I've had a few of these Webcor radios in the late 60's & 70's, the small pocket radios and I had a multi-band (with police bands). The large drug store in town used to sell them.
The very early pocket radios containing germanium transistors seem more reliable, even with the substance being less thermally stable than silicon types. Perhaps the use of epoxy in the process of manufacture (the release of chemicals in curing) affecting the RF performance of the P-N N-P junction only becomes noticed after a long period... I imagine there exists several radios with this problem...
I dunno, from experience some Mullard and Newmarket germanium transistors can be very unreliable, mainly due to tin whiskers forming and shorting them out.
I'm wondering if the plastic used on those early transistors was an alpha emitter and the silicon got radiation poisoning. If the transistor testers show them good, but they have no gain, I would suspect that the Ft went to hell, those testers only look for DC gain anyway. You'd need a dynamic tester that ran at several mhz to sort that kind of thing out.
I don't know if that's only me, but I found out that sometimes if you heat them up, they start to work right. I found that useful on some situations like that with those early transistor radios.
Interesting. I recently bought an AM/FM radio at an estate sale (for a song) that looks exactly like that one, except for the blue logo and name on the front. Instead of Webcor, mine says AIMOR. Everything else is exactly the same. Obviously the same factory, time of manufacture, but different retail brand. This one works and sounds pretty darn good for a radio from that time. I brought it to the beach the other day and irritated a neighbor (hot broad in her late 40's) by turning it up loud and dancing awkwardly around her.
I Love you're videos Shango especially the Cave mine exploration. You have great camera skills, and thank you for sharing these great experiences with us.
That is a cool little radio. Good repair information in this video. I would love to collect radios, but I live in an area that the AM and FM bands are so crowded, that nothing comes in good (central NJ.) The station depends more on where your standing, than how you move the tuning dial.
Lots of oldie/goodie radios are found at estate sales and the like, often for a dollar or two, so it wouldn't be difficult to collect a handful for little money and experiment with reception. I also live a crowded radio dial region (Los Angeles) and found that some radios are better than others. Not so surprisingly, modern era digital tuners can cut through cross fading and isolate distant stations. I own a Sangean DT200V, which in addition to am and fm, it has a 13 station TV band, which was obviously designed and sold when TV signals were broadcast in analog. It remains the king in my handheld collection. Sensitive and powerful, sounds great, runs forever on two AA's, 19 programmable preset stations, I take it with me everywhere. The current Sangean product equivalent is the DT200x, or the DT400, which includes an emergency/weather band, plus bass boost.
My niece was cleaning out her recently passed mom's trunk (My oldest sister) when she came across 3 old AM transistor pocket radios. Having watched dozens of these type repair videos, I was anxious to see what I could do with them. The first 2 were completely dead when I put a battery in them, the third came on full blast and the volume control refused to turn it down. Well I have hundreds of old capacitors I got in surprise packages from ElectronicGoldmine so I went about replacing the caps on the 2 that refused to utter a peep, son of a gun if both didn't come back to life, now I didn't have the exact replacements, in fact most of the caps I had were 47uf so anything close like 30 or 50 got those. Didn't have any 10 volts but I did have some 16 volters so they went in the sets. For 0,05's I used some disk caps and they seemed OK as well. The one that was full blast refused to change despite using deoxit on her,, so in desperation, I went to the screwdriver and dis-allinged her, now she does pick up all the local stations and begins at a fairly good listenable volume and goes up with the turn of the switch. I do have another old skeleton of a pocket radio when I find that I plan on replacing the volume switch with that one.
had one of these puppies in the 70s,,used the 1/8 ear plug/speaker out to see how fm did when plugged w RCA cable into the panasonic record player/in,,,fidelity & s/n was good,not stereo,
I think a lot of those "domed" transistors were made by Fairchild. It seems like when they get older, they need more bias. I've just done half-ass repairs by scratching pencil lead from base to collector on the circuit board to turn the transistor on a little more. Just keep scratching lead til it starts playing good. And yes, you gotta watch out for component testers. I had a CB radio with a bad final. Diode check function showed good, transistor checker said good, had beautiful curve on curve tracer. Scratched head. Installed new final. Bam! - 5 watts. The best guess I could come up with was that someone keyed the mic with no antenna, and the final got "bruised", not fried. I guess the base-emitter capacitance increased to the point where it no longer had gain at 27 Mhz. The transistor did have DC and low freq gain tho.
Interesting trick, the trouble required to get this thing apart is enough that I will just pop something else in there. This one is branded with 2 interlocking Cs like CC, not the fairchild F.
