Remove the grilll. Sandwich it between two sheets of clear overlay sheets and place on a flat surface. Take a large spoon with the bowl facing downward and rub the grill with the spoon while applying moderate pressure. Pay particular attention to the dents. This will flatten the grill and make it look factory.
26:00 the AM test shows a superb S/N and I was immensely impressed. Very nice and linear audio that was vastly superior to the squished, hissy, flat-topped audio modern AM BCB receivers have. They don't build em like this anymore. 73
That's a nice radio. I was also shocked when it powered up and ran right away, especially given how it was coming apart internally. That set could clean up really nicely.
Definitely a restore worthy radio. Quality in the design detail such as the RF amp isolation transformer and intermediate AF transformer with direct coupled output. I was amazed all those plasric coated caps were still working enough to let the radio function. The sort of radio I would love to have hanging around the house playing background music while I'm doing whatever.
You start the video with an interesting question... if it's worth the time wasted to watch the entire video. The answer is yes. You see, the people with whom I shared long talks and experiments with radio oscillators and transmitters in the 70's have died. I don't know how old you are, but every time I watch the videos, not only is it entertaining because of your jokes and sarcasm that really help to have a good reference with reality, but they contain a lot of electronic experience in the precise language that I was used to. listen, for example, to the name of the components by their function, "coupling capacitor" filter capacitor" and there are thousands of these examples. Well yes. It is worth it. I thank you very much for your willingness to share your knowledge although in practice Do not proceed in the same way when repairing a radio. It is not because I am a purist, but because I recognize that I do not have that much experience,... an experience that reminds me of my friends who are no longer here. Thank you Shango! greetings from Alicante, España !
9 месяцев назад
I was born way before 1961 and serviced some radios. Hitachi used the same single screw. I am fascinated that there were FM. In Argentina we had FM in the 70s. Gracias. Great video!!!
For 62 years old that's impressive, and the quality definitely off the charts. Adding too, that push pull arrangement is pretty impressive having to be pretty beefy transistors to pull that off. Here's wondering if Zenith and G.E. had to tip their collect hats or cuss under their breath ha ha. Anyways, congratulation on a good find and quick resurrection.😊
@@williamstevens7090 unusually low for that type of circuit, compared to UK ones, the output transistors must be a fairly high current type for that low impedance,
Thanks for another great vid. I enjoy seeing quality equipment like this, from a time when consumers had options for consumer electronics at different quality levels. The designer of this unit is looking down and proudly smiling, seeing all us nerds so impressed with his work. No one is going to be making videos 65 years from now of someone restoring 2023 era commodity-grade garbage; where the brand on the front, design, and production facility are all completely unrelated.
When I was a kid, radios like this one were 'dream' radios, that only the adults had; because of the cost, they'd never trusted us with one like this. I finally I was given a GE 'Great-Eight' Model: P915E in 1963 for my 7th birthday. I wore out the leatherette case's bail on the handlebars of my bicycle! And, as I was told it wasn't cheap; and you knew if you lost or broke it, you'd never get another! So, it is understandable that with the quality we see, that these radios were so expensive even in the day... Thanks for posting & 73!
That's so true about Toshiba being a big player over the decades. They were a heavy influence in making components. I was recently involved in troubleshooting a TosLink problem. It's stands for 'Toshiba Link', and it's the standard for fiber optic interfacing audio between modern TVs, VCRs, Home Theater systems, Amps etc. Along with creating the standard they produced the transmit and receive converters between TosLink, and SPDIFF. Their converters (TOTX173, TORX173 older versions) can be found in a lot of entertainment systems.
Another great video..I wanted to thank you for having such great educational videos..I've been watching for a very long time. I wanted to share this short story with you. When I was a little boy my Grandfather's attic was someplace I would sneak off too and he had a big old metal Rca in his attic that he traded some farm equipment for back in the 50s when they had a farm. No one along the area could afford one and my grandfather would invite friends over to watch it. I was fascinated by it and asked for it.Nobody in my family wanted it so he gave it to me and I put it up lugged it around for a long time then started watching you. I was able to restore it.When he got older toward the end of his life I finished it and called my grandparents over and my Parents with a sheet over it and a vcr hooked up we all gathered around it and watched MA and PA kettle. My dad who's in his 80s now sat down in the floor to watch and commented I haven't sat and watched this since I was 7 . My grandfather was nearly moved to tears to see the set play again.Hes gone now and the set still sits in my living room and I turn it on from time to time.Everyone in my family takes a fit over it . I thought I would share this story so you know the impact your videos have on many people who want to preserve the entertainment heritage from decades ago..Thank you .
