am radio rant.

[p24-1953]

okay, i enjoy driving around listening to the radio in my car and untill this morning we had a really decent oldies station, but now we have another talk radio sport program.. i can get 5 stations and all of them are talk, or radio disney. i guess time to switch to fm.. augh........

[Normspeed]

If you go FM, you might look into receivers with a satellite radio option. Lots of choices in playlists, most with no commercials, and you can listen to the same station from coast to coast if you want to. Costs about $12 per month to subscribe.

[Young Ed]

see if www.trueoldieschannel.com has a station in your area

[47heaven]

okay, i enjoy driving around listening to the radio in my car and untill this morning we had a really decent oldies station, but now we have another talk radio sport program.. i can get 5 stations and all of them are talk, or radio disney. i guess time to switch to fm.. augh........

Same here with AM, plus all the Spanish stations as well. The FM oldie stations play the same stale top 10 oldies everyday so that's why I put a radio/CD player in the glove box so I can hear MY music on CD, I pod or pretty soon...satellite radio.

[47heaven]

see if www.trueoldieschannel.com has a station in your area

Hmmmm...that seems pretty close to what is played on the oldies stations today. Not much offered for the 50's music fans.

[Young Ed]

Darin these guys play a much much wider range of oldies. Maybe not back to the early 50s but its 100 times better then the FM oldies channel here.

[47heaven]

Darin these guys play a much much wider range of oldies. Maybe not back to the early 50s but its 100 times better then the FM oldies channel here.

No, what I mean is that I was just looking at their playlist and it seemed like a lot of 60's-80's, with a lot of the same stuff the oldies stations play. Let's face it...your FM oldies station and mine are probably owned by the same companies and told to play what they want, not what the listeners want to hear. What can I say, I'm an all 50's music fan.

[Normspeed]

I can vouch for that. One of my all time favorite 50's oldies CDs was put together by Darin.

[daddyo23]

If you go FM, you might look into receivers with a satellite radio option. Lots of choices in playlists, most with no commercials, and you can listen to the same station from coast to coast if you want to. Costs about $12 per month to subscribe.

That's what I did. Works good, you have a nice selection of music. I preset the 40's,50's, and a Blues channel.My kids bought me a plug-in unit. You use a 1/8 plug from the radio to the docking unit, as they call it. I have it in my truck at work and picked up an extra antenna for the Plymouth. Takes me two minutes to pop it out and bring home. Works great in both. Wayne P.

[Oldguy48]

That's what I did. Works good, you have a nice selection of music. I preset the 40's,50's, and a Blues channel.My kids bought me a plug-in unit. You use a 1/8 plug from the radio to the docking unit, as they call it. I have it in my truck at work and picked up an extra antenna for the Plymouth. Takes me two minutes to pop it out and bring home. Works great in both. Wayne P.

I got a Sirius radio that I can use in the garage or in my vehicles. I enjoy listening to the "Roadhouse" channel, that's old traditional country music, but they also air their playlist over and over and over..... That's my only gripe about it.

[norrism1]

I just picked up a radio and power\ speaker from a 53 Chrysler New Yorker this weekend at the U- Pull it yard. Might see if it will work or sell to allow somebody to converted for FM\ Satellite. Mopar (Philco) Model 830

[Don Coatney]

I enjoy listening to the radio in my newer cars. But I do not have a radio in my 48 Plymouth nor do I have plans to install one. I get more pleasure listening to my engine and my dual exhaust kackling as I drive. What I really like is the sound of my exhaust as I pass someone at 75 MPH and I take my foot off the gas and man alive I shove it on down into overdrive.

[Jacqualine47]

I don't exactly have a radio nor a car ready to cruise - but for the day I do, I plan to either solder the aux-in mod into an AM radio (detailed here: http://www430.pair.com/p15d24/mopar_forum/showthread.php?t=16566&highlight=radio ) or hide a modern CD player in the glovebox (in case I can't get the AM to work after doing a 12v conversion)...

Since I'm also a fan of 50s oldies... I put together just shy of 800 megs worth of 50s and 50s styled music MP3s... plus a bunch of MP3s of old 50s Conelrad alerts, civil defense messages (including Bert the Turtle! DUCK! and cover...) and such. I'm still looking for generic sound clips of a 50s style DJ and some 50s radio commercials - haven't found any yet though... if I keep having problems finding it then I might record clips of the DJ off of 'Grease.' Sooo... if everything goes right it should make for a good eight hours worth of 50s radio. I've even got some MP3s of an old 50s science fiction radio drama!

EDIT:

I just checked... I've only used 737 of the 800 meg cap for a data CD (if I go the aux-in route, the cap is a gig on the low end), and my current play-time is just over 10 and a half hours. Oh, and most of my stuff is the obscure stuff like this lovely song called "Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb." I don't think I have a single Elvis song - might add some though. I do have some of Johnny Cash's early stuff in there though just because I'm a huge Cash fan.

Edited September 5, 2009 by Jacqualine47
More info...

[p24-1953]

see if www.trueoldieschannel.com has a station in your area

thats the one they just pulled off the air

[James_Douglas]

I have a guy who builds AM modulators that will work on whatever voltage and polarity needed.

