Doug, Great video and nice to have you back making them again. I've enjoyed them all over the past months. New vids on vintage tv's would be great. Even though I'm not a TV person myself I always finding them entertaining and informative. Never lose your passion for restoring the past! Regards, Terry.
I also buy from Mouser. All capacitors in this radio were polarized including the small values under 1uF. I normally use Nichicon TVX series axial caps for most of my work, but the values under 1uF are not available in the TVX, thus I had to find an alternative which was the Nichicon USV radial series for those small value caps (all of which are high quality). I like to keep capacitor values as close as possible to the original specification while maintaining consistent brand name.
Takes me back to my old days as a soldier in Vietnam. Man back then, if you purchased a radio at the PX, you could depend on getting something that would reproduce the tunes that you wanted to hear on AFVN, most had great speakers and nearly all of them were quality made in Japan. My first was an AM/FM/Cassette she was really built. One day I was stuck on tower guard duty. a 24 hour detail that I shared with another soldier. So I carried my radio up the 60 foot ladder to the square little steel lined watch tower, a tin roof kept the treacherous sun off our heads during the day, and hopefully the rockets and mortars during the night, but I am sure they would have punched right through. So I set my Hatchi radio on the edge of the tower and took my place behind the M-60 machine gun and huge spot light, the wires from the claymore mines were in front of me, and a clacker on a small table next to my chair. The other GI decided to get some sack time around sunset, and as he readied himself to climb on the cot, under the mosquito netting, he knocked my radio off the damn ledge. Man I was PISSED! He took my place as I climbed the 60 feet back to the sandy beach of Dong Ba Thin, and searched for my prize radio, there she was, half buried in the sand. I pulled her out and returned to my roost, as I was not supposed to leave the post till 7 AM. When I had made my way up the 60 foot ladder and got back to my seat, I had pretty much jiggled all the sand out of my radio. I looked her over with a flashlight, as the sun had disappeared by then, and found one small crack in one corner of the case. The radio played perfectly and the cassette that was in it, containing a letter from my late wife was still intact and played as good as ever. Man that radio was built! About six months latter, she was stolen, damn I was pissed, I hope the thief burns in hell for taking my radio! I did replace it, but the radio I got was no where as good as the one I had, the PX I went to looking for the replacement was much smaller as I had been transferred up country to Camp Haskins near DaNang.
Nice radio. This was one of the early Panasonic models under National Panasonic, by the late 60's and into the early 1970's, they dropped the "National" name and rebrand itself as Panasonic where it continues to its day, and the logo remains the same until 1972 when they dropped it and changed its logo to a modern Panasonic where it still remains to this day. The radio was made in Japan, and this was one of the earliest of the Japanese radios.
drh4683 Emma biggest fan of yours I would like to have you help me with them with mom Maura radio from from the planets that shut down gotta know but the need to be the Cassy be replays though nothing to might be the West composer known tube type clock radio and their wish to some way I can help man there that mother looked at me that makes on will mess up that dial cord on the station selector I know how I get that out of that are with up chicken O about Coro off of the North the tuning no pick up in their own them on the main tunr and all the utter pick up Janet I wanna be with the sleeve and check the On the up messing up that tuning cord on it like to have your here help with it so nice radio will like the here play alike to get the things get the is beneath kept redone I could recap for programming than a mourner cook the tubes up for the got the original tubes in there nice and take the saga tell had been touched go there tubes are tightly in the socket real good and tight and the cover with the and on the radio Like the rain was maiden and 38 or 58 I'm not quite sure to look on the back of the back of the radio again term that the date on it when it was made was made and made an ever norge Franklin Park Would like to hear the sound all that radio in or until you do a better job I can on rails in the then the Tango 066L don't know you are going to radio its sound really good them sound reels don't sound shrew a law when you work on a radio sound drew clear the got a nice rich tone till it when you work on a radio the works on us all shrill and and then it knocks up some of the instrument sounds on the radio old canted terminal what kind inch move the is or what key they're playin and as the sharp or the flat or waters all shrill and and can on the can't understand the cipher the the the insta Mr. Playing at all got with you work on a radio it's done right it sound real clear and crisp and then keep been at this a lot longer than than shango 0 66 and I Palm shop If I can hear from you sometime you can cause I want you to give me a human color give me a shout for give me AA call he if he can a number and that the email dressing get me as us is Anderson gm1992@gmail.com MI ama phone number is 14059335533Please give me a shout if you can are right MA and their my address is 305 North move and drive morrow Coahoma 7 31 60 zip code
That radio ought to be good for about another 50+ years. Matsushita made some excellent radios. That one is very cool. Even the plastic is textured. 📻👍🙂‼️
I forgot to mention I enjoy your videos on vintage color TV restorations.Never did much with with TV's myself,I'm more into radios, reel to reels and phonos
Nice looking, and it sounds better than most of the pocket radios from that era; the bigger speaker and output transforms seem to have served their intended purpose. Seems like a lot of push-pull distortion though; they probably chose battery life over clean sound. I don't imagine people bought these expecting to enjoy many quiet piccolo solos.