Cool radio. I watched the whole video to the end and enjoyed it. I learned that it's OK if you don't replace the caps when the radio works fine. This made me feel happy inside because I have been losing sleep over a 1959 GE portable transistor radio I recently acquired that works REALLY well with all the original parts and I could not see why I should replace any. (It's a very sensitive, good performer too). Leaving those new looking but very old caps has caused me some anxiety issues however, so I hope I will finally sleep better after watching this video. Thank you Shango066. ;)
I have the hardest time understanding what the audio quality is supposed to be. Maybe trying out new caps in some strategic place can show a difference. You don't have to leave them in if there is little difference.
@@kti5682 distortion in this case , if only FM?? he didnt say? 'could' be bad ratio detector cap or an imbalance in it cause by it being out of tune or one of the diodes going partially bad no longer matching the characteristics of the other, distortion in all bands could be bad, rubbing speaker, incorrect biasing of the output stage or driver/preamp circuit, or partially bad transistor, a bad cap in terms of low capacity unlikely to cause distortion, but may cause low output,, an electrically 'leaky' cap in the preamp/driver stage could cause distortion but leak would have to be fairly severe
@@kti5682 When the bad cap is in the audio path you will definitely mis some volume, mostly in the form of bass. When it is a filter cap in the power feed, it is often to stabilize a power point, and a bad cap there could cause slow oscillation ("motorboating"), or sometimes a bit faster.
This is nearly identical to a radio I have called a Masterwork Galaxy III from the same era that was made in "Western Germany" It has the same kind of battery holder, the case is nearly identical in shape but is actually made of wood and covered in black leatherette. It's one of my favorites.
Since I discovered your videos about a month ago, I've been watching every one on transistor radios I can find and I always enjoy them and come away with tips to help me in my own repairs. Thanks!!!
I’ve watched many of your videos, I know nothing about electronics but enjoy seeing you fix them and I especially enjoy your witty comments! Thank you..
Toshiba was a prolific manufacturer of transistor radios back in that day. I immediately throught of the TR-193 "Lace" pocket radio they produced around 1958-1959. Those are very rare, very expensive if found ($250+) and usually not working. Their other late 50's pocket radios are also pricey, but not nearly as much. Early 60's and on pocket radios are more available and affordable - but not as cool looking.
Exactly - after the early 60's radios lost the beautiful colors and reverse-painted clear plastic. Real eye candy in those days, replaced by black and chrome. One looked like the next. Dull.
DX Trip to the desert! Nothing like a wide band AM receiver. In 1965 I used to have a rocket radio crystal receiver hooked to a realistic tube tape recorder. WBZ out of Boston was top 40 at the time. It had near FM quality sound. You could actually hear the birdies of adjacent signals. Great Toshiba radio!
I was looking forward to this today. Spent all day moving boxes to our new house, so I nodded off. I had to spin back & see what was done, and - nothing! It's amazing to see little change in the electrolytic capacitors and even the IF alignment was spot on. I have a Toshiba Checkerboard and similarly little needed to be done to it. In it's case it did have the bad gray plastic capacitors. Toshiba made some very nice radios and they retailed in the U.S.A. in these little presentation boxes - cardboard, but very detailed, the lid tilting up and stopped by a little ribbon. Almost the way quality watches were sold in a little presentation box.
One of the favorite radios that I have is a mid 70's General Electric AM/FM transistor radio. The performance is outstanding. On FM, I can hear stuff being broadcast from central Wisconsin, and that's all the way from Isanti County Minnesota! AM is even better, I can hear that border blaster on on the border of US and Mexico! If I go on trips, that's the radio I bring.
The first thing I noticeed when you took the back off was the size of the transformer. I'm so impressed with that radio, 1961 and still working perfectly. 👍Go Toshiba.
Yes I watched the whole video and yes I got something from it, it was worth my time. I learned how to fix my Ford ECM from your channel and that isn't even how I got here. Thanks for the content. Love seeing these classic appliances enjoy some TLC. It's a part of our history.