The domed case does look a lot like the early uLogic ICs by Fairchild. I have an Emerson transistor that checks good with the tester, but it wouldn't work on the radio. I plugged it on a Zenith and it works there, no idea what's going on with it.
About 30 years ago, I took a look at a cheap boombox that an elderly woman who knew my mother owned. FM was OK, but AM was dead. With no schematic and no incentive to invest a lot into it, I found a dead IF stage and just jumpered over it with a ceramic capacitor. It got all the local stations and was probably fine for an old lady in a nursing home who probably only listened to one or two stations. Whatever it takes.
No Name Cool! That was a recommended troubleshooting technique in FM IFs that had the "gain block" ICs. Jumper a cap across in and out on each IC til the signal came up, and then you have located the bad IC.
Where do you get all these wonderful old radios from please? I LOVE fixing stuff, but if I could find them in the uk, I would do this all day everyday.
Those epoxy topped transistors will sometimes temporarily be shocked back into operation from soldering or accidentally shorting the leads while powered up. Back in the day would use the V.T.V.M. on R X1 for junction checks, although bad looked good.
thats what i call a STARMATE ST1 its total satellite driven radio no ANTENNAS of nothing.....NO COMMERCIALS no ANNOYING DJS!!! just a square black box and it picks up the satellite signal and bypassing the AM/FM bands all together!!!
I have Panasonic radio RF1405L it working fine with its original capacitors do you think I need to replace them. Do you think replacing capacitors will improve the sound and reception. Thanks
To be honest, anything that uses electrolitic capacitors with more than 20 years should be replaced. If they're not bad, they will be soon! Specially high voltage ones, or used on power supplies.
Don't know how it was Stateside, but here in the UK in the 60s and 70s, there was only 3 stations on FM/VHF and dozens of stations on AM/MW. Now in 2023, AM is rather dead, with a couple of talk stations, no music, and there's dozens of stations on FM. Also FM radios tend to me more complex than AM ones, more components.
Another blob-topper transistor bites the dust,over the years i've serviced lots of equipment and found lots of problems with these Fairchild and fairchild-like clones, sometimes heating or cooling the device will cause it to pop back to life,it may be because of differences in expansion rates between the body and epoxy tops that they would develop internal problems.
I have a General Electric pocket radio, very similar to this. The two wires connecting to the batter broke off, so I salvaged some parts from a baby monitor and repaired it. I'm interested in learning how to repair electronics.
Nice video, I just finished watching Mr Carlson repair and tear down a Heathkit tracer so was amazed to see you use one. You said you cant work out which is BCE on the transistor that you took out but got good readings from a meter. If I understand this right, then I hope this helps.. Find the base by swapping red leads around until you find two good junctions, if that doesn't work do the same with the black lead. If you get 2 junctions with red leads the you have an NPN if black then it's PNP... Next measure again very carefully from the now known base and the reading that is higher is the Emitter, leaving the Collector being the last lead.. It's not perfect as in rare cases you get the same reading, wait a while to let the meter settle in difficult cases.
Excellent repair, you know your stuff.
Interesting cute little radio. It reminds me of the ones I had as a kid, riding my bike around with it hanging off the handlebars. 👍🏻😀❤️
Best listening ever.
I've had a few of these Webcor radios in the late 60's & 70's, the small pocket radios and I had a multi-band (with police bands). The large drug store in town used to sell them.
Learn something in that video,thanks.
The very early pocket radios containing germanium transistors seem more reliable, even with the substance being less thermally stable than silicon types. Perhaps the use of epoxy in the process of manufacture (the release of chemicals in curing) affecting the RF performance of the P-N N-P junction only becomes noticed after a long period... I imagine there exists several radios with this problem...
I dunno, from experience some Mullard and Newmarket germanium transistors can be very unreliable, mainly due to tin whiskers forming and shorting them out.
I only know basic electronics but video great thanks
That type transistor is junk, but I do not think they designed those little radios to last 40+ years.
I'm wondering if the plastic used on those early transistors was an alpha emitter and the silicon got radiation poisoning. If the transistor testers show them good, but they have no gain, I would suspect that the Ft went to hell, those testers only look for DC gain anyway. You'd need a dynamic tester that ran at several mhz to sort that kind of thing out.
I don't know if that's only me, but I found out that sometimes if you heat them up, they start to work right. I found that useful on some situations like that with those early transistor radios.
10:17 FBI Asst. Dir. Bill Gannon...and his partner Joe Friday....
That radio has that late 60's 70's Hong Kong sorta flavor to it
Kinda Szechuaney.
