In a Nutshell
With a 1960's SABA your eyes and ears simply get much more radio than with any other 1960's radio - that's why they are the most collectible German radios

Introduction:
The history of SABA is excellently documented in ref.1 and 2 below, both articles being written in German. The first article is written by Ernst Erb, the prime mover behind radiomuseum.org, and is easier to read than its English translation in ref.3. What else can you produce in Triberg, located in Schwarzwald country (Black Forest) in South-Western Germany? Clocks of course - and that's what Joseph Benedikt Schwer started doing in 1835. His grandson Hermann, a skilled watchmaker himself, took over in 1905, moved the factory to nearby Villingen, and started building radio parts and kits in 1923 and whole radio sets in 1927 under the name of SABA (standing for Schwarzwälder Apparate-Bau-Anstalt August Schwer Söhne). In 1935 export oriented Saba was already represented in 13 countries. In the 1950's, shortly after UKW (Ultrakurzwelle = FM) but before transistors and stereophony (not available until 1963) came up, a large number of big German tube table radios flooded the market from manufacturers like AEG, Blaupunkt, Graetz, Grundig, Koerting, Loewe Opta, Nordmende, Saba, Schaub-Lorenz, Siemens and others. The phenomenon was part of the "Deutsches Wirtschaftswunder" (economic miracle), a period of post-war prosperity under chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his minister of economics Ludwig Ehrhard (born in Grundig town of Fürth in Bavaria). Some of the finest and most collectible radios are Saba sets, some of which come with a cable remote, that not only allows remote control of on/off and volume, like others but also remote station tuning. This is achieved with Sabas famous automatic station scanning and automatic frequency control, a feature accomplished by a 2-tube device ("Steuerfilter") automatically detecting and amplifying deviations from optimal reception to steer a motor, which itself is connected to the tuning capacitors and manual tuning knob through a clutch, that switches between AM and FM (see movie by clicking on pict.57). Model names for these radios are taken from Black Forest and South-West Germany regions and towns like Breisgau, Württemberg, Schauinsland, Triberg, Villingen, Freiburg, Freudenstadt, Lindau, Wildbad, Meersburg, Konstanz, and others. Export versions just have prosaic numbers as model identifications, and an FM band that extends to 108 MHz. Saba radios are best documented, having an own private forum (ref.4), that helped me appreciably restoring another automatic radio (ref.5). The Freiburg 14 and same year's Studio A are the highest end, largest, and most expensive table sets Saba built. Note the "14" only accidentally matches the 14-tube content. Next year's Freiburg Vollautomatic 15 and 15M, had only 13 tubes (ref.9). The original price tag was a hefty 1130 DM (today more than US$5000).

For the techies only:
Saba radios of this vintage have 3 main problems;
    a. Degradation of pot metal by zinc disease, or - in German - by the "Zinkpest, Zinkfrass oder Zinkbeißer". Three parts in this radio are made from pot metal (see pict.s 33-36), the coupler ("Kupplung") to the volume knob, and two quarter shells and the entrainer ("Mitnehmer") of the automatic clutch. For the Saba 300 (ref.5) these pieces were defect and I had to make new clutch shells by hand from aluminum (pict.60). This Continental 410US has all these parts in mint condition
    b. The infamous black Saba capacitors. Fortunately Saba replaced their own caps in the early 1960's by the then new yellow WIMA polyester foil capacitors (pict.31)
    c. Stereo decoder (pict.s 38-44). Stereo reception was not available in Germany until 1963. Receivers like this had however full stereo audio long before, that was used for external devices, like turntables, tapes, extra speakers etc. Later a stereo decoder could be added as an option. My radio uses Saba's first transistorized decoder "Stereo-Rundfunk Einsatz (Multiplex-Decoder) 14" (ref.6), equipped with Ge pnp transistors, because there was no Silicon. Those in metallic TO-7 cases, like the OC170 and the AF110 series, are known to develop the "mystery hair disease", which turned out to be of great consequences in space and computer technology, and in medicine.The TO-7 metal case has 4 legs (base, emitter, collector and case). The problem and its (only temporary) solution are described in the book "Electronic Classics - Collecting, Restoration and Repair" by Andrew Emmerson (available at amazon.com). Slow growing so-called "Mystery Hair", which are fine tin or zinc whiskers inside the transistor, shorts its electrodes to the case, which is normally grounded. NASA has a whole group working at the problem of whiskers: whiskers in floor tiles caused catastrophic computer failures, even destroyed computers, killed the 130 million commercial satellite GALAXY VII [PanAmSat] in 2000, caused a heart pacemaker recall in 1986, shut down reactors and GPS systems - all by ruining electronic components like relays, chip condensators, transistors, microcircuits, potentiometers and so on. The orthodox remedy is burning the whiskers away with a charged 50µF condenser. The higher the voltage, the more efficient is the arc generated to evaporate the whiskers. I used my "Wee" megger (ref.7), to charge a 33µF capacitor to 800V (pict.44). After replacing also some leaking (low voltage !!!) capacitors (pict.42), the decoder now works flawlessly.
The original selenium rectifier was left alone, since the voltage drop was normal. It could be easily replaced by a Si bridge rectifier along the lines of ref.5, The motor and dialcord cogs were painstakingly cleaned and oiled, to achieve smooth-running of the motor tuning. Finally the whole set was aligned on all bands by following the 2-page "Abgleichanleitung" of the manual. In particular the alignment of the "Steuerfilter" profited from the use of a signal generator (Hickok 288X) and an oscilloscope (click on pict.57 and watch the tuning motor on the lower right searching and finding the signal generators frequency, and then tracking it when it is changed - not too fast). A youtube video (click on thumbnail 58 or go to ref.8) shows the radio working.

Additional information:
   ref. 1.    http://www.radiomuseum.org/dsp_hersteller_detail.cfm?company_id=22 (in German)
   ref. 2.    http://www.saba.pytalhost.com/Werbung/100jahrefestschrift/index.html (in German)
   ref. 3.    http://www.economypoint.org/s/saba.html
   ref. 4.    http://saba.magnetofon.de/showtopic.php?threadid=3861
   ref. 5.    http://www.greenhillsgf.com/IndexOwn_Saba_300-10T.htm
   ref. 6.    http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/saba_multiplex_decoder_14.html
   ref. 7.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULQ-vumIj1s
   ref. 8.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stq33jkglik
   ref. 9.    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=371029946216

About my radio:
The time consuming restoration paid off: here is a beautiful 1963 Saba Continental 410US FM Stereo, export version of the domestic Freiburg Vollautomatic 14 in near to new condition with all critical and failure-prone parts having been taken care of. The radio plays loud and clear and with superb sensitivity and selectivity on all bands - yes, also on short wave. The automatic works flawlessly on all bands finding stations with the tip of a finger and holding tight on them, up and down the scale. Stereo reception with the repaired decoder has been tested by observing the second tuning eye's and the balance control's response. Please watch the two movies at pict.s 57 and 58. Please e-mail me (Kris) for any questions, ich spreche Deutsch, je parle Français.

Here are the specifications:

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