@Shango : wanna say this at your comment posted first etc. Lots of folks look forward to your weekly videos. As some one says first i think you better see it as a compliment , sitting and looking forward to your latest edition. I always look forward to your videos as a Ham radio operator but also your amazing sense of humor. Heck if i was in your neigbourhood i would make lots of efforts to get a meet and greet and bring you some thank you presents from my country ( the netherlands ) So pls pls pls keep them coming with lots of blamblublances and EOL blow up videos and educating tube radio stuff. To bad your not a licenced Ham otherwise you would be on my bucket have to make a QSL with list. it would be an honor. Have a good weekend shango thanks 👍🍻 73s from PD0ROH Eindhoven Netherlands.
Great radio that was obviously was mishandled in the past. Electrically it is in great shape for its age. Shango had to reconnect the AM antenna. Surprised and impressed. Thanks for showing it is possible to get a decent sounding vintage AM/FM radio with minimal restoration done to it.
As this 'channel' along with several auto repair ones captivates my interest I spend lots of time watching. I've learned that my mind often times absorbs more if I speedup playback... Upper right hand corner has the settings icon gear where I can select playback at 1.25x or 1.5x.
Wow this is a really impressive radio! Pretty high end with that dual power supply. FM in 1961 must be rare, even in the USA. We didn’t get FM until late ‘70’s here in Australia so radios like this didn’t have a market here. Thanks for an interesting video. Cheers
I have great respect for Toshiba. They pioneered the first capacitive touch controls in 1974 and produced the first portable fully synthesized AM/FM radio with digital frequency readout: the 1980 RP-S400...
I was thinking about you today, I know we all evolve with the advent of new tools and test equipment but it sure was cool and enjoyable in years prior watching how you would locate bad capacitors using an amplifier, speaker and a source of sound! Absolutely Beautiful!
You can fix pretty much any set on this planet in nearly any condition, on top of that - your personality is unhinged and unique, you're just who you are and you don't give a ra.... well you know where I am going with this, so yeah it's worth watching, you are endlessly entertaining.
I thought that audio drive circuit looked familiar, (the split in the battery supply gave it away) the GE P925 (TSM-32) uses that same double secondary transformer driving a transistor pair with direct output to the speaker. When I had one of these (as an 11yr old) I changed the speaker to a low impedance regular and shortly after the audio failed. Took until having a replacement (2015) to see in the schematic what I had done. Childhood is for learning. Oh and since you didn't ask I DO enjoy these these repair / disassembly and sarcasm feasts. I've recently added a TinySA to my toolset and plan a SMD remediation procedure on a vacuum tube ZTO. Keep it going sir.
Like it or not you have become the Taylor Swift of this kind of electronics repair stuff. OMG its Shango! Ima Shangie. I love the sounds of the airplanes, doves and blamalams. Much have I learned and much have I destroyed in my vain attempts to learn your ways.
I always thought Toshiba made some great products up until the early / mid 2000's when they went downhill with their design of rear projection TV's ( I was a factory authorized servicer) Thank you Shango066!
Then, they farmed out production of their direct-view CRT sets to Orion. I have such a 27" set from 2006 and it works OK, but it's Toshiba "in name only."
A true testament of high quality standards adopted by Toshiba back in the 60s. Can’t imagine a radio so old restored without having to recap any of the old capacitors. Great learning. Thanks for the video…👍
I watch all your videos from beginning to the very end! I enjoy the sense of humor brought to the workbench in each video. You keep shooting those videos and I’ll keep watching them! You’re a cool person who’s Whitts Cary you beyond most other RU-vidrs on the net. Full flavor country my friend!
I have collected a lot of transistor radios in the past and generally Toshiba is about the priciest brand, because they not only have quality but really beautiful designs. Up til the very early 60's radios were beautiful with reverse-painted plastic and nice colors; Sony and Panasonic turned it to the boring black and chrome.
WOW! That thing had batteries leaking inside it at some point and still works, and works very well with original components. Very very impressive! Thanks for sharing Dan.
Those Japanese and Hong Kong built sets were so undervalued. And yes, I always watch to the end, always worth my time as I appreciate you giving us yours.
A lot of their stuff was under priced so they could dump it on the US market and undercut domestic manufacturers. We definitely saw again with televisions in the 1970s. Looking back on the quality of many of those early import sets, they were very good. There were also some cheap junkers that looked nice, but never performed above the quality of a crystal radio with a output transistor and speaker.
