Red scare or red score? Testing out the most Chinese-looking Chinese-made radio I've ever seen, the Hong Deng "Red Lantern" HD-753F, with ominous 1960s Cold War-era styling.
that part reminded me right away of the one hey arnold episode where arnold's asian neighbour who enjoys singing country music becomes a famous radio sensation. I think the neighbour's name was niwin or something like that I can't remember
Yes China's philosophies and cooperate private partnership are expanding world wide. We all need to work for our countries world wide and be behind our great leaders.
@@stephenwong9723 arent there? I do nit like these jokes from Americans. They are so obsessed ( afraid an oblivious) with China. They must be afraid as hell. 😱
I showed this video to my grandma and she wanted me to bought one of these. Said it brought much nostalgia to her mind. She's 78 years old now and moved to New York since the 90s.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 nor a VWestlife episode without a mention of his favourite stations 101.3 WOW FM and 98.7 the Flutter. Siiiiiiiit baaaack for some amazing tunes on WoooooooW! 😅
@M-2 Hydra Build yourself a big AM loop antenna. There are directions to one I made on my video about it. I`m about to make one out of a box a 100 watt solar panel came in. You can get the magnet wire and tuning capacitors on Amazon. You can also get wires with alligator clips on both ends to connect the loop to the tuning capacitor. On a 16 inch pizza box I needed 16 turns of 24 AWG magnet wire wrapped side by side using a 22 dollar 450 pf tuner.
As far as I can tell, this radio is the latest model in the series and the F in the name probably indicates FM. The original Hong Deng 753 had only MW, and was built using germanium transistors. You can still buy them cheap at flea markets in China. Let me know if you want one for a comparison video.
Glad I read your comment so I didn't repeat the same thing. It was a welcome, unexpected bonus. Also, I'm not in the US and I could have thought, well, maybe it plays more often on some oldies stations over there, but by what you say I get it's rare anywhere.
I had some Chinese friends when I was in high school, I can tell you that the first two characters after 753F mean "China", and are pronounced zhongguo which literally stands for "middle country".
When you seperate the two characters, that's the literal translation. 中 = middle and 国 = (more commonly) kingdom. But once they're put together, it means "China"
You see @@daniel_kale people commonly say kingdom in China /me rolls eyes. If you asked 10 Chinese people the meaning of "guo" 10/10 would say country. You are totally right in your thinking. It is "kingdom" from its origination, but "commonly" is a stretch. Some people have to try to be smarty-pantses.
I saw those on eBay a while ago and I was curious so I looked up some reviews. This is a replica of a radio that was really common in China in the '60s, except the original was AM only.
The original ones were made of wood and worked on valves and were 220v. Its just a copy of a 1970s radio that was made. The Chinese says (China - Shanghai Red LIght Company Limited),The original ones were also double the size.
At 2:55, you caught a few seconds of the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D Minor from a weak FM station. This music would have been totally banned during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. No Western decadence for you, Comrade!
I've been fascinated by Soviet 'bone records' ever since I learned about them. It's remarkable how so many regimes want to redact music based on ideology. It's equally remarkable what lengths people went to (and still go to) to hear 'illegal music'.
@@xaenononly that it mostly bs. Sad to say to you but most people here never heard of such records lmao (i did ask people around) if by bone records you mean xray thingies, western music was mostly listened through soviet radio that had foreign music programs, released on records through Melodiya or recorded on Reel to Reel tapes. Soviet people had way more access to western media then people tend to imagine, my father for example has love for westerns, which he developed from watching them as a kid in his small town cinema in 60s-70s
I gave my mom this radio and she loves it. The adaptor plug that was provided in my unit does not cause any interference on am/fm maybe because it has low mAH. I just put an 18650 inside and the adaptor charges it. I only bought this radio because of its retro look. Now I have a lot of chinese radios and some of them are actually good. My favorite is the digital pocket radio which runs on 2x 18650 batteries and has 2 memory card slots and a mini flashlight, really great for an everyday carry.
I have to say, I really love seeing you review these little oddball radios from around the world. This one was a real treat - in all honesty, until you showed the modern power cord it came with, I thought it was a new old stock unit from the 60s!
I have to admit this radio does have a nice retro look. If only you would've been able to pick up 1380 or 1480 from NYC. Those are stations air Chinese programming. Thanks for reviewing it.
1:11 this could be saying "buying this radio officially makes you a member of the CCP" 2:28 I almost expect to hear a speech from chairman Mao when I turn it on 5:00 It wouldn't be AM without the preachers This is definitely the most Chinese-looking Chinese-made product ever, but for the reasons above this is also a funny video.
