Stromberg-Carlson Model 120 (1948)
A five-tube table set in brown swirly marbled Bakelite — the kind of radio that makes you wonder why anything else was ever made of wood.
Overview
The Model 120 is a table radio built by the Stromberg-Carlson Co. of Rochester, New York, and dated by collector listings to 1948. It is a five-tube set covering broadcast and shortwave, and it is housed in Bakelite — specifically, in a finish collectors describe as "brown swirly marbled," which is exactly the sort of phrasing that sounds like nonsense until you see one in person and realize it is a literal description.
There is a wrinkle in the record that anyone shopping for one of these should understand before they start bidding. The research surfaces two name variants: a "120-B," documented as a five-tube table radio covering broadcast and shortwave, and a "Model 120" dated 1948 and finished in that brown marbled Bakelite. The available documentation does not state whether these are the same radio or two different products sharing a number. Collectors should treat any listing that uses one name and shows the other as an open question rather than a settled match.
What can be said with confidence is the shape of the thing. Five tubes in a table cabinet, broadcast plus shortwave, and a wire antenna required to pull anything in. The shortwave coverage runs from 3500 to 18000 kHz on the 120-B, which is a genuinely useful spread — the 49, 41, 31, 25, 19, and 16 metre bands all sit inside it, so a working example is not a decorative object. It will still find stations.
Key Features
Brown Swirly Marbled Bakelite Cabinet
The cabinet is Bakelite, and the finish is the marbled brown that collector listings describe as "brown swirly marbled."
Five-Tube Broadcast and Shortwave Chassis
The 120-B is documented as covering both broadcast and shortwave from a single chassis, with shortwave tuning from 3500 to 18000 kHz. That range is the reason these sets still get used rather than just displayed — shortwave propagation at those frequencies means a working Model 120 can pull in international broadcasters after dark with nothing more than a length of wire strung across a room.
Wire Antenna Requirement
The documentation is blunt about this: the radio requires a wire antenna. A Model 120 without an antenna connected will receive local stations weakly at best and nothing on shortwave at all. This is not a fault — it is how the set was designed, and it reflects a period when a wire run to a window frame or a length of bell wire stapled along a baseboard was simply how radios were installed.
Collectibility
Pricing information for the Model 120 is thin and comes with a caveat worth stating plainly. A collector listing for a "1948 Stromberg Carlson Model 120 Brown Swirly Marbled Bakelite" carries a figure of $79, but the source does not state whether that is the original 1948 retail price or a current asking price, and no listing date is given. Treat the number as a data point rather than a valuation. It does at least suggest the model trades in the affordable range rather than the collector-premium range that surrounds the more celebrated table sets of the period.
Nothing in the available documentation covers common failure points, parts availability, or restoration notes for this model specifically. Beyond that, the record is silent, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
eBay Listings
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