Hongquoidal
12:25 2 god references and a jesus in a 2.5 second am band scan -
Interesting. I recently bought an AM/FM radio at an estate sale (for a song) that looks exactly like that one, except for the blue logo and name on the front. Instead of Webcor, mine says AIMOR. Everything else is exactly the same. Obviously the same factory, time of manufacture, but different retail brand. This one works and sounds pretty darn good for a radio from that time. I brought it to the beach the other day and irritated a neighbor (hot broad in her late 40's) by turning it up loud and dancing awkwardly around her.
AM has turned into a pocket squarewave synthesizer lol, hello shango you ok?
That model sold in the UK in the 1970s with the 'Perisound' label. My sister had one for a long time.
I Love you're videos Shango especially the Cave mine exploration. You have great camera skills, and thank you for sharing these great experiences with us.
Just like a tube tester, always question a "good" reading. BTW - Love the Teflon Tampon comment. Spot on 100%!!!!!!
Oh hell yes, I second that comment re: hellery.
vs. Drump. I hope Bernie runs on the Green party, or the FBI does their duty before the convention.
That is a cool little radio. Good repair information in this video. I would love to collect radios, but I live in an area that the AM and FM bands are so crowded, that nothing comes in good (central NJ.) The station depends more on where your standing, than how you move the tuning dial.
Lots of oldie/goodie radios are found at estate sales and the like, often for a dollar or two, so it wouldn't be difficult to collect a handful for little money and experiment with reception. I also live a crowded radio dial region (Los Angeles) and found that some radios are better than others. Not so surprisingly, modern era digital tuners can cut through cross fading and isolate distant stations. I own a Sangean DT200V, which in addition to am and fm, it has a 13 station TV band, which was obviously designed and sold when TV signals were broadcast in analog. It remains the king in my handheld collection. Sensitive and powerful, sounds great, runs forever on two AA's, 19 programmable preset stations, I take it with me everywhere. The current Sangean product equivalent is the DT200x, or the DT400, which includes an emergency/weather band, plus bass boost.
I own both those models Sangean radios, they are very good quality pocket radios.
My niece was cleaning out her recently passed mom's trunk (My oldest sister) when she came across 3 old AM transistor pocket radios. Having watched dozens of these type repair videos, I was anxious to see what I could do with them. The first 2 were completely dead when I put a battery in them, the third came on full blast and the volume control refused to turn it down. Well I have hundreds of old capacitors I got in surprise packages from ElectronicGoldmine so I went about replacing the caps on the 2 that refused to utter a peep, son of a gun if both didn't come back to life, now I didn't have the exact replacements, in fact most of the caps I had were 47uf so anything close like 30 or 50 got those. Didn't have any 10 volts but I did have some 16 volters so they went in the sets. For 0,05's I used some disk caps and they seemed OK as well. The one that was full blast refused to change despite using deoxit on her,, so in desperation, I went to the screwdriver and dis-allinged her, now she does pick up all the local stations and begins at a fairly good listenable volume and goes up with the turn of the switch. I do have another old skeleton of a pocket radio when I find that I plan on replacing the volume switch with that one.
13:32 After he finished the vocal, Jones took off his headphones and said "nobody'll buy that morbid son of a bitch."
had one of these puppies in the 70s,,used the 1/8 ear plug/speaker out to see how fm did when plugged w RCA cable into the panasonic record player/in,,,fidelity & s/n was good,not stereo,
I think a lot of those "domed" transistors were made by Fairchild. It seems like when they get older, they need more bias. I've just done half-ass repairs by scratching pencil lead from base to collector on the circuit board to turn the transistor on a little more. Just keep scratching lead til it starts playing good. And yes, you gotta watch out for component testers. I had a CB radio with a bad final. Diode check function showed good, transistor checker said good, had beautiful curve on curve tracer. Scratched head. Installed new final. Bam! - 5 watts. The best guess I could come up with was that someone keyed the mic with no antenna, and the final got "bruised", not fried. I guess the base-emitter capacitance increased to the point where it no longer had gain at 27 Mhz. The transistor did have DC and low freq gain tho.
Interesting trick, the trouble required to get this thing apart is enough that I will just pop something else in there. This one is branded with 2 interlocking Cs like CC, not the fairchild F.
The domed case does look a lot like the early uLogic ICs by Fairchild.
I have an Emerson transistor that checks good with the tester, but it wouldn't work on the radio. I plugged it on a Zenith and it works there, no idea what's going on with it.
Graphite resistor trick, good idea!!
About 30 years ago, I took a look at a cheap boombox that an elderly
woman who knew my mother owned. FM was OK, but AM was dead. With no
schematic and no incentive to invest a lot into it, I found a dead IF
stage and just jumpered over it with a ceramic capacitor. It got all the
local stations and was probably fine for an old lady in a nursing home
who probably only listened to one or two stations. Whatever it takes.