They really did miss a trick not installing a small red LED behind the red lantern logo. Oh well it would probably an extra quarter cent or something like that.
Hong Deng (Red Lantern) is a very old Chinese brand for radio / cassette recorder / record players, manufactured by Shanghai No.2 Radio Factory. The retro look originated from the classic model Type 753, which was manufactured back in the 1970s.
To me, it looks kind of like something Channel Master would have sold. The asking price seems high. I'd be surprised if it cost even 20% of that to make and ship them.
The ebay seller's name, "Happy Home" reminds me of the Goldstar VCR I bought back in the 80s. I remember the owners manual saying, "We hope you have happy time with your new VCR"
Hi VWestlife. The characters"中国上海红灯电器有限公司" (Zhōngguó Shànghǎi Hóng Dēng Diànqì Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī - if you want to read it in Chinese) translate to China. Shanghai Red Lantern Electrical Appliances Company Limited. Red Lantern is Hóng Dēng in Chinese. That's a very contemporary 'capitalist' way of identifying the factory which made it. :) In the the time of Mao, if its manufacturer was identified at all, it would probably have just said something like "Shanghai No.1 (factories were identified by number) Electric Devices Factory." The fonts used on the radio's number also look very modern. Markings like numbers on products from the past were printed in very odd looking fonts which were often hand-rendered.
Those atmospheric effects are the reason why I can sometimes get a transmission from radio stations as far out as eastern Ohio on a 2016 Nissan Pathfinder.
I got a couple of old mid-70s Chinese radios, a Red Lantern and a Spring Thunder, both have AM and SW, but no FM. I don't believe FM was used for broadcast in China until the late 70s.
I think this unit works quite sensitively on FM judging from the number of stations it receives during yr first dial thru. Edit: For that amount of money, it’d be a much better bet for anyone to buy Degen’s modern radios instead.
The schematic is probably almost the same. The big plus of DSP based radios is that the performance will be almost the same irrespective of manufacturer, and there aren't a dozen adjustments that need making during manufacture.
I just did a bit of digging into the Hong Deng Electronics Company and it was indeed a premium brand for supplying household appliances and entertainment for the CCP members when it was launched in the 1960s. The packaging says "Retro-style Portable 'Transistor' Radio" so this thing might be actually based on a real Hong Deng Radios of the 1960s-70s. One side note - one of the unique offerings that this company produced in the 1960s and 70s was the 8.75mm film projector which was the proprietary but dominant home movie format in Communist China in the 1960s 70s - this format was made by slicing the standard 35mm film stock into 4 pieces, and Hong Deng produced many projectors and other equipment for this format.
I live in the Eastern Europe, small town. I'm amazed how many radio stations you have. For me a radio in my car serves no other purpose than receiving my BT transmitter. Because otherwise I'd have like 3 stations playing commercials most of the time. Of course my phone plays only what it downloaded. Outside big cities not much internet for mobile phones is available.
He's in the single most densely populated state in the US, 470 people per sq km, the FCC has something like 163 total radio stations licensed in New Jersey. I expect things would be very different if he was in the middle of Wyoming
Ironic, he could have used a smart phone, taken a picture of the words and it would have translated what the words meant. New technology solving old technology problems.
Here in the UK there’s not so many AM radio stations left they are in decline unfortunately. FM still has a few but DAB has taken over now it’s a shame because I used to like the sound AM gave out.
There was another big wave of MW transmitters closures this June - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rvoZYo4OhRE.html for example these three from NI..
@@jamespoole7490 I can still catch Absolute Radio on 1197 in the night in Edinburgh. Probably from Nottingham. 1215 is super strong 100 kW from Westerglen near Falkirk and also 1242 is possible.
Isn't it just wonderful to see a product brand new and not waste that extra few seconds or minutes watching the person trying to make surgical cuts in either the box or an envelope with a oversized razor or a 50 year old serrated steak knife that Ron Popeil sold on the television that's seen it's better days.
Yes. I hate unboxing. I guess some people like that just for the experience, but I've never even liked to do it myself. I would be happy if I could snap my fingers and any new product that I get is instantly out of the box like magic.
@@briangoldberg4439 ...........Have you ever tried to open up some of those all plastic blister packs ? .....I've sometimes just had to look at the package for a few seconds and begin to cut the 4 sides of it to try to get a clean break THEN you see that in the middle of the package it's got a heat sealed blister in the middle of it and you still can't open it up. You need a pair of gloves to protect your hands from getting cut. I wonder what those packaging engineers were smoking when they thought of them.