I performed a little research with Mouser's search engine and found out that they have low voltage, non polarized, capacitors available up to 2 uf at 35 or 50 volts, I was thinking of trying some of those in place of small electrolytics like those .47, .33, and 1 uf caps. That would permanently eliminate the problem of at least some of the caps drying out and failing.
This looks like a typical high quality National Panasonic portable of time time. Was this unit originally sold in the USA or perhaps not sold in this market but in Japan or Europe? More likely to see AM / FM even back then in the USA.
The term "perfectly" is a relative term. Making some static noise when you turn the volume control and receiving a couple of stations in any way might constitute "working perfectly" to some.
I like that quote "THE TUNING STRING IS ALWAYS IN THE WAY" oh how this is true..Or what I hate it removing that tuning pulley...and of course the string will come off unless you do a trick that I found...and that is put tape around the pulley to keep the string on..
Is that station that was playing "Just My Style" your own signal? I was wondering what station would be playing oldies at around 1110-1130AM in Chicago and found only talk stations across the whole dial according to Radio-Locator.
I'm not sure who made the non polarized caps I was looking at, they may have been Zicon brand. Panasonic makes pretty decent electrolytics, but they may not have the same selection in axial lead caps like Nichicon does. I suspect that the small value electrolytics were used in these radios due to cost and space considerations at the time, depending on the circuit it may not matter whether a polarized or non polarized cap is used.
Wow. What a NICE looking little portable radio. that "She's Just My Style" song is very fitting. To me, The shortwave bands are pretty much useless as there's nothing ever really on it. Basically just christian talk and the "Coordinated Universal Time" if you can pick it up, and some talk in other languages.
It did not require IF alignment as fortunately it was spot on right after the re-cap. One thing Panasonic did from the factory was fill the tops of the IF cans with beeswax as a moisture sealer and/or shock absorption protection (since it's a portable radio). This makes adjustment very difficult if needed as you would need to carve out the wax in order to use an adjustment tool. Slug damage is also very possible as you would be adjusting the slug against residual wax in the core and can.
I’ve got 2 Panasonic AM/SW radios - both are dead 🙁. I’m just beginning to get into collecting. Don’t even know how to solder yet. I wish I knew someone who actually works on these radios professionally. I know it’s expensive, but it’d be worth it to me - especially these difficult ones. ( love that little radio) 📻🙂
That unit looks like the kind you could mount under the dash of your old 50 Ford and plug in the car antenna to play tunes when you tired of the vibrator noise of the old 6 V radio set built in the old cars.
Amazing how good the radio sounded after 50 years. It's obvious it would need a cap job, but I'm surprised those germanium transistors are still working great! And the shortwave side also worked was a great bonus! Nice radio!
TO1 Germanium transistors, no doubt the 2SA/2SB series of which there were a million part numbers. Radio Shack had a handful of part numbers which crossed over to these such as 2SB22, 2SB186, 2SB400 etc. 2N301=2SB472 and so on. And the blue taped audio transformers.
Thanks you very much!!! this is a great repair video , finally I got the right way to fix the dial cord of my panasonic radio RF-721. You do a great job!!!
