Looking for the model number of the Philips three posts back I found that Peter Vis has a whole page about that model with internal shots. https://www.petervis.com/Radios/philips-d1720/philips-d1720.html I also had a look inside the Realistic and as I suspected it is a different PCB with one less IC. Surprisingly all the ICs in the Philips are made by Toshiba. Even more surprising when you consider that Philips / Signetics had their own range of Radio ICs. It makes me wonder more whether this was designed by Philips or whether they just got their name printed on someone else's design. As the Philips is one of my top performers that sent me off down a Toshiba rabbit hole and after spotting this on Ebay, a week later it was in my hands. Radio Museum dates this as 1986. I have said before that you don't get more 1980s than diagonal stripes It runs off two AAA batteries and has an LCD bar-graph with scales that change with the band for tuning, and five presets. Performance is similar to the Philips i.e. good. If anyone fancies one brand new and boxed a couple of Ebay sellers in Spain have them. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-x-Tosh...m4691371c71:g:gQsAAOSwe~lb7HmO&frcectupt=true Three times what i paid for my scratched example though.
Great looking radio, 80's styling lives with the graphing and vertical lines, oh yea, there always has to be one red stripe.
I just found this nice litte guy, these are super cool, 9 freakin bands! and just a bit bigger than a cassette case. The Sony ICF-SW20, I found it in one of my storage boxes after sitting a few years, I had completely forgot about this one. I'm cleaning up and organinzing my space so there might be some more photos coming.
and a couple more, the Motorola X40E and it's yellow friend a Panasonic RF-H20. The Motorola is much older and I included it because it looks like its straight out of Star Trek and I can't find any information on it, did the tricorder gets its cues from this? The Panasonic is really nice very small and it pulls in a lot of stations. This is FM Stereo/Mono only but it has "Ultra Phonic Mode", I really can't tell the difference even with a wide stereo song playing but it's really nice looking and the yellow is cool. I might start using this one more, the size is perfect for a pocket.
I found another cool one the Sony SRF-8 with armband strap, this was in a box of stuff I was cleaning out. While it might seem big and clunky, these were nice for listening to the radio back when it was pretty good, skateboarding around town in the middle of the night cranking up some Black Flag on the college radio station. In the 80's radio in the US was more regulated, but in a good way. An entity could only own maybe one station in an area which meant most stations were local. Now we have three companies owning all of the stations in the local market, that's why there's no competition anymore. For the average reader, we used to have 2-5 of every type of music radio station, now we're lucky if there's two and they're still owned by the same company so you don't get any variety. It was good back then when you had your favorite DJs that would guide you to the newest bands because they liked them, not becuase the station's owner also produced their record. The SRF-8 has an AM/FM dial on the top and when you remove the battery the case has a gasket so water doesn't get into the battery compartment, pretty cool!
Here are two that I missed buying this week https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ORIGINAL-VINTAGE-PANASONIC-amp-PHILIPS-PORTABLE-POCKET-SIZE-RADIOS-BOTH-WORK-/233559405881?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&nma=true&si=LqtQzdgxcbPCXvcYdIk7V7c7CAE%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc Annoyingly I was the first bidder, but when I got outbid thought I would wait until close to the auction end before bidding again. I was thinking about it both in the morning and lunchtime, but then got busy doing things for work and the house and completely forgot about the auction until I saw the "you missed this" email from Ebay. The Panasonic RF-422 comes in quite a few paint schemes. I think they were trying to outdo the Philips "Moving Sound" range with this one. I have an example of the Philips already but in Gloss Black. On Friday I was using my Toshiba which receives well but has a bit of a "gritty" sound then swapped to the Philips which is much richer and smoother, hence a quick look to see if any more were available. I don't have any Panasonics in the collection to date so was interested in finding out how they perform. Off topic, I felt even older on Friday when I found that "Sounds of the 80s" which I listen to has moved time and is now followed by "Sounds of the 90s". Yes the 90s are now considered to be nostalgia, to be listened to on Radio 2.
Seems some people still praise up Philips but I'll never own a Philips cassette player again because they chew tapes up like they're chewing gum!, the reason for this is the plastic gear drive where the gears melt or break then the full hub turns while the receiving hub doesn't thus feeding loose tape into the machine. This might be avoidable if you have an auto reverse model and put the side you want to play face down/in to play backwards and stop at the end, this defeats the advantage of not having to turn a tape over but it beats having to throw the tape away! I've had two Philips CD/Radio/USB units for two years, they are brilliant, AZ2538 and AZ2555. My Sony Walkman WM FX313 is twenty five years old in December and is still brilliant and with the radio frequencies still visible (not rubbed off). I've got a Sony CD Walkman D-FJ61 that I bought last year which also has a radio so if the batteries won't allow CD or cassette play I can listen to the radio on either machine. I've had half a dozen CD Walkman or Discman type models but all packed up in a short time, this one's kept going, touch wood.
Sony had some neat Sports Model AM/FM Radios, too bad this was when bluetooth was still an enfant way back in 2002. The Walkman SRF-H5, notice the "carbon fiber" detailing if you can see it underneath the black, these are pretty heavy duty build compared to some other radio/headphone combinations. I don't think there is a plug for a Walkman Jack. Some cut sheets are attached.
