you are refering to is called "The Great Awakening" model 7-4880
When I was the CE of WXKS-FM "Kiss-108 owned by Heftel Broadcasting our
morning show was called the "Great Awakening" Congressman Cecil Heftel saw one
in the window of a Peoples Drug in DC and sent what he could find to Boston.
The station did a promotion with GE and gave away thousands, I still remember the pallets wrapped in plastic. I still have two, one still in the original box.

What's the difference between the 7-4880 and the 7-4885? That's cool you still have one in the original box. Do you think you may sell one of them on eBay sometime?

 

[Tom Wells]

GE was always known for a good AM radio back in the day. The cathedral radio replica introduced back in the eighties not only had a good sound but excellent sensitivity and selectivity. I always purchased their clock radios and was always pleased. Of course, there is the GE Superadio. I have the "II" and love it.

The reproduction GE cathedral radios made in the Phillipines in the early 1980s are darn near perfect consumer AM radios.
12 khz usable bandwidth on AM, and really good sensitivity for a built-in loop antenna.
They do overdrive the dial light, and I put a lower wattage dial lamp in mine when it burned out.
The dial mechanism has some backlash, which makes critical tuning (to avoid iboc hiss or optimize high freq info) difficult.
Mine was not at all difficult to realign to pick up the expanded band up to 1710.


The Philco reproduction cathedrals radios from 1975-6 are pretty darn crappy in the same categories.
Sounds bad, AND low sensitivity.
But mine was also pretty easy to realign to pick up the expanded band.

 

[WPPCProductions]

I Have one of these radios. Excellent DX piece.I like to find a new keypad for it.mine is shot.Ditto on radios today. The selectivity and sensitivity sucks altogether. I'll be lucky to pick up as station 20 miles away.

 

[PAJake]

I had an old GE clock radio for many years. It's what woke me up since I was in elementary school, and I remember my grandmother would borrow it to hear her NYC radio stations when she'd visit us in PA. I had that radio for a good 10 or 15 years and then one summer in the mid 90s I took it with me on a road trip out west. In a hotel room in Minot ND I picked up KGO from California and WBAP from Ft. Worth TX like they were nearby stations. Unfortunately I accidentally left the radio in the hotel room and didn't realize it until I was in Billings MT three days later. I called the hotel and they said they'd check, but no luck. Someone got themselves a great old radio.

 

[dxnemo78]

I've had my GE 7-4975B clock radio for about 25 yrs now, hope it lasts another 25 (provided Ido! ;D). Great for AM & FM DX, cassette player quit long ago, thanks to my abuse & neglect :-[ Digital clock can be turned all the way off, or bright enough to almost read by...

 

[dxer720]

Over the years, I've had many GE radios...clock & portables. I've always found the AM to be great, but the FM on most was very unselective. Strong FM stations would spread all over the dial. I have a Superadio modified with a 100KHz filter in the FM. That did the selectivity great, but the sensitivity was never there for the FM. My favorite was GE AM/FM clock radio with flip clock numbers from about '76. Yes, the FM was not much, but the AM pulled in everything. I had it till about 1992, when the clock stopped. Until then the whole thing was very reliable.

I wholeheartedly agree about the current crop of clock radios. Some I've seen in stores have no frequency indicator at all.

I don't want to come off as a salesman for them, but I just got a Timex clock radio that impressed me. The T-307S is mono AM/FM with digital tuning, 2 alarms, nature sounds & a line-in jack. The FM is fair in sensitivity, but the selectivity could be better. This thing shines on AM, with very good sensitivity & strong stations seen to keep to themselves. The radio also has excellent sound for such a small unit. IMHO a great little clock radio for about $30.

 

[eyg2181]

i have an old GE clock radio, its not one like you guys mentioned, but the FM tuner works good...i think in going to try the AM just for the hell of it. its hooked up at my dads house and i wake up to it every other weekend....its an analog clock, with the tuner wight on the side of the clock, with the controls on the side of the unit. i can get 99.9 the hawk on it in Levittown PA, i barely get that on the big stereo

heres the model i have

http://cgi.ebay.com/COLLECTABLE-CLASSIC-ANALOG-CLOCK-AM-FM-RADIO-GE-7-4553D_W0QQitemZ270207901221QQihZ017QQcategoryZ50614QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[WPPCProductions]

Some day I have to start searching for a new keyboard for my programmable clock radio. mine is shot. everything else runs fine.Is there any place on the web for parts
for these relics around to get it fixed.

