I love to see the TH-cam community getting inspired by each-others videos. This is what TH-cam is for, not the million-dollar channels which are slowly taking over TH-cam. The tech TH-cam community is what TH-cam was made to be! -Nick (Mazz-Gras Radio youtube channel) (Other account).
My previous truck was Indian. The interior fit and finish was much like this radio. It was a strong truck though, and you could fix anything on it with just a hammer and shifter.
Mine isn't nearly that wideband on AM, but I'm not next door to a 50 kW transmitter like you are. And the loopstick is supposed to go the other way around, so maybe that has something to do with it. Neither the Sony chip nor the loopstick were designed for shortwave, so that's why it's so poor on that band. And its sensitivity on FM is indeed impressive.
maybe shango's radio has a fault, why its so wide? bad IF transformer? i'd think the 3 plastic cased cans are the AM IF and metal ones for FM..???? with that ceramic filter for FM , looks like it has empty position on the board for another ceramic filter, for AM?
Yeah. I think this specific radio is a partial dud, both due to the fact that it was damaged and its performance on everything other than FM is really poor.
Yes agreed. He is in a very unusual market. I turn on am in ohio and I have maybe 5 stations, only 2 close by. Poor selectivity means better sound. Am is Almost dead too. I was really impressed with your review and loved your am740 spotlight. That's from where I was born. It's a terrific station and not just for music. It's time to change the track...
@@Trance88 certainly possible, unless shango has a few very strong stations nearby swamping it out, i'd say 'something' is wrong.... i've made trf sets using the famous/infamous ZN414 and its equivalents with seemingly better selectivity, on average strength stations, on a single tuned circuit!
I was thinking, I don't want to see the inside or outside of it. Cheap. Just looking at it screams CHEAP!!! If it was less money, like $14.88, I might splurge. But 25 plus shipping from India is just too much money for such cheapness.
Here in Brazil, we had a company called Motoradio. It was pioneer on automotive radios and sold a lot of portable radios. Will be interesting if you grab one of those to check the quality, especially the units made in the '70s, when Motoradio used Sony components.
@@madmax2069 I agree with you. But that's not the case here. Also, DSP is best used when you can actually set the frequency digitally, not with an analog dial.
@@joseislanio8910 Sony fully transitioned into DSP based portable radios not too long ago, the ICF-P27 as example you can't really tell that you're tuning a DSP radio.
Shango, "5 Core" is not the only Indian- made radio. They used to make the Èton E1 (Grundig?) in Bangalore, India. Its circuitry was based on the Drake SW8. It also had an FM band and provisions for XM radio. It's been discontinued. I still have mine and it's a darned good radio -- so the Indians can make a good radio!
Philips' still make radios in India. Philips Prince, Champion are to mention a few. I'm pretty sure that the circuitry in this 5core radio is a copy of philips Prince (with a philips chip in place of a sony)
Nice video. I bought one of these and was surprised at how well it receives. Your short wave problem is the assumption that the loop is also for Short Wave, it is not. I connected the whip antenna to a Sangean ANT-60 portable wire reel antenna with great results on SW. Please don't throw out that antenna!!! Just treat it tenderly! This is a $25 dollar radio, and it's built like one. Everything about this radio is done on the cheap. It's amazing how well it works.
One of the only things I can remember with a "Made in India" label was one of those cheap Raleigh-knock-off bicycles, either a Triumph or a Robinhood. Another was a storm-drain grate near where I used to park for work. For some reason, India doesn't export a lot of stuff to the USA; maybe they send more to the UK under whatever Commonwealth trade agreements are still in place.
I couldn’t resist,,, just bought one..... it does sound very nice for such a small radio... now the only thing missing is another review from phononut.....can’t wait for his take on the five core
The datasheet of the IC provides a diagram and there is a ceramic filter for AM, and this radio does not have it, and it could improve selectivity at least to a decent level. Even if you look at the PCB there is space for it.
The datasheet says the IC has 500 mw output when supply voltage is 6 volts. This thing only gets 3 Volts from 2 D batteries. That must be a really efficient speaker.
I was surprised when he didn't open it, he's usually good about that! I'm glad you made this! This would be a neat radio to take out to the desert to include in a sensitivity test round-up video.
The bad selectivity does mean your audio is much better. It is always striking how good the quality of AM stations is in the USA, compared to the rest of the world. Pretty much all european tube radios have 10-12khz bandwidth at most (transmitters RF 9khz to mayyyybe 11khz, except for Radio Romania that sounds good at 16khz with a wideband receiver) so you get audio just a hint better than phone quality. It was very much needed because every single european country used to have a bunch of 100-500kw medium wave transmitters, 10 times more power than the typical USA transmitter - otherwise you'd just have a jumbled mess all the time. I can still hear stations from the other side of the continent in the Netherlands at night.
European broadcasters mainly limit audio to 6 KHz. Some reduce audio to 4.5 KHz to reduce adjacent channel. Very few are running 500kw these days. Not uncommon to find services running 100kw today which in the old days ran 500kw. Those services under threat of closure due to running costs.
That wide tuning on AM may be a bonus. Too many radios limit the bandwidth to 5KHz or even 3KHz, when the transmitters are putting out 10KHz. That wide bandwidth might cover weaker stations, but I'll bet what it does pull in sounds better than most.
