Examples of Vintage Transistor Radios

Series Summary

Next time you’re in a pawn shop eyeing all of those classic old keyboards and stereos, you may just want to make a purchase. But be sure to pick out a cheap one, even if it doesn’t work. Because after you watch this video series on restoring vintage electronics, you’ll be anxious to try out your new knowledge. You now have the power to bring a old amplifier or a Fender keyboard back to life, saving a bundle of money as you hone your skill in working with electronics. Or maybe you would just like to get that old radio in the attic working again. Grandpa gave up on it years ago, but now you can bring it back to life!

In these free videos, our electronics expert Lorin Parker will tell you how to diagnose and troubleshoot vintage electronic devices. He demonstrates how to clean and test circuits, get the dust out of control knobs and even how to check the voltage on old electronic gadgets. No sound coming out of the radio? Has that hum on your keyboard got you down? Does the volume knob crackle every time you turn it? No problem. Just let Lorin walk you through the solution in these excellent videos and soon you will be enjoying vintage sounds at a discount price!

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Larin Parker for Expert Village and here I have a couple of examples of vintage electronics. Starting over here we have a somewhat classic Magnavox transistor radio that I've picked up. This is special because it's a shortwave receiver as well as a broadcast band receiver. Shortwave receivers before there was the Internet this was a way of hearing broadcasts from around the world. Sometimes when I turn this radio on I can hear things from China, I've gotten transmissions from New Zealand, all the way from those faraway places here to Los Angeles in the United States. It's really quite neat but often you'll find them in Antique stores, you'll find them in thrift stores and their not quite going to be in the best of shape and they need a little bit of work to come to life. This one I've fixed up just a little bit. Here we probably have a Spanish language station coming in on. This is the seventeen meter band. Perhaps from Mexico I don't know, I'd have to wait and see. Also I have this, I'm very proud of this, this is probably going back to the fifties or sixties, this is a Chinese Red Army telegraph machine, a field telegraph. It has that classic tone it also can kind of adjust its frequencies a little bit. For telegraph operators that was important because sometimes they need to adjust the tone a bit if there were multiple transmissions going on, on the same line. This one I had to fix up because originally it was powered by military batteries. It had one forty five volt battery and one, one point five volt battery. The one point five volt battery would be D cell, but the forty five volt batteries we don't even find anymore. When you can find them they are about ninety dollars. The solution for this problem of getting this guy started was to create a power supply for it that could provide forty five volts, and one point five volts in the right way. This is actually a kit from antique electronics supply. I'll show you how to get some of these things going and how to take care of the stuff that you already have with some of the tips coming up in this segment. Thank you"