Who Actually Repaired Sixties Pocket Radios?

[Nowhere-Man]

Having experienced the trials and tribulations with respect to small transistor radio repair, I was curious over a specific point. I know many pocket radios were exported by Japan and that they were really pretty costly at the time. The idea was portability, of course, and people could now go on a picnic and not have to cart a larger 90 volt powered Vidor around.

The question that I wonder about is, were these pocket radios repaired and, if so, by whom? Let's say you were living in the swinging sixties and you bought a pocket Japanese transistor radio or a Fidelity Coronet. Then, the output stage goes kaput. Did you take it back to the shop and did the shop fix it? Or did you just get a new radio?

Or were these smaller radios built just to last as long as they lasted with no thought to on-going service if they broke?

I recall very well in my day we had these black leather case small transistor sets and they always seemed to work just fine. I used mine to listen to Radio Luxemburg at night. The only case I can recall of a repair was a mono tape player I had that was taken back to a shop as it chewed up cassettes. It was returned after repair and it still chewed up tapes.

[Mark Hennessy]

They were pretty reliable from new. Tin whisker transistor problems didn't show up for many years - well outside of the warranty period. Likewise, capacitors were fine from new. Output stages were generally reliable and more often than not only went wrong if people did something daft with them (like a short circuit in external loudspeaker wiring).

Most weren't especially easy to work on, but it was possible with care. But that was by experienced engineers - not people who are relatively new to the game. There are easier sets to "cut your teeth" on. For example, Hacker made great sets that were built with future maintenance in mind. Generally, a pleasure to work on, with plug-in connectors and modular construction. Pick yourself up a Hunter RP38A or a Sovereign II RP25A. Then download the manuals and study them, as they were a work of art in their own right.

I find continental sets to be the hardest to work on - in no particular order, Grundig, Tandberg, Braun, and several others besides. But they were cleverly designed and made, and do generally last well - it's hard to get too upset when a set gets its first failure in 40+ years...

[Old Sparky]

About 50 years ago, I had a Sobell 'Word ranger' multi-band portable. A little bigger than Pocket size, but still quite small. The volume control/on-off switch failed, and, back then, I didn't feel that i wanted to work on the radio myself, so back to the shop it went. They repaired it for, IIRC, the princely sum of 18/6d (92.5p). I forget what the radio cost, maybe something like 13guineas (£13.06), the best part of a week's wages to me at the time! I haven't seen a 'World Ranger' for maybe more than 40 years. Don't know what happened to mine!!

[Terry]

I know it is five and a half years old(!) but I just stumbled on this thread by accident.

I note that neither reply answers the original question, so here goes!

Who Actually Repaired Sixties Pocket Radios? I did!

Originally targeted at the US market, they first appeared her in 1962* where they became the 'must have' present for the youth of the day.

Not all were made in Japan - quite a lot were made in Hong Kong, but all the identifiable parts were Japanese.

They were also the first sets that most people had seen with dials marked in frequency, as in the US, of course, and they all carried the square and triangular symbols that marked the US Conelrad frequencies. As there is no Long Wave in the US, they were all Medium Wave only.

The sets we sold were from Hong Kong and were under the Kendy trademark I think - but it was a long time ago!

They retailed at £5 19s 6d, I recall.

No matter which country they came from they were virtually identical on the inside, only the cabinets varied.

In the main, there were only four faults with these sets!

One was broken battery leads, followed by faulty volume controls, although it would often be the little paxoline cam that operated the on/off switch that started to revolve on the spindle. Fotunately we had a wholsaler who carried these little 5k controls, so no problem there.

The other two faults were rarer. At the bottom left hand corner of the PCB was the final IF transformer, then right on the bottom between it and the edge of the board were the detector diode and diode load. It somebody was clumsy when changing the PP3 battery, its body and the IF can made a beautiful vice which could prove fatal to the diode! A replacement OA90 did the trick. Occasionally it might be the load resistor which suffered and 4.7k resistors were the first eighth watt resistors we ever stocked!

* I've written about this before in a post entitled "The year of the vest pocket radio" - probably on VRAT1, but I can't seem to find it and the thought of going through the entire forum to look for it doesn't really appeal! It did, however, explain why I am so certain about the date.

[dawson5]

As I remember most faults were just broken battery leads or problems with the earphone or socket.

[Murphyv310]

You were not alone Terry in repairing 60's portables. I started in the trade in 1970 and you did a 50 50 mix of radio and TV for a couple of years. There were many Benkson and Kendy sets to do as well as Pye and Murphy.
I had the advantage of playing around with radio and TV prior to joining the trade.

[Diabolical Artificer]

Anyone come across a valve portable tranny? A chap off tother forum who I helped fix his record player said he had one. I didn't get to see it though.

Andy.

[Murphyv310]

There were a couple of hybrid portables, fairly rare now though. I'm sure they will be noted on the Radiomuseum.

[Terry]

I've a vague memory of seeing one - German, from memory.

That would make sense because it took some time before transistors working at high frequencies were developed and the occupying forces had appropriated the AM frequencies allocated to Germany for AFN and BFBS. So Germany made considerable use of Band II for broadcasting very early on, making a hybrid portable with a valve VHF mixer/oscillator a viable proposition as soon as transistors capable of operating at 10.7MHz became available for the IF at low enough prices.

[ppppenguin]

There were also hybrid car radios. Transistors for the audio, valves for RF.

Hybrid design hung on a lot longer in TVs. Although Thorn led the world in transistorised colour TVs in 1967 and Philips followed a little later quite a few makers stuck to valves for the line output well into the 1970s.