Toshiba really makes quality components. Since the late 90s though we don't see them much in my country. I wonder if they have closed some of their factories, maybe because of cheap components from other asian countries, I'm not sure. Great radio worth restoring fully for sure. Thanks for the video.
When I was a kid in the 60's we had a tube National AM/FM radio (Matsushita) in our kitchen and if you tuned it to the very top of the FM you could hear air traffic communications.
Those coils are strain reliefs I believe I remember in my IPC classes that it one type of strain relief used for discrete components. Never encountered those in the factory I work in though.
I can remember radios and record plays us to sound great back then I have Digital radio which I have give up on because I have to walk around the house trying to pick up a good signal and it uses batteries like it was an EV car i wish I had kept some of my old radios from back in the 60s and 70s it nice to see you got it going it looks like an old well worth watching with a lot of patina
These on-off switches are a pain sometimes, the current goes through a few surface contacts. Two of them are from the steel spring, and (as this one) it oxidises. I repaired some bad switches by soldering a small braided wire from the soldered terminal of the switch, over the spring, to the movable part of the switch. It takes care of both oxidised spring contacts that way.
Soldering on these radios is something else. Can you imagine a factory producing something like this and beeing happy with it? There has to be like 50g of solder in this radio alone, i bet they dipped the whole PCB in a pool of molten solder :D
Good radio and excellent work, I’m going to get my first vintage radio, a Sony CFM-10 made in the late 1980’s. I’m also looking at a MAYAK-1 Soviet military radio, but it’s a bit out of my price range at the moment.
They knew how to build good transistor radios in the late '50s and into the '60s., There was no smartphones back then. I remember a lot of the kids in our 6th grade elementary school classroom brought their transistor radios in.
Always enjoying your videos. I think I've watched every single one now. Excellent content always educational even though I've been in the electronic industry for 40+ years you almost always manage to turn up something new.
Greatly enjoyed the video! As always, I learn something every time I watch one of your videos. Thank you much for entertaining and education content like this!
Exceptional transistor radio. I'd put that in a place where I could actually use it. Flatten a few dents in the grille and polish the plastic and that thing would be very presentable. Enjoyed the vid. Doc
As a comment on first viewer. Yes i did watch the whole video. As usual i enjoy your way of doing things and comments. I remember these kind of radio’s from when i was little. Always nice to see that old tech. Btw. I think i have seen all videos. Always when i see a new video i start right away.
Ive seen those loops on germanium rectifiers mounted on a solid PCB so I dont think it's there to relieve mechanical stress. The perfect thing to clean switch contacts I've found to be the emery cloth on dish sponges. It cleans the corrosion quickly, polishes the contacts, and doesn't scratch them. much better than sandpaper, although it disintegrates rather quickly.
To improve reception in the MW range, I did this 60 years ago with great results. Connect a wire to the RAIN ROOF RAILS from the house then 3 turns to the ferrite antenna and connect the other end of the wire to a tap or ground then you have 100 new transmitters. the electrolyt capacitor you mast chance. The electrolyte capacitor must be replaced. Saludos de Alemania
It helps if the product's manufacturer also makes components in it. This was part of the success of Japanese TV makers versus UK ones. In most cases, the setmaker was part of a bigger firm which also made parts. At the design stage, teams from both departments would work together to arrive at the best overall result. This resulted in superior performance and reliability. In UK firms, a TV design would be set out pretty much in isolation; then the various component makers would be invited to submit their bids to supply parts. The responsibility for good component design fell on them, and they weren't always the best for the task! 'Lowest bid please' also had its effect.
The old Toshiba radios aren't extremely rare but they are very popular with collectors because of their quality and some really beautiful designs. They are a premium radio. I have a few of them in my display case. They also made some radios for JC Penney, Linmark, and Realistic, among others. If there is a serial number label present in one of the older ones you can tell when it was made. First three digits of the S/N tells it. 905 means May of 1959. 008 is August 1960, 204 is April 1962, and so on.
Shango066, one of my friends worked for some company building and turning HF RF transmitters, they used tools made out of bone so there was no off tuning
A yes to I do watch to the end of your videos, yes to I do enjoy them, and it's a yes to I depending on what it is you are working on I get to pick up something new on the how to repair.... This radio's audio comes through good not tinny at all unlike some of them. a good get it running vid man.