Using an old style Motorola antenna "Y" this unit has a dozen or so frequencies on the AM dial that you can use. The unit has an RCA plug and what ever you play into that plug comes over your AM radio.

This is a high end unit with lots of controls on it to match it to your radio.

I use an XM satellite receiver as many of the early Delphi units run on 6V and are not ground sensitive. They have a 12V to 6V cigarette lighter plug we just toss out.

I also use my iPod and have my collection of WII Victory Disks loaded on it.

It is not a cheep solution but it works very well.

If interested, contact me offline.

James

[47heaven]

I just looked into Sirus and XM and they didn't seem to have many selections on 40's and 50's music. Maybe just one station each between the two of them. I would think there would be a live broadcast big band channel and maybe one for old radio shows, but the majority seem like newer music...80's and 90's. Are there other satellite servers?

[Jim Yergin]

Did you look at Sirius channel 4? Nothing but '40's music.

Jim Yergin

[TJM70's_48]

Here's a link to a pretty easy modification you can make to a working original radio. If you have general schematic skills, soldering skills, etc. it's very easy to do.

http://www430.pair.com/p15d24/mopar_forum/showthread.php?t=16566

I have an MP3 player that's the size of a package of chewing gum in the glove compartment - it holds hundreds of songs, old radio shows, 1948 news casts, etc. Tons of fun and very confusing to some passengers.

TM

[Jim Yergin]

Here's a link to a pretty easy modification you can make to a working original radio. If you have general schematic skills' date=' soldering skills, etc. it's very easy to do.

[url']http://www430.pair.com/p15d24/mopar_forum/showthread.php?t=16566[/url]

I have an MP3 player that's the size of a package of chewing gum in the glove compartment - it holds hundreds of songs, old radio shows, 1948 news casts, etc. Tons of fun and very confusing to some passengers.

TM

Tom,

Thanks for the information. I checked out your earlier post. Please forgive my "denseness" but could you explain the connections to the "high" side of the volume control. You say to disconnect the line to start the installation and then at the end you say to run the lines from pin 2 and pin 5 to the high side of the volume control. I am confused as to what happened to the line that was originally disconnected from the high side.

I really appreciate your post and am interested in trying it.

Jim Yergin

[TJM70's_48]

Jim....the high side of the volume control pot will be the terminal that has a changing value as you turn the control - measure it with an ohm meter. Three connection points, it won't be the center one.

Then (referring to your question about the wire originally on the volume control), disconnect the wire from the volume pot and connect it to pin 3 on the new jack...via a shielded wire. I used coaxial cable because that's what I had on hand. There's probably a better choice - more like the original.

With my installation under the glove box and to the right a bit...I had two long runs of coax to and from the jack location.

It's a nice modification because it's 100% reversible. You are left with a working radio too for those times when you want to use it. Just unplug the jack and the radio is back on.

If my explaination still isn't clear, please ask as many follow up questions as you want...it took me a while to understand it and, since it wasn't my modification to begin with, I also asked a lot of "dense" questions...once it clicked, it was a breeze.

-Tom

[LAKOTA169]

Here's a device the hooks up to your original radio.

http://www.rediscoveradio.com/

[55 Fargo]

I don't exactly have a radio nor a car ready to cruise - but for the day I do, I plan to either solder the aux-in mod into an AM radio (detailed here: http://www430.pair.com/p15d24/mopar_forum/showthread.php?t=16566&highlight=radio ) or hide a modern CD player in the glovebox (in case I can't get the AM to work after doing a 12v conversion)...

Since I'm also a fan of 50s oldies... I put together just shy of 800 megs worth of 50s and 50s styled music MP3s... plus a bunch of MP3s of old 50s Conelrad alerts, civil defense messages (including Bert the Turtle! DUCK! and cover...) and such. I'm still looking for generic sound clips of a 50s style DJ and some 50s radio commercials - haven't found any yet though... if I keep having problems finding it then I might record clips of the DJ off of 'Grease.' Sooo... if everything goes right it should make for a good eight hours worth of 50s radio. I've even got some MP3s of an old 50s science fiction radio drama!

EDIT:

I just checked... I've only used 737 of the 800 meg cap for a data CD (if I go the aux-in route, the cap is a gig on the low end), and my current play-time is just over 10 and a half hours. Oh, and most of my stuff is the obscure stuff like this lovely song called "Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb." I don't think I have a single Elvis song - might add some though. I do have some of Johnny Cash's early stuff in there though just because I'm a huge Cash fan.

Bring on the Johnny Cash, was raised on this growing up, never get tired of hearing his tunes, or a lot of other classic country or back roads country either.....

[Joe Flanagan]

Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb? I want to hear that. I like the obscure stuff, too. There used to be a series of albums back in the 70s that were compilations of individual years from the 1950s. The covers were in the form of comic book art. They had recordings from actual DJs and radio commercials of the time interspersed with the songs. We had 1956. There was a commercial for Fago's old-fashioned root beer and one for WKMH in Detroit: "Stay in the know/Dial one-three-one-oh/In Detroitland, it's WKMH...." And a commercial for the new '56 Ford to the tune of "Standing on the Corner (Watching all the Girls Go By)," except they substituted "Fords" for "girls."

We also had the record from 1967 where the DJ was ridiculing LBJ for the US involvement in Vietnam. I don't know if you can get those records anymore.