The ITC 490N 'Retro' Radio

[Old Sparky]

'Modern Technology' should perhaps be loosely applied to this Romanian 'scale model' of a Philips 634, since it's circuit seems to be, at the latest, a 1970s transistor design, using discrete transistors throughout, BF255 & BE254 in the RF & IF Stages, BC172's in the A,F. stage, driving, would you beleive, a pair of Germanium output transistors - either AC180's or AC184's.  My main reason for mentioning  the ITC490N here is, to me, the poor build quality.  Whilst the P.C.B. itself appears to be reasonably well made, if a bit cluttered, the way the radio is put together is, I.M.H.O., a bit crude.  The circuit board is fastened to a panel containing the volume & tuning controls with three plastic pillars, each of which is actually two pillars, one on top of the other.  Granted, the radio has reasonable sound quality, and sensitivity, but, if all of them are built the way the one I have in for repair at the moment (broken plastic pillar) improvements could be made.

[Murphyv310]

One piece of alleged retro junk I'd not look at IMHO. Did one before for a friend who thought it was the genuine article...... Never again.

[Paul_RK]

I've not been inside one, but deficiencies in build quality don't surprise me. I think they appeared fairly soon after Philips' own R634, at a much lower price than the Philips model which memory tells me sold for 79 guineas somewhere around 1980. Its cabinet was said to have been made at the Dynatron factory which was part of Philips at the time, and it's a presentable little set, though in producing a scaled-down replica I'd have thought they could have tried harder for the price - the knobs are only an approximation, 'speaker cloth nothing like, and the front moulding is in a matt grey plastic with no resemblance to bakelite. Reasonable but nothing special internally, as I recall: I have one I paid £15 for at the local flea market in about 1990, but I've not seen it for a while.

Paul

[Old Sparky]

It's the first one I've ever seen, Trevor - and I may think twice about fixing another!

[Old Sparky]

As a delayed follow-up to my post, I did successfully repair the ITC 490N. I superglued the broken plastic pillars together, rectified a simple electronic fault (TBH I don't recall what that was!), re-routed & tidied up some of the wiring, after which it gave quite a good account of itself on all 3 wavebands). The owner was pleased to have it back in g.w.o. Incidentally the o/p transistors are BD433/434 or similar, not germanium transistors so this one was obviously a later version. I was also, perhaps surprisingly, able to download a service sheet for the 490, which helped. Never seen a Philips R634, though.