Tandberg Huldra 9
The Tandberg Huldra 9 is a stereo AM/FM receiver from the late 1960s. It sits in the Norwegian maker's lineup between the Huldra 8 (Tandberg's first receiver with a germanium solid-state power amplifier) and the Huldra 10 (the company's first all-silicon solid-state receiver). The Huldra 9 itself was a hybrid. It used tubes only for the IF stages, and the rest of the signal path ran on germanium and silicon transistors. One enthusiast described it as "a tube-germanium-silicon device."
The receiver covers FM, MW, LW, and SW. There are two shortwave bands, one with fine tuning and a "fishing band" (marked FB), which was an unusual feature for a home receiver. It came in a wooden case and measured 540 × 140 × 270mm, weighing 9.1kg. The design used 35 transistors. Two versions were released with different output power, one rated at 15 watts and one at 25 watts, and you tell them apart by serial number. There were also internal differences beyond power. One owner noted that two Huldra 9s can look identical but differ inside, and mentioned a "silicon version" among the variations.
Documentation on the Huldra 9 is scattered. A service manual exists in Norwegian (40 pages, dated 1970), and schematics are available through several manual services. Production appears to have begun around 1968, though some sources list 1970. The exact end date isn't firmly recorded. No original price, distortion figures, or frequency response specs have surfaced in the sources found.
What owners say is positive but brief. One forum poster called it "amazing value for money" after buying one for 30 euro, though he was still testing the silicon version and couldn't yet comment on the sound. A YouTube video description notes a successful repair of the FM tuner and power amplifier. The Huldra 9 seems to have been a well-built, slightly idiosyncratic receiver from a maker whose main specialty was army transmitter-receivers.
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