Background
The machine was purchased at a charity boot sale on a miserable cold wet day and I felt I had to buy something from them. It had a £4 label but the stallholder said call it £3. I said done and she said you probably have been! She said it had been bought on impulse and never really used. It was the closest thing to buying a new machine. Some of these Japanese machines were assembled in the UK to avoid the EU anti dumping laws and are regarded by some as being responsible for the demise of the European typewriter, so this must be quite some machine then. They also come with many different labels so be careful your Brother or whatever is not a Seiko.
                                           Features (not many really)
The cover is made of impact resistant plastic (?) and seems a little better than the self-destructing plastic used by other manufacturers of the time and the colour is a disgusting mustard yellow, all very 1970's. It is a well designed and engineered, if rather basic machine and I have found no problems reported as regards reliablity. The size and weight placing it in the lightweight rather than the home portable class. It is an all metal, single colour machine with no tabulator, touch adjustment or rather annoyingly, a paper rest. The line indicator goes from half a line, then one, two lines and zero for line drawing. The margin release also can be used to return the keys if you stack a couple together.
                                                                  Performance
Right from the start you are aware of how noisy this machine is. It has a fairly light touch about mid point of most machines that are adjustable. All controls were in the usual places and the keyboard held no surprises except for having a decimal point key. Our banana fingered touch typist didn't catch any keys and our petite teen didn't break any fingernails. Even our two fingered typists managed an even print. The results were good using 80gsm headed paper and a backing sheet. It also managed reasonably good print results on up to two carbon copies and it produced clear results on a single line of Banda master if anyone still uses a spirit duplicator. For a stencil you would have to remove the ribbon, it clearly is not designed to do them and it doesn't. I found changing the ribbon was a real pain to do as well.  I found it difficult to line draw mainly as it is much lower than a home portable or full size office machine.  Results were passable though. Typing speed usually depends on how comfortable you feel and I found myself naturally typing at a fairly good speed.  In the great outdoors it was quite comfortable with the machine on my lap for short periods. It also makes a good bird scarer too.

The Silverette is a robust machine that does everything it was designed to do and does it well if not exceptionally so. It is very noisy and not a machine to use late at night. These typewriters sold on price alone, there are far, far better machines out there. In a word it is an unremarkable machine. Typewriters have always been considered to be expensive items in the UK and in the seventies these prices still represented a big slice out of the average wage.
Prices in 1977 were £36 for this machine,  £40 for the two colour ribbon and £44 for the tabulator model. I doubt if they are collectable or desirable, not rare and they fetch little money in auctions etc.,

They are however a reliable workhorse well suited to typing letters and envelopes but the lack of a paper rest is disappointing  but then you're not going to buy one are you? No, I thought not!

My daughter asked why I had bought that disgusting yellow thing. Well it was a cold wet miserable day at the charity boot sale and..................................................

Rating? Well if we take the Hermes Baby and its copies as the machine by which others in this class are judged and therefore give it  a mid point of 5 out of 10, then I would give the Silverette 3 out of 10.

Just thought I would add a picture of it
"https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7295/16253141099_1f53e803aa_z.jpg"
















 

Last edited by retro (24-5-2015 19:21:25)