Pearce Simpson Bengal and JC Penney 981-6235

[Turbo T]

Picked up these two moldy oldies. Both are 23 channel. The Bengal is a SSB unit that needs a cleaning. The Pinto doesn't even look 70's at all. Both of them work. I guess the Bengal 3 pin mic is scarce? The Pinto uses a Cobra wired 4 pin mic.

Looking for info on the Pinto model...who built the board? Are they a reputable radio? or just a "throw away" radio? What about the Pearce Simpson?

Thinking of modding both. All I can find on the Pinto is to cut D15 and D14, then tune L5 L8 L9 for max AM power. I can't seem to find any mods for the Bengal. Anyone know?

 

[Mudfoot]

That Pinto was the first CB that I ever bought "new". Always liked that radio, it played and sounded good. It's built tough. The only thing I ever did to it was put a 22A crystal in it.

I paid around $150+ at JC Penny.

Don't recall who made it.... Likely Uniden.

 

[Turbo T]

Here's pics of the JC Penney board, if anyone can identify it....

 

[Turbo T]

And here's the board of the Bengal...if anyone can identify it...I do thank you in advance...

 

[Squints]

The JCPenney 981-6235 is a great base station I like everything about it and I have one I'm currently monitoring channel 14 on it and it never gets turned off unless it storms outside.
What is a 22A crystal ?

 

[BC Coyote]

What is a 22A crystal ?

27.235 MHz. After the move to 40 channels this became part of the regular band as channel 24. Back in 23 channel days there was often an unused spot on the channel selector, and people would put in 22A as an 'extra' channel.

 

[Hurricane145]

27.235 MHz. After the move to 40 channels this became part of the regular band as channel 24. Back in 23 channel days there was often an unused spot on the channel selector, and people would put in 22A as an 'extra' channe

There was a 22A and a 22B channel between 22 and 23. Not sure what they were for anymore. Seems to me 22A was an RC channel and B was a business band channel but not sure anymore. The way the 23 channels were set up with earlier crystal synthesizing, 22A would be there but there were no contacts for it on the channel switch. With some radios, if you carefully turned the channel switch between 22 and 23 you could engage channel 22A and have a very quiet channel to talk on that most people didn't have. It seems to me that Lafayette had a couple rigs it would work on. I think the 525 mobile rig was one but it's been a long time and I don't remember for sure.
There was one Lafayette base station that advertised as having 24 channels in the catalogs. I don't know the story behind that.

It seems to me that it was common on some rigs to use that space on the channel switch for switching the rig to PA in mobile rigs.

The earliest 23 channel rigs had separate transmit and receive crystals for each channel and came with just a few channels. You would buy any additional sets of crystals for more channels. Getting all 23 was expensive back then!

 

[nomadradio]

The Bengal is definitely Uniden. The "UNI" label on the sideband crystal filter gives it away. Don't know about the Pinto. Doesn't look like Uniden.

Channel 22A became channel 24 after the 40-channel expansion, and 22B is now channel 25.

73

 

[secret squirrel]

A good friend rocked the Bengal back in the early 1980's His best Bengal story is a skip contact- accidental Channel 9 request via skip from Alaska to Pittsburgh area asking for a local sheriff to be called. I have a Pearce Simpson Pussycat- the entry base station. Can only say good things about it, with the stock tune, 4 watts to about 16 watts it shines. It likes the Pro Comm basic power mic, the 15.95 jobs that sells under a bunch different names. Had the 4 pin mic jack rewired to Cobra pin out. Used it a lot just to leave on Channel 19 at old house. I did have to have a cap in the transmitter side replaced, at 40 years who can complain. Bob's CB found the bad cap, Cybernet board.