Three knobs, and nothing to learn
Plug it in and it works. There is no account to create and no screen to consult. One dial for volume, one for the band, one for tuning, each with the weight of a switch in a well-made car. You can work it in the dark, and a guest can work it without being shown.The restraint is the design rather than a limit on it. Nothing has been added to this radio because nothing has needed to be.
The cabinet does the work
The cabinet is real wood, and it behaves the way a wooden instrument does, lending the sound a body that moulded plastic never finds. Tivoli's equalisation and voicing do the rest, so a single speaker fills a kitchen, a study or a bedroom with more weight than its footprint suggests.The radio tuner is a discrete-component design adapted from mobile telephony, which is a technical way of saying it holds a station that other radios lose. For everything else there is Bluetooth, and the character of the sound stays the same either way.
Choosing between them
The four tones were drawn from natural materials rather than from a trend, which is why they sit more easily in a room than a colour with a season attached to it.Sage for a room with plants in it. Ginger for warm timber and brass. Angora for linen, wool and pale oak. Eucalyptus for the cooler end of a room, for greys and stone.
For the quiet hours
A Model One finds the room where people pause. A kitchen bench at six in the morning, a shelf between the records and books, a sideboard on the verandah through a long lunch. It is a radio you leave on rather than one you operate.Tivoli have made the Model One since 2000. Objects worth keeping rarely need reinventing.