by Johnny Bilek, April 2003

Since a lot of the Registry members are in the US, there needs to be a little clarification on radio bands. There is more to radio than AM and FM. AM (mediumwave, 530kHz-1650kHz, today goes up to 1710kHz), SW (shortwave, 1711kHz-30000kHz), L (longwave, 100kHz-395kHz), and FM (frequency modulation, 87MHz-108MHz, or sometimes only up to 104MHz). Depending on what part of the world your car was sold to, or where the radio was purchased, there can be many different bands. The symbols L, M, U and K are the German language equivalents to longwave, mediumwave (broadcast AM), FM, and shortwave respectively. Sometimes you'll see M mixed with AM and FM. In this case, M stands for Marine (a part of the shortwave band).

Longwave (L): longwave isn't really used in the USA anymore. Most of what you can pick up are beacons broadcasting their ID in morse code. Here on the West Coast I can pick up a few beacons, specifically 333kHz. On a good night with really good "skip" conditions you can pull in longwave stations from far away. Member Larry Edson has picked up South America from Northern California. Try it sometime you might be surprised!

Shortwave (K): The World Band. Want to hear what's happening in Germany, Great Britain, or even the Voice of America? This is where you'll hear it. Different parts of the world receive different bands in the shortwave band better than others. If you look at different radios, you might notice that the frequency coverage on the shortwave band is different from radio to radio. My Blaupunkt Frankfurt has a shortwave band from about 3000kHz to 7000kHz. You might even notice something like 25m 31m 49m on the shortwave scale. Some areas in the 60s still used the old "meter" designations (still used to some extent today) instead of the frequency numbers. Shortwave radios in general aren't very popular in the US and almost unheard of in American cars. Shortwave listening in the United States is usually limited to hobbyists (like me).

Mediumwave (M): Ah, the old broadcast AM band. This is what most cars had. You would be pretty hard pressed to find a car radio without AM, unless it's a add-on FM unit, then you'd have AM in the stock position, FM under the dash.

FM (U): As technology got better, FM became more popular. FM has a far superior frequency range for music than AM. But, FM signals only travel line-of-sight. If there is a mountain between you and the transmitter, forget it! AM bounces all over the place and is usually very easy (especially at night) to get in if you live in rural areas. Shortwave (which is really AM) travels farther. In the US, FM was for talk and classical music until the 1970s. Usually only high-end cars (like ours) had FM. The FM band in the US is between 87MHz and 108MHz, and has been that way since the 1940s. Europe's FM band (in the 1960s) ran from 87MHz through 104MHz. Some of you might notice that the scale runs from right to left, instead of left to right like we are used to in the US. Sometimes, you'll see the scale on one band run from left to right, and one run from right to left on the same radio. Go on, take a look! That's usually because of the design of the tuning capacitor(s) in a multi-band radio. All three bands on my Frankfurt run from left to right.

As far as I know, Volkswagen only installed Blaupunkts in Type 34s. For that matter, I think the Type 14s did too.

Comment from Chris Wright: The most usual radio originally fitted to Type 34s was a Blaupunkt Frankfurt model which has MW, LW, FM (and on some years, SW too). The exact version would have depended on the year of the car, the earlier ones would have been 6v and valve based or possibly a hybrid valve and transistor version. Later ones would have been 12v and all transistor. There are many other (cheaper) Blaupunkt models equally correct, but these are mainly MW/LW (and sometimes short wave). The Frankfurt is the best of the models, everyone wants FM these days. There was a special faceplate to fit all the Blaupunkts to a Type 34, which tapers upwards, a bit like a Type 3 faceplate upside down. No, these are not interchangable. If you can't find a face plate (they are rare) the radio will fit the slots in the dash perfectly anyway and there are some thin chromed brass plates more readily available which can be made to sandwich between the radio and the dash so the chrome comes through the slots.