Egr k Matsuhita. They started using the Panasonic name in the U.S. right about 1963-. Because of a name conflict. They kept the National name for the international market until the early to mid 1980’s when they finally phased it out. I have a couple radios from the early ‘60’s ( one is from 1963) that do read “National-Panasonic “, and a Short Wave radio I had from 1986,also had both names. At the same time, they also had radios with their Matsushita badge, with a logo that looked very similar to the Mitsubishi ( three star) logo.
Doug,
Great video and nice to have you back making them again. I've enjoyed them all over the past months. New vids on vintage tv's would be great. Even though I'm not a TV person myself I always finding them entertaining and informative. Never lose your passion for restoring the past! Regards, Terry.
I also buy from Mouser. All capacitors in this radio were polarized including the small values under 1uF. I normally use Nichicon TVX series axial caps for most of my work, but the values under 1uF are not available in the TVX, thus I had to find an alternative which was the Nichicon USV radial series for those small value caps (all of which are high quality). I like to keep capacitor values as close as possible to the original specification while maintaining consistent brand name.
Thank you for the nice words, it was fun to get it going again.
Takes me back to my old days as a soldier in Vietnam. Man back then, if you purchased a radio at the PX, you could depend on getting something that would reproduce the tunes that you wanted to hear on AFVN, most had great speakers and nearly all of them were quality made in Japan. My first was an AM/FM/Cassette she was really built. One day I was stuck on tower guard duty. a 24 hour detail that I shared with another soldier. So I carried my radio up the 60 foot ladder to the square little steel lined watch tower, a tin roof kept the treacherous sun off our heads during the day, and hopefully the rockets and mortars during the night, but I am sure they would have punched right through. So I set my Hatchi radio on the edge of the tower and took my place behind the M-60 machine gun and huge spot light, the wires from the claymore mines were in front of me, and a clacker on a small table next to my chair. The other GI decided to get some sack time around sunset, and as he readied himself to climb on the cot, under the mosquito netting, he knocked my radio off the damn ledge. Man I was PISSED! He took my place as I climbed the 60 feet back to the sandy beach of Dong Ba Thin, and searched for my prize radio, there she was, half buried in the sand. I pulled her out and returned to my roost, as I was not supposed to leave the post till 7 AM. When I had made my way up the 60 foot ladder and got back to my seat, I had pretty much jiggled all the sand out of my radio. I looked her over with a flashlight, as the sun had disappeared by then, and found one small crack in one corner of the case. The radio played perfectly and the cassette that was in it, containing a letter from my late wife was still intact and played as good as ever. Man that radio was built! About six months latter, she was stolen, damn I was pissed, I hope the thief burns in hell for taking my radio! I did replace it, but the radio I got was no where as good as the one I had, the PX I went to looking for the replacement was much smaller as I had been transferred up country to Camp Haskins near DaNang.
Thanks, I hope to get back into making more videos soon
Awesome Job on that radio, They sure made them well back then.
Nice work! I still have my Panasonic transistor radio from 1968
Boy, this brings back memories. I saw some similar radios in my youth. Thanks for sharing this project with us!
Job well done Doug...i'm late but it's always a pleasure to follow your videos.
Nice radio. This was one of the early Panasonic models under National Panasonic, by the late 60's and into the early 1970's, they dropped the "National" name and rebrand itself as Panasonic where it continues to its day, and the logo remains the same until 1972 when they dropped it and changed its logo to a modern Panasonic where it still remains to this day. The radio was made in Japan, and this was one of the earliest of the Japanese radios.
Working as brand new now .... Awesome sound quality .... Made in Japan
Another nice restoration and a great find. It looks and sounds like your trouble was worth it. It is a neat looking unit, very early 60's style.
Nice find ! My Grandfather had one, wish my folks did not sell it in a yard sale. Had the original box and instructions !!!
