the most popular portable music and entertainment device today which you may be using to play
this video right now is of course the smartphone and before then in the 2000s it was the portable
MP3 player and before then in the 1990s it was the portable CD player and before then
in the 1980s it was the portable cassette tape player and that's probably as far back
as most of my viewers remember
but before then back in ancient history the most popular portable battery-powered pocket-sized
device that people were using to listen to music anywhere on the go was the transistor
radio
the first commercially manufactured transistor radio was the Regency TR1 introduced in 1954
but the heyday of the transistor radio was really in the 1960s and 1970s when they were
mass manufactured in the Far East and sold at discount prices for example in 1971 you
can get a typical basic AM transistor radio for under five dollars or a model that also
had FM for around fifteen dollars
but that was 50 years ago what about today is it still possible to get a decent quality
transistor radio now well the answer is yes and it's actually from a brand that I'm sure
everyone recognizes: Sony
yes they actually do still sell a transistor radio today it has am and FM a small built-in
speaker a folding out antenna for FM the AM antenna is built in you get a switch for AM
and FM the tuning dial the volume control and a headphone output and it runs on two
AA batteries and it comes with a wrist strap and that's really about it
and the fit and finish of this radio is excellent the plastics are all high quality the battery
door is captive so you can't lose it it feels just like a Sony product from the '90s because
it probably is a Sony product from the '90s that they simply kept on making
and although this is not a stereo radio on either AM or FM it does have a stereo headphone
jack so unlike vintage transistor radios which were designed to play through one of those
awful single earphones you can plug in a normal pair of stereo headphones and hear the audio
through both ears
it's the Sony ICF-P26 and you can buy it right now brand new on Amazon for around $29 so
let's try out first on FM
"a house explodes in Pompton Lakes New Jersey with six firefighters inside at about two
this morning the six firefighters were called to a house because of thick black smoke in
the basement as they made..."
that's 1010 WINS the news station in New York City which is now simulcasting on 92.3 FM
[Music]
[Music] [Commercials] [Music]
finally some nice peace and quiet on FM but you can hear it's picking up plenty of stations
all across the dial so very good reception on FM [Music] and this is one of the weaker
signals that's coming in nice and strong but the dial calibration is a little bit off because
this is supposed to be 105.9 and it's showing around 104 so it's like the whole dial's kind
of shifted downwards but otherwise good reception on FM
it doesn't get very loud but that was typical
for transistor radios they have rather low output power because you don't want to be
annoying everyone else around you of this thing so they purposely kept the maximum volume
kind of low
"Monday mornings at 11 on the Classical Network and at wwfm.org"
I'm actually impressed it's picking up this station WWFM 89.1 even my full-size component
tuner has difficulty picking up a clean signal from this station it's not coming strong enough
to light up the tuning indicator but you can hear it's coming in perfectly listenable
now let's try AM
"...any pre-owned vehicle on our lot including our huge selection of cars, trucks, and SUVs
$3000 at Lamoille Valley Ford we have by far the largest inventory of new Fords in Vermont along with
a huge selection of pre-owned vehicles and we have instructed our entire team to make
deals and earn your business"
just heard an ad for a Ford dealer in Vermont I'm here in New Jersey so that's some kind
of station from a couple hundred miles away it is nighttime right now so the reception
on AM is better for long distance
"users benefiting from or owning part of the platforms they're using via tokens and digital
assets and transacting digital currencies to power..."
the speaker's kind of rattley but that was pretty typical for transistor radios I mean
it's a little plastic enclosure so it's common for the speaker to make it rattle when you
turn up the volume
here's a song people have listened to on one of these back in the '60s
and a song people have listened to on a transistor radio in the '70s
"the love hour is on the air now I want to say hi to cousin Jim Chrisette hello Jim uh
he said I'll be listening tonight Brucie after I get home from the hospital visiting my wife
I hope everything is going well God bless you and please tell your wife Jim that we
said a prayer and this is Jim's song to his wife" [Music]
that was a voice people may remember in the New York City area Cousin Brucie the famous
DJ from WABC and later CBS-FM now he's back on WABC AM radio Saturday nights he has his
oldies show so that's a nice throwback
now I'll give you some direct hookup samples of this transistor radio taken from its headphone
output so you can hear what it sounds like directly through your speakers instead of
through this little speaker
"we're here with attorney Mark Miner of the personal injury law firm of Zalman, Schnurman
and Miner"
"but he is a cuckoo-munga he's a fruit loop trooper he's a nut job like we have discovered
so many of the others are in the House of Representatives on both sides of the aisle
we got our crackpots screwballs ne'er-do-wells on the Republican side we might as well call
them a squad so to speak led by George I never told the truth in my life Santos right" [Music]
"do you have taxiety that uncertain feeling knowing taxes are due and you don't know what
to do 710 WOR the voice of New York" [Music] "it's 30 degrees in New Jersey fast traffic
and instant weather every 15 minutes on New Jersey 101.5 New Jersey 101.5 our own radio
station New York not Philadelphia proud to be New Jersey"
[Music]
"from Bedford New Hampshire softrockradio.net the lighter side of classic rock
and more" [Music]
I think that proves that with a strong signal and a high quality tuner AM can sound almost
as good as FM
inside it's very simple just one single-sided circuit board there is the AM ferrite bar
antenna the tuning capacitor a couple coils a ceramic filter for the AM tuner there's
the band switch and on/off switch volume control headphone output and the built-in 8 ohm 0.2
watt speaker which is just glued to the cabinet so that's why it's prone to buzzing when you
turn up the volume and just one chip which runs the whole show
it's a Sony CXA-1019S which is an integrated AM/FM radio tuner and a 500 milliwatt audio
amplifier but unfortunately I just discovered that this model the ICF-P26 has recently been
discontinued and replaced with the ICF-P27 which looks nearly identical except it's a
few dollars cheaper and the tuning dial's arranged a little bit differently
and you may ask what's the difference while this radio is based on an old-fashioned analog
tuner chip the ICF-P27 is based on a digital tuner chip that model may still look like
it has an analog tuning dial but it's really masquerading as one because it has that digital
tuner chip which is constantly scanning the position of this tuning dial and if it detects
that it has changed it'll retune itself to whatever frequency you've selected
thankfully it still has good reception and no annoying choppiness as you tune across
the dial unlike most other DSP based tuners
so if you want a true analog tuning radio from Sony you better get one of these ICF-P26's
while they're still in stock because this will probably be your last chance
"because giving you options is the right thing to do oh yeah like when I hold the door for
someone sure it may be weird if I don't time it right and they're a little too far away
and oh now they're running and we're both asking ourselves is it worth it to run instead
of just you know letting them open their own door"