Vintage Receivers: National NC-125

[mikethedruid]

The National NC-125 is a very good, if a bit quirky receiver. It covers from 550 kilocycles to 35 megacycles in 4 bands on the main tuning scale. It also has a calibrated tuning scale for the 10, 11, 15, 20, 40, and 80 meter ham bands. The wide, "slide rule" type dial, where all the tuning bands and expanded ham bands stretch across the entire width make tuning easier. What is quirky about this receiver is its use of National's proprietary "select-o-jet" circuitry to sort out a signal from background noise instead of the more common crystal filters or Q multipliers. It does work moderately well, but hurts sound fidelity on AM. It never really caught on, and is not used by other brands. Here is a link to the manual for those interested: https://bama.edebris.com/download/national/nc125/nc-125.pdf

I restored one of these radios some years ago, and it is part of my regular rotation of "daily drivers" I listen to. This is a link to a video about the restoration: Restoring my National NC-125 . And this is a link to a video where I demonstrate the finished radio: Demonstration of my National NC-125 .

 

[W0JOG]

"Quirkey"? No. State of the art in its day. National was one of the top choices for amateur and SWL use. Others were Hammerlund, HRO, Lafayette and Hallicrafters. Collins was there too, but at the top of the price range and designed more for the new SSB amateur and commercial/military use. All afforded about the same quality of sound quality, selectivity and stability. I became quite adept in just following along the carrier of what ever I was listening to (or talking to on the ham bands) as my Hallicrafters drifted along.

You could count on most of the radios of that day occupying a major part of table or desk space. They ranged from the bread-box size of the Hallicrafters S-38. etc., to the half-desktop space requirement of the top-of-the line"boat anchors." But we all were happy with what we could afford and were graced with some real sun spot activity that made far-away signals exciting hunting.

Antennas usually were a wire out in the trees or, for ham use, dipoles or the 8JK double dipole which would bring in Tibet and such rare catches if you were lucky. Many of us built our rigs from scratch or kits offered by National, McMurdo Silver and Heath.

W0JOG