This elegant and stylish Tandberg Solvsuper 12 is one nice looking receiver. It was manufactured in Norway in the mid 70’s. It’s dimensions are 19.5L x 4.6H x 9.4D inches and it weighs nearly 13 pounds. It was basically designed as a table model receiver and puts out 22 watts per channel into 4 ohms. The beautiful top and end panels are made of Teak and the front panel is aluminum.
Solvsuper translates into Silver Super and the Solvsuper 12 has Longwave, Shortwave, AM and FM bands. It has a tape monitor and a phono input that is switchable between magnetic or ceramic phono cartridges.
These Tandberg models are not easily found and therefore fetch fairly good prices on the open market. Many collectors love the styling and aesthetics of the Tandberg designs and are always looking for units in excellent condition.
I’ve been away for too long from this wonderful site and its superb content of vintage receivers.
Strange push button design for the mid 70’s and the lack of flip switches rates this unit a 1.5/4 on the design scale. We can only guess how it sounded unless someone wants to send me a unit to audition.
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ps. I continue to enjoy my Hitachi HA-330, but this time in a new light… strictly as a headphone amp. Sounds superb and I have seen it power everything from 32ohm Grado’s to K701’s (which only being 120ohm are VERY difficult to drive. AMP meter hit a steady 10w per channel) to LCD2’s and HE-6’s.
The Sølvsuper was Tandberg’s cheaper line of recievers, and should not be compared with the Huldras or later TR10xx/20xx.They all had very good build quality (maybe with the exception of this one, Sølvsuper 12), but the amplifier specs weren’t stellar. The radio part was still great, these are built to receive weak signals in a very mountainous and sparsely populated country. Here in Norway, there are many Sølvsuper 11 in daily use still, and they can be had for next to nothing. They are the most sold radio in Norway ever.
Love Tandbergs. My tr-200 has been used costantly from 1974 to this day. With swedish MP speakers .