people collect Swan gear?
W6QKI was a much better designer than he gets credit for: the Swan radios weren't as complicated as his competitor's, and they required more expert tuning, but they got the job done and set a standard for minimalist design and layout that still looks good today.
Mr. Johnson realized that hams, unlike the Air Force, didn't care about being
exactly on frequency, so he lowered his parts count by using a simple dual reticle tuning indicator that was intuitively obvious. He knew that, unlike Art Collins, he wasn't going to be selling to the military, so he didn't need to use the mil-spec "idiot proof" 6146 finals that were in the KWM-2.
There were other design choices, which some considered sloppy and others efficient: crystal filters instead of mechanical, and wide-coverage VFO's that used dial markings in different directions on different bands (a feature that Drake used to great effect when manufacturing the 2-B receiver), thus saving on crystals, bandswitch complexity, and wiring effort.
In short, I've always thought that Herbert G. Johnson's radios deserved more attention than they got: Art Collins, flush with Curtis LeMay's money, could afford to put his ads on the facing-contents page of QST, while Johnson had to compete with a leaner, more minimalist design, word-of-mouth, and a better price that average hams could afford to pay.
I've got a 350C on a shelf downstairs, and I'll tune it up on occasion just to remember how it was to have a radio that really
would bite if you weren't careful: before the autotuners and the fold-back circuits, before 10 Hz resolution displays, before "anyone" could do it.
I always admired Swan. YMMV.
73,
Bill, W1AC