Thank you. I guess in the long run I'm glad it needed work as now it has fresh new caps!
drh4683 Emma biggest fan of yours I would like to have you help me with them with mom Maura radio from from the planets that shut down gotta know but the need to be the Cassy be replays though nothing to might be the West composer known tube type clock radio and their wish to some way I can help man there that mother looked at me that makes on will mess up that dial cord on the station selector I know how I get that out of that are with up chicken O about Coro off of the North the tuning no pick up in their own them on the main tunr and all the utter pick up Janet I wanna be with the sleeve and check the On the up messing up that tuning cord on it like to have your here help with it so nice radio will like the here play alike to get the things get the is beneath kept redone I could recap for programming than a mourner cook the tubes up for the got the original tubes in there nice and take the saga tell had been touched go there tubes are tightly in the socket real good and tight and the cover with the and on the radio Like the rain was maiden and 38 or 58 I'm not quite sure to look on the back of the back of the radio again term that the date on it when it was made was made and made an ever norge Franklin Park Would like to hear the sound all that radio in or until you do a better job I can on rails in the then the Tango 066L don't know you are going to radio its sound really good them sound reels don't sound shrew a law when you work on a radio sound drew clear the got a nice rich tone till it when you work on a radio the works on us all shrill and and then it knocks up some of the instrument sounds on the radio old canted terminal what kind inch move the is or what key they're playin and as the sharp or the flat or waters all shrill and and can on the can't understand the cipher the the the insta Mr. Playing at all got with you work on a radio it's done right it sound real clear and crisp and then keep been at this a lot longer than than shango 0 66 and I Palm shop If I can hear from you sometime you can cause I want you to give me a human color give me a shout for give me AA call he if he can a number and that the email dressing get me as us is Anderson gm1992@gmail.com MI ama phone number is 14059335533Please give me a shout if you can are right MA and their my address is 305 North move and drive morrow Coahoma 7 31 60 zip code
It Motorolaradio
That radio ought to be good for about another 50+ years.
Matsushita made some excellent radios.
That one is very cool.
Even the plastic is textured.
📻👍🙂‼️
Excellent restoration as usual! Sounds, and looks great. Good to see a new video from you.
I forgot to mention I enjoy your videos on vintage color TV restorations.Never did much with with TV's myself,I'm more into radios, reel to reels and phonos
You did a beautiful job on that radio drh.
Nice looking, and it sounds better than most of the pocket radios from that era; the bigger speaker and output transforms seem to have served their intended purpose. Seems like a lot of push-pull distortion though; they probably chose battery life over clean sound. I don't imagine people bought these expecting to enjoy many quiet piccolo solos.
I performed a little research with Mouser's search engine and found out that they have low voltage, non polarized, capacitors available up to 2 uf at 35 or 50 volts, I was thinking of trying some of those in place of small electrolytics like those .47, .33, and 1 uf caps. That would permanently eliminate the problem of at least some of the caps drying out and failing.
Thanks for sharing.. that was a nice piece of advice to make drawing of the stuff that is being worked upon...
What a nice looking unit.Sounds good good also,,,nice find!!!
What also is interesting about this radio is it looks like it might have been able to be installed in a car dash, I wonder if it was in Japan.
Nice little radio. I would have used Panasonic caps, just to "keep it in the family"-but a nice job!
Great video. That radio is cool. if i was a kid when it came out i would have put it on my wagon and pretended it was a car radio.
More vids pls
Nice 60s Panasonic quality unit. Great Video Many Thanks. Job well done.
I've been there more than once too... It's no fun when you make that wrong move and the edge of the iron melts that dial cord!
Lovely radio great to see it working again although sorry to hear about your loss on eBay.
This looks like a typical high quality National Panasonic portable of time time.
Was this unit originally sold in the USA or perhaps not sold in this market but in Japan or Europe? More likely to see AM / FM even back then in the USA.
Wow, stepping up to transistors. G
ood work.
The term "perfectly" is a relative term. Making some static noise when you turn the volume control and receiving a couple of stations in any way might constitute "working perfectly" to some.
I like that quote "THE TUNING STRING IS ALWAYS IN THE WAY" oh how this is true..Or what I hate it removing that tuning pulley...and of course the string will come off unless you do a trick that I found...and that is put tape around the pulley to keep the string on..
Is that station that was playing "Just My Style" your own signal? I was wondering what station would be playing oldies at around 1110-1130AM in Chicago and found only talk stations across the whole dial according to Radio-Locator.