 

[WMC2006]

Well it's not a GE and it's not a clock radio but it's a plain old digital alarm clock with snooze alarm (gotta have the snooze alarm!). The brand name is Cosmo.

It was given to me by my then-boss when I was leaving a parttime job to live on-campus for my freshman year at college. Along the way, it has travelled with me to two other states in which I have lived. It has a battery backup...I JUST checked that and there is still a battery in it. God knows how long THAT'S been in there. : There is still a sticker on the back describing how to set the time and the alarm.

I use this clock to this day.

The year it was given to me was....1983! ;D

And, unfortunately, it outlasted that boss who passed away 8 or 10 years ago.

 

[ABQTom]

I had an old GE clock radio for many years. It's what woke me up since I was in elementary school, and I remember my grandmother would borrow it to hear her NYC radio stations when she'd visit us in PA. I had that radio for a good 10 or 15 years and then one summer in the mid 90s I took it with me on a road trip out west. In a hotel room in Minot ND I picked up KGO from California and WBAP from Ft. Worth TX like they were nearby stations. Unfortunately I accidentally left the radio in the hotel room and didn't realize it until I was in Billings MT three days later. I called the hotel and they said they'd check, but no luck. Someone got themselves a great old radio.

Sorry to hear of your loss in Minot ND ! What a cruel person to steal a radio out of a hotel room. I thought most people in the Midwest were honest.....

Anyway, my GE clock radio woke me up starting in either 6th or 7th grade, too. It's the model 7-4622D (was this posted above?). I recall that several members of my extended family also had them. After a few years, the clock radio buttons stopped working, but the radios still worked perfectly. My family members stopped using the radios and threw them in the basement workshop to collect dust. I resurrected them a few years ago, and am AMAZED by their sound quality and sensitivity.

You could probably compare the AM processing to the high quality CBS Radio Station on-line streams. FM music sounds great, the lyrics are recognizable and not jumbled with everything else. AM talk sounds great, without the blunting of higher frequencies. However, there's no X-band. I will keep the radio forever, and perhaps fix the clock buttons (it's a digital display, they have to be glued in somehow).

Thanks for all the observations. My family discarding radios under a basement workbench caused massive childhood trauma. Thanks so much for vindicating me. HA HA HA HA HA :8

CC: family members

 

[psych-sal]

i was contacting dxnemo78 i just got the sradio you were talking about the model 7-4975b can you tell me what the message button ontr the front is for and does it have multiple alarm? trying to figure it out. thanks, :-*

 

[4dude]

Ahhhhhhhhhh the 80s!

 

[vibe]

ABQ Tom: sorry that someone STOLE your clock radio in ND. 2 yrs ago I stayed o/n in Williamsburg Iowa (I remember it being an Econolodge). I left my 2" HH color TV on the nightstand that night (the hotel lost power due to a bad storm and I watched the All Star game on the HH). The next day at 2:00 I realized I had left it there. Fortunately I was only 35 mi away. 30 min later the TV and I were reunited (at least until 2/28/2009). So there IS honestry out in the heartland!
I would have told the hotel clerk that I was going to file a police report for the missing radio. The theft might have made the local paper which I'm sure the hotel wouldn't like and they may have offered you something (a free night?) to settle it.
I never have had a clock radio except for an old Bose. Always used a wind up clock to start me up.

 

[pberger]

I have a 7-4880A which I used for years. I've torn it apart at least a dozen times to try and clean the contacts. As I recall, there are 2 parallel bars that come through the PC board below each button. They are covered by a convex steel circle, which shorts the bars when you press on the button. I've cut strips of fine sandpaper which I would slide between the steel circle and the bars, and pull out gently while holding the button down. I would get about 6 months use, then I would have to do it again. I too would like an easy replacement. I have even considered buying 12 push buttons and mount on a plastic panel. I have also used cardboard strips moistened with contact cleaner. Someone once recommended WD-40, but I have not tried it. Supposed to keep the contact surfaces from corroding.

The main reason I liked it: It was the only radio available where you could go to sleep listening to one station, and wake up to a different station. I did find an RCA about 10 years ago that will do this.

I have another similar GE, but it has blue digits instead of red, otherwise similar. I don't know the model number.