No Name Cool! That was a recommended troubleshooting technique in FM IFs that had the "gain block" ICs. Jumper a cap across in and out on each IC til the signal came up, and then you have located the bad IC.
Didn't Webster-Chicago become Webcor?
Nice avatar. 🙂
that must be an American version of the Mallard.
Esses receptores eram bons, pararam de fabricar e agora só tem porcaria no mercado!
I have one identical to this one with the LLOYDS brand name on it.
*Can you do a video on the 4 tuner screws and adjustment on that radio*.
How the fuk did he hit 1999 like that without mentioning it 😂 so funny
Voice much better but my radio voice is very low
Where do you get all these wonderful old radios from please? I LOVE fixing stuff, but if I could find them in the uk, I would do this all day everyday.
Ebay, there's usually dozens of old radios on there most days.
I love that Charley Pride track from the "8-TRack cartridge Charley Pride 22-TRack replay"
I dig lots of the late 70s and 80s country. Good stuff
+shango066 I have to agree with you for sure! totally agree
Just like tubes...my teacher never liked using a tube tester. He would go find another spare or pull one from a good working tv to use as a sub.
Quite an improvement. Nice repair job!
Those epoxy topped transistors will sometimes temporarily be shocked back into operation from soldering or accidentally shorting the leads while powered up. Back in the day would use the V.T.V.M. on R X1 for junction checks, although bad looked good.
thats what i call a STARMATE ST1 its total satellite driven radio no ANTENNAS of nothing.....NO COMMERCIALS no ANNOYING DJS!!! just a square black box and it picks up the satellite signal and bypassing the AM/FM bands all together!!!
I have Panasonic radio RF1405L it working fine with its original capacitors do you think I need to replace them. Do you think replacing capacitors will improve the sound and reception. Thanks
To be honest, anything that uses electrolitic capacitors with more than 20 years should be replaced. If they're not bad, they will be soon! Specially high voltage ones, or used on power supplies.
Beware the dome!
"I screwed with the alignment with the transistor dead." Tsk tsk, shame on you Shango. (smile)
How come they only made pocket transistor radios AM band, instead of the more popular FM band? 📻
Well back in the 60 and 70s AM radio was more popular than FM in many countries. Plus AM transitor radios were cheaper to make than FM ones.
Don't know how it was Stateside, but here in the UK in the 60s and 70s, there was only 3 stations on FM/VHF and dozens of stations on AM/MW. Now in 2023, AM is rather dead, with a couple of talk stations, no music, and there's dozens of stations on FM. Also FM radios tend to me more complex than AM ones, more components.
👍👍🍺
Another blob-topper transistor bites the dust,over the years i've serviced lots of equipment and found lots of problems with these Fairchild and fairchild-like clones, sometimes heating or cooling the device will cause it to pop back to life,it may be because of differences in expansion rates between the body and epoxy tops that they would develop internal problems.
If the dome transistor tested good, how do you know the problem wasn't a bad connection or bad solder? Doesn't solder degrade over time?
Looks like a retagged Westinghouse.
I have a General Electric pocket radio, very similar to this. The two wires connecting to the batter broke off, so I salvaged some parts from a baby monitor and repaired it. I'm interested in learning how to repair electronics.
hey shango, can you modify these radios to pick up 27mhz cb radio frequencies?
nope, they are not even close. what is the interest with cb?
Ahh ok was just a thought
I was looking into HAM radio, but the licensing issues put me off, dont really want to do a college course to operate a radio
Synthematix. The technician class license test is a breeze. No course, just a few days of study.
who the fuck did that soldering?
A Taiwanese family. Might have been the 8 year old's time at the bench.
Child labour probably, given it's from Hong Kong or Taiwan.
MALLARD LTD BC108 transistor is what that is.
The bad one says CE1001C on it.
Nice little radio
Nice video, I just finished watching Mr Carlson repair and tear down a Heathkit tracer so was amazed to see you use one.
You said you cant work out which is BCE on the transistor that you took out but got good readings from a meter. If I understand this right, then I hope this helps..
Find the base by swapping red leads around until you find two good junctions, if that doesn't work do the same with the black lead. If you get 2 junctions with red leads the you have an NPN if black then it's PNP... Next measure again very carefully from the now known base and the reading that is higher is the Emitter, leaving the Collector being the last lead..
It's not perfect as in rare cases you get the same reading, wait a while to let the meter settle in difficult cases.
60fps without a tripod is sooo trippy - no complain, I simply watched it in 480p