Who Actually Repaired Sixties Pocket Radios?

[Terry]

Whatever happened to No where man?
When I saw this thread I thought he had popped back.

Last here in January this year, according to the forum stats.

We all used to sit around it closely listening to the puny sound, in between the playground "bundles"

There was a way of beefing up that 'puny' sound.

As I said in my first post in this thread, the differences between sets were mainly confined to the cabinet design. The sets we sold had the speaker grille set off from the cabinet front on a shallow circular projection and was the ideal candidate.

I don't know where the idea came from - I can't claim credit for it - and this would be a few years before the famous speaker-in-a-chimney-pot arrived on the scene, but the idea was similar.

If one of these sets or one with a similar cabinet design came into the workshop, after repairing it I would lay it on its back on the bench. Ideally, a sheet of thick paper and sellotape would have been better but usually I used a copy of a 'Trader' magazine and a strong elastic band. This was rolled into a tube with the aim of creating a snug fit with that circular plastic projection. It was then carefully lowered over the set and then I switched it on.

The difference was incredible! More volume and, most impressive of all, an improvement in frequency response you wouldn't believe these radios were capable of!

Some time after we learned this little trick I popped into our local Woollies one day and saw they were selling speakers for these little radios. The consisted of a tube perhaps 3" in diameter and just under a foot long with a speaker mounted in the centre, two ornamental grilles on the ends and a lead terminating in a 3.5mm jack to fit the earphone socket. Should have sounded good and longer lasting than my elementary attempts - that rolled up Trader was quite weighty and tricky to balance on top of the radio for long!