Monarch SMX-50a
  The receiver that can be safely considered the "smallest" among all tube amplifiers sold. It contained only 13 lamps, or as many as 13 lamps, because none of the equipment produced in Europe in those years could boast of such a number of vacuum elements. The second proof of its "greatness" was the operation of the amplifier using ECL82 tubes in the SE circuit, which did not ensure too high output power. However, the SMX-50A was an almost full-fledged tube receiver, with a number of solutions that would appeal to audiophiles today. These solutions include operation in the SE circuit, construction in a "full tube" - power supply was based on a vacuum duodiode and FM demodulation - also based on a duodiode. The equipment, despite the low power, sounded very nice and with good quality, but required better speakers than the original oval broadband with quite low power and a limited frequency range.
The radio part was a model design for "budget" equipment. The sensitivity and separation on the FM very good, the 10.7 MHz path as in higher class tuners, and the MPX decoder on three tubes was more than you could expect from this baby. The drawback of the receiver was the lack of a phono preamplifier with RIAA characteristics, bandwidth control and a headphone jack. The manufacturer apparently assumed that the equipment was supposed to amplify the signal from a turntable with a piezoelectric cartridge or a tape recorder. The receiver had very economical adjustments - the volume with an additional "bass" switch being in fact a dynamics / loudness and balance switch.
Its appearance was so distinctive that it could hardly be confused with any other receiver. The casing gave it the look of a table radio and was probably also supposed to enlarge the "baby" optically. In order not to bother the buyer with looking for the appropriate speakers for the "baby", they were added to the receiver and a nice and stylish set was created.

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