I gained a treasure this weekend. My folks found this SABA Wildbad radio for me at a yard sale. For free.

My vintage radio collection isn’t huge but I have several pieces, picked up as bargains along the way but none of them were free and none are German.

There’s not a lot available on the internet but I did figure out that it’s a fifties era model and that the company began by making watches in the Black Forest in 1835. The founder’s grandson moved the company to Villingen in 1918 to begin making headphones and radio components. By 1931, they were producing radio units with loudspeakers. This model has three loudspeakers.

They also were the first to develop automatic fine tuning in all bandwidths and, in the sixties, they had a short stint as a record label. Today they are known for televisions, home security systems and home appliances.

Too bad I don’t read German. I did figure out that the Ein-Aus button is On-Off!

This weekend has been busy so there’s been little time to research it but, if nothing else, it’s a great conversation piece. So I plan to clean it up a bit and give it a creative place to live. Someday I’ll circle back around to researching it.

Anyone have experience with mid-century German electronics?