@@jpolar394 and gloves to protect your hands from getting covered in blisters themselves. Its like god damnit I get it they are just trying to protect the merchandise from getting stollen and everything but there are better options! The spider, the sensor tag etc etc etc... I literally got covered in blisters once while opening up a set of motorola walky talkies that came in one of those bloody blister packs. It sliced me several times too
Oh, my. So close. Unfortunately, the Chinese never produced a musical drama entitled "The love of boat anchors", which would have fitted even more precisely a show about old radios (even if not old radios precisely like this one).
Love these obscure radio videos, man! That's very interesting about those cheap power cables too causing all that RFI. Now I'll be checking everything in the shack, especially my raspberry pi's. Have a great summer!
I'm thinking Kevin ought to get himself a Russian radio like a Vega Selena. They were actually far more common than Chinese made ones in the 1970s with adverts in the Sunday papers, saying things like "you've heard about the Russian spy "trawlers" full of sophisticated electronics. Now you can buy a Russian Multi-Band radio with similar capabilities.
THAT would be something i'd love to watch. Because there's a lot of solar radios out there and i'm a little obsessed with them. Would be nice to see which ones actually care and which ones try very little to be actually decent.
wow... holy moly thats fascinating that you caught some very long distance tropo dx! 130 miles is very impressive, especially considering the wide bandwidth of that FM signal.
Half expected a few bars of "The East is Red" to come booming out of that radio when you turned it on! It has a real late 60's/early 70's Cold War look to it. Weird.
I live in Japan so I can read some of that Kanji. First group says 'China' and second group something about 'Shanghai ... electric company' so I think it is a company name based in Shanghai.
it's interesting that cold war era styling & aesthetics influences how people think of this radio when the actual guts of the thing are just cheap off-the-shelf generic radio components...reminds me of Crosley radios where they just bought the name & make new radios with vintage styling to make you think it's the original company making them again
I'm not sure if this is aimed at Chinese pensioners who had the original ones when younger, or people like Kevin who are facinated by the look. In the 1970s / 80s there were lots of novelty radios shaped like cans, bottles, and even Robots. Most were made in Hong Kong and sold in seaside novelty shops.
The volume and tuning controls remind me of cheap looking special effects from sci-fi programmes. The buzzing when using the power adaptor wasn't interference, it was the sound of bees in a beehive! You could always try using an translation app on the text on the radio and in the booklet. Just a thought.
Twice have I almost ordered this radio without the excuse of a RU-vid review. Literally the aesthetics of the thing is the appeal. Fortunately I happened to see some review and the unaesthetic 5Core T-22 entered my life. Unlike some RU-vidrs, I realize the fundamental property of radio is the sound and not the decor of its housing. I still kinda want a 753F though.
I payed a visit to my friend's home during the Lunar New Year early this year and I spotted the exact same 753F placed on a small coffee table next to his grandpa's rocking chair. Seems like Asians are hyping their radio fidelity over aesthetics and this is testified with the 753F and 5-Core radios which are sold like hot cakes in China and India respectively.
Weird how the radio picked up Froggy 99.9 from Ocean City, MD when you'd probably be closer to Ocean City, NJ. Heck, it might even pick up 103.7 WXCY, which is a country station from Havre de Grace, MD, and broadcasts to MD, DE, and some parts of NJ (they just expanded their broadcast as well to include a wider listening area).
The manufacturer uses a nostalgia name to promote sales, however the well-known Red Latern radio in Mao's time was "5-TUBE Red Latern" vacuum tube type radio. Some versions came with short wave, which gave listeners access to so-called Enemy broadcasts at that time, like VOA or Taiwanese Free China broadcasts. The reason short wave radios were still made under China's tight control, simply because in the remote areas there were no AM radio receptions.
I imagine transistor version of this is what you could get for your one-child certificate back in the days NB - it's based on "Red Lantern 红灯 753" transistor radio by Shanghai No.2 radio factory from the 70s (530 - 1600 kHz, so MW)
Which sub-80 USD analogue/semi-digital (DSP based) FM radio would you recommend? Do you think this one would sound better if the speaker is replaced? I want to give one away as a present, it should be very easy to use (Like the one shown in this video).
Its radio china time again yay! I enjoy collecting these crazy and unique chinese radios from amazon and ebay There are so many weired and quirky ones out there even some with bluetooth and a builtin mp3 player.