[Boatanchors] EV-664 opinions?

[Robert Nickels]

On 2/14/2011 8:21 PM, w8au at sssnet.com wrote:
> The duo also bought RME (Radio Mfr Engineers) after WW2 and produced
> ham gear until 1962 when they sold RME to GC (General Cement - solvents, etc)
> which closed the operation by 1963.
>
That's what the late great Paul Harvey would have called "the rest of 
the story" Perry.

And you've helped me make another connection that I've been puzzled 
about.   I have a new in box microphone made by "American Microphone 
Manufacturing Company, a division of GC Textron Inc., Rockford 
Illinois".     I live about 30 miles from Rockford and have picked up a 
couple of semi-assembled radios that came off the production line when 
it was shut down from a Rockford ham, so the mic may have been a local 
acquisition as well.   It's a really cool design, die-cast and chrome in 
the E-V style, and has a low-Z dynamic element.  The model number is 
D-11M and I've never seen any pics or literature on it, so I wonder if 
it even made it to the market.

I was wondering how GC got into the microphone business, but had 
forgotten the Al Kahn/Electo-Voice connection.  They were indeed very 
good engineer-businessmen - a rare combination.

And here's another chapter of the same story:  After being overloaded 
with orders for his newly-introduced CB sets, Leo Meyerson (who turns 
100 later this month) decided to sell his Globe Electronics business to 
a larger company that could make the needed investment in manufacturing 
capacity.    The original plan was to roll Globe into General Cement, 
but realizing they lacked electronics know-how, Textron Electronics was 
set up for this purpose and production was moved to Rockford in 1959.   
The partially-assembled units I have were the Mobiline Six, a GC-Globe 
six meter transceiver that was in production when the line was shut down.

RME, Globe, E-V, GC, TenTec - (and later, E-V became part of Telex, 
along with HyGain and Turner) - that's a pretty good handful of 
electronics and ham radio industry pioneers!   As an old boss of mine 
who knew Leo well used to say "it was a small club back in those days".

73, Bob W9RAN