In 1953, the first New Zealand Pye radios made their appearance. They were made by Akrad Radio Corp in Waihi. The first ones were virtually the same as the English ones, but without the Long Wave bands, as we don't have those frequencies here.  The following is a copy of some information taken from the Guest Book.

Where are you from? London & Cambridge England originally, now live in Florida. Do you have any comments? As you have Pye radios you may like to know that Pye was a Cambridge radio company which started before the 2nd WWar producing military radios (walkie talkies that weighed a ton) then home radios, car radios, the first UK transistor radios and finally TV in the 60's and 70's. They were then bought out by Phillips of Holland. My appreticship in Electronics at Pye was mostly repairing car radios whilst attending their own electronics school. Great site, enjoyed it a lot.   Tony Cooper.   Thanks Tony.

I don't know anything about this one yet, apart from being an Australian model. I haven't even had the back off it. So I don't know how many valves it has! It does work reasonably well, and has quite good tone. There are 3 spread bands and broadcast. The two vertical lists of stations at each end of the dial are all Australian, but there are no broadcast frequency markings anywhere! The speaker grill is metal mesh.

The Pye PZ39 is a 5 valve multiband  Bakelite set. It even has a large, double sided, single sheet, of servicing instructions!

Pye PZ71 is a 4 valve plus Magic eye set.  There are 4 shortwave bands, and broadcast.  Tone control and band change switches are on the ends. the name plate has "wings" with Cambridge and England. But it has New Zealand stations on the dial.

The PZ92 is quite a large radio.  It is also a 4 valve plus Eye.  Wooden case, 4 shortwave and broadcast.

Click on picture below for large version.

This little beauty model PZ60 has 10 bands plus gram input. Although, it's not so little! It has 6 valves plus magic eye, and an 8" speaker. It really pulls in the shortwave stations, by the dozen, if not hundreds! Even in daylight it does well, which is not so easy these days, with all the sources of interference now around.  It also has pretty good sound. The on/off/tone and volume are on the left side and tuning and band selector are on the right side.

Click on picture for large version of this 1964 advertisement.  80KB