I'm not sure who made the non polarized caps I was looking at, they may have been Zicon brand. Panasonic makes pretty decent electrolytics, but they may not have the same selection in axial lead caps like Nichicon does. I suspect that the small value electrolytics were used in these radios due to cost and space considerations at the time, depending on the circuit it may not matter whether a polarized or non polarized cap is used.
Burning the dial cord with my soldering iron has happened to me more than once!
Thanks!
Great to see a new Video!
You must be in Chicago. WBBM 780
Hi...did you use 50 volt caps as replacements??
Thanks for the video.
Nice job ,good video.
I like Panasonic caps...
Great video!!
I need help restoring my 1969 Panasonic reel-to-reel tape recorder, "The Encore"
Hmm, not sure if I've ever come across any electrolytics whose values were less than 1uF.
Tem alguns placa destes rádio pra mim vende
Wow. What a NICE looking little portable radio. that "She's Just My Style" song is very fitting. To me, The shortwave bands are pretty much useless as there's nothing ever really on it. Basically just christian talk and the "Coordinated Universal Time" if you can pick it up, and some talk in other languages.
I tired of lieing sellers ,I think he owes you some money ,send him all the bad parts,or show the to eBay .
Sounds like Peter Griffin is running the commentary on this video!
It's pronounced "fer-rite", not "ferret". That's a small animal.
William Crowell
D’pens on where y’all’s from ❗️. 🙂
Tem alguns prá vender amigo
It did not require IF alignment as fortunately it was spot on right after the re-cap. One thing Panasonic did from the factory was fill the tops of the IF cans with beeswax as a moisture sealer and/or shock absorption protection (since it's a portable radio). This makes adjustment very difficult if needed as you would need to carve out the wax in order to use an adjustment tool. Slug damage is also very possible as you would be adjusting the slug against residual wax in the core and can.
Great repair, drh. Still checking in on your channel.
Thanks for the post.
I’ve got 2 Panasonic AM/SW radios - both are dead 🙁.
I’m just beginning to get into collecting. Don’t even know how to solder yet.
I wish I knew someone who actually works on these radios professionally. I know it’s expensive, but it’d be worth it to me - especially these difficult ones.
( love that little radio)
📻🙂
Cool, transistor radios are always fun to use... Those eBayer scammers... I hope you reported it to him.
That unit looks like the kind you could mount under the dash of your old 50 Ford and plug in the car antenna to play tunes when you tired of the vibrator noise of the old 6 V radio set built in the old cars.
Garry Lewis and the Playboys. Love that song.
Try re-stringing one of these , it can be tedious and frustrating if you don't know how to do it.
Amazing how good the radio sounded after 50 years. It's obvious it would need a cap job, but I'm surprised those germanium transistors are still working great! And the shortwave side also worked was a great bonus! Nice radio!
Congratulations
TO1 Germanium transistors, no doubt the 2SA/2SB series of which there were a million part numbers. Radio Shack had a handful of part numbers which crossed over to these such as 2SB22, 2SB186, 2SB400 etc. 2N301=2SB472 and so on. And the blue taped audio transformers.
Thanks you very much!!! this is a great repair video , finally I got the right way to fix the dial cord of my panasonic radio RF-721.
You do a great job!!!
Yeah, in the evenings the 49 and 41 meter bands would probably be jumping with activity.
The previous name of Panasonic was National the change was in mid seventy
Egr k
Matsuhita. They started using the Panasonic name in the U.S. right about 1963-. Because of a name conflict. They kept the National name for the international market until the early to mid 1980’s when they finally phased it out.
I have a couple radios from the early ‘60’s ( one is from 1963) that do read “National-Panasonic “, and a Short Wave radio I had from 1986,also had both names.
At the same time, they also had radios with their Matsushita badge, with a logo that looked very similar to the Mitsubishi ( three star) logo.
PERFEITO
Give me a break, who puts a radio completely back together before trying it after an attempted repair?
i would have liked to see the tuning string removal/reassembly - good video anyway thanks
Nice video, good to see you making new videos
Nice radio, good repair.
great job on restoring.
.
Look like new radio.