Interesting post. Personally I've never bought a dedicated FM Walkman but I have always preferred the tape WM models with FM/AM functionality too, I've owned many Walkmans but often sell the majority off as I just enjoy working on/repairing them. I've only kept 3 Walkmans, all of which have built-in radios... I suppose I just have some sort of nostalgia for those ones. I do have a WM-DD as a dedicated tape player + a deck but I seldom use them, the former still needs fixing (which won't happen for a very long time now with corona)... My absolute favourite personal Walkman-type device is the Panasonic RQ-E27V, which has an extremely sleek look but most importantly has very good radio functionality, that's primarily why I hold it in such high regard.
I can vouch for my RQ-E27V as being an absolutely solid product, though maybe that comes from it being a later release and likely of a sturdier/more sophisticated build. The mechanism was rather complex in comparison to Sony WMs when I refurbished it last year.
The Sanyo RPM 6950, another model from the golden age of portable radios, this has an added calculator! The case front is metal with a plastic back, overall the build quality is really nice and if your looking for the dial, it's on the top with a lighted pointer. The tuning and volume dials are metal and turn with really nice precision, the only question is the headphone jack is right next to the antenna.
I have finally got a Panasonic RF-422 for the collection, which came in the original (but tatty) box. Radio Museum dates this one to around 1987, still in the era of diagonal lines. First impressions are good, with good reception and a nice tone. I will have to compare it with the Philips which is my current favourite. Also shown is a Sony SRF-M35 . However, that got put to one side when I got it months ago as the volume control is very scratchy / intermittent.
Longman. Those diagonal line walkmans certainly catch the eye. Never seen that Sony radio before. How does it sound compared to the Sony?
I am pleased with the Multi-Colour Panasonic. It comes in a number of patterns. I posted a picture of one that I missed further up the thread. As I said in the previous post, as a minimum the Sony needs some contact cleaner in the volume control before I will be able to use it and give an opinion on how it sounds.
Nice pick up, you seem to gravitate towards the ones with mega-80's coloring and design. Personally I feel like they will become as collectable as the neat old 60's transistors that had the cool styling since they really define the era. I always tried to have a Walkman with a radio so I never had a radio only but I'm sure there was a lot of times it would have worked fine. I just don't remember seeing that many back then or they were really cheap Emerson or Sound Design Models.
That is true. Before bidding on the Panasonic (for which I was the only bidder at a start price of £8.50) I spotted this one when it was £19.50 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Panasoni...404283?hash=item4b8155643b:g:q-0AAOSw~ANfR8cw but the boring styling and higher price made me wait for something better. One reason for buying these is that I do actually use them, especially for listening to Sounds of the 80s https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03c936z on a Friday night. After @Mister X 's post I was counting up and I have seven MP3 players with built in radios, but none have a belt clip. Also quite a few Cassette Players with built in Radios including the RQ-E27V that @stereomecha99 was rating highly a couple of posts back, but that is about four times the size of these radio only models. I can't find that at the moment but found an RQ-85V for the attached photo It is nice to have something that simply receives the radio well and sounds good as soon as you turn it on. Another good thing about these simple models is that as the battery gets low they just get quieter rather than abruptly cutting out. Lets just hope that Radio 2 stays broadcasting on FM. I do have two pocket DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) radios. The Technica is quite nice but has a battery life of about four hours, The most recently purchased POP was a big disappointment as it has the worst sound of any of my headphone radios with next to no bass. I am seriously thjnking of dismantling it to see if anything can be done about it (like changing the output capacitors).
Longman, your Prinz Cruiser looks identical in shape to what was sold here in the US as the ‘Mura Hi-Stepper Hi-3’.
I did comment at the time "I am sure there would be an AKA of this." Dixons was (and still is) a company with lots of electrical shops (similar to Best Buy in the USA) who has own brand products but don't manufacturer any of them. Changing the subject and since I took the photos some time ago here is proof that Sony is still intent on making innovative transistor radios. The XDR-P1 is still a current model which is about the same size as a cassette. Like many items sold today it has a built in rechargeable battery. These do have a bit of a reputation for the power switch coming off the board. Someone was selling a load of these "Spares or Repair" at about 1/4 of the retail price. However, the one I received works perfectly.
Sony is doing a lot more for DAB overseas than they are with HD Radio here in the US.......You can count with one hand how many (smaller) HD Radios are available in this country--over all brands.
How popular is HD Radio in the USA? In Europe some countries like Norway have turned off their main FM transmitters. They did plan to do that in the UK but thankfully it got postponed as they realised there are rural areas without DAB coverage. We were getting lots of adverts explaining how wonderful DAB is with Lots of stations and "Near CD quality sound". I presume they weren't including the many stations that use 64KBit/s MP2 encoding (no that wasn't a typo) in that category. Quantity not quality seems to be the name of the game on DAB now. On a related subject Techmoan recently reviewed a Sony NW-A45 Walkman and noted that the European version doesn't have a radio. Apparently that is because it is illegal to sell radios without DAB+ in France. By re-flashing his firmware to the Australian version he got the radio and no volume limiting. I suppose we can't criticise France for being for being forward looking too much. as they did a similar thing with SCART sockets on TVs. That meant that by the end of the 1980s nearly all TVs sold in Europe featured SCART which worked better with computers and games consoles than either S-Video or Component.