Fm sounds really nice for a budget radio :-D Narrower filters would help. Shame about the postage system knocking it about, but no expanded poly in the box :-(
I am a longtime shortwave listener. When listening to shortwave radios, you have to turn the tuning dial slowly, especially if all of the shortwave bands are on one universal band on the radio. The stations tend to be crowded in a handful of locations on each shortwave band. Turning the tuning dial too fast can make you miss some stations, especially when some of them have signal fade issues. Not every international broadcast network will have a good, strong signal. Another factor affecting reception quality is the time of day you are listening. In the Eastern Time Zone, the best time to listen to shortwave broadcasts is between 7:00 PM and 11:30 PM. Some of the international broadcasters broadcast their programs for Pacific Time Zone listeners between 7:00 PM and 11:30 PM also. Solar storms on the surface of the sun can hinder or block shortwave signals, so that has to be taken into consideration when listening for important news broadcasts on shortwave radios.
Shango may wish to consider taking this for a reception test in the desert the next time he goes there. That 1960's-era Sylvania radio appears to be a post-CONELRAD receiver -- they sure don't make 'em like *that* anymore!
Glad to see you test one. Strong locals can really wreak havoc on more recent true analog tuners on AM. Ironically, the tuner I had the issue with is the opposite of Vwestlife's problem where it is an analog tuner with digital readout (from around 2010) instead of a digital tuner with analog readout.
Tire sizes are always metric in width, but inches in diameter. Bizarre, but that’s how it is. There was an attempt to make both metric in the late ‘70s, but it failed.
Never seen anything electronic manufactured in India myself. Cool to see this radio and it being an analog format design. And yeah cool way for the board to separate from the tuning string track set up. Yeah not much competition in the AM tuning arena to the American analog portables, but a lot of them do as good as this one on FM I think. Thanks for showing it! Cheers! 🍻 -AL
I recognize the ferrite antenna by its color and flat sides: it's the common 10x100mm Chinese ferrite rod that goes between $1 and $3 a piece on ebay and aliexpress.
One nice thing about it, uses full size electronic components rather than surface mount junk. Would make it easier to repair or improve with ceramic filters.
WHAT A GREAT PORTABLE RADIO! I'm not sure what your quality criteria are, but from where I'm standing, this looks like a great little radio. The sound is about 1.35 million times better than any western portable radio I've bought lately - you know, the ones that have a huge speaker grill in the plastic, but inside you have a piezo element. This one has a proper speaker and it actually has bass too. The power consumption is remarkable. 5 milliamps plus speaker drive, that's remarkable, the modern digital tea5767 based units have 4 times bigger power consumption. This would play for months from 2 D cells. And it picks up stations really well. From U.S. big city point of view the selectivity is not great, but for rural areas, travel, hiking, this has great sensitivity. In short: a great piece of proven design, they really did do these better in the analog days.
The shortwave band on mine worked really well. Unfortunately, something's wrong with the speaker. I contacted the seller and they're sending me another, no questions asked.
I ordered one the same day VWestLife put up his video and it's still not here (FEMA Region III). Hope it's not all smashed up like yours. Edit: No physical damage but the dial pointer was off the track and jamming the tuning - easy 1 minute fix. Circuit board and speaker identical to yours. AM performance is better than expected but has poor electrical noise rejection - bandwidth was a little wide but nothing like yours. FM antenna broke right away but this thing doesn't care and gets really good FM anyway. SW is useless. The sound is better than expected and should get better as the speaker breaks in. I got this thing as a throwaway radio for working on stuff outside but I'm starting to like it more and more.
As you say, the FM reception is awesome. In earlier days, they used to make cabinets using bakelite. The cabinets were sturdy, but the transistor radios were heavy. To make it lighter and better portability, plastic cabinets were used. Honestly I feel that by charging a little more than $25, they could have given better finishing/reception. I am from India, and I have used high quality transistor radios especially the ones made by Murphy, Bush, HMV, Philips etc. Sadly, very few people are enamored of the transistor radio. Even many Japanese electronics giants have stopped making transistor radios. And Sony has already announced that they will no longer make SW radios. But a very good and informative video. Keep rocking.
I am from India. Never seen this brand in any electronic or music shops in my country. It's a new local brand by a small scale manufacturer under the govt's Make in India initiative. You can buy Croma brand of modern digital radio made in India by the Tata group. By the way there are few radio enthusiasts in India these days and they are no longer interested in these antique or rather assembler models.
Hi there, greetings from Ireland. I'm into all about radio and love your content. Just by looking at the PCB of this radio, the AM selectivity is none but you can fix this easily. there is unpopulated 455 KHz IF filter on the board. Just remove jumper and solder one in. I think it's worth it. then the sensitivity desert test would be nice:)
On many of these receivers with SW, the single transistor is used as an antenna buffer. It's a cheap attempt at an active antenna. They need all the help they can get. On many of these radios with more than one SW band, they run the RF stage in the front end unturned.
Inches is still used for speakers and screen size just about everywhere. Back in the tube TV days we (in a metric country) used cms but for some reason when flat panels came out everyone suddenly switched to inches... I don't really get it, cm is always a higher number, wouldn't they want to use that for their marketing??
Nice video dan i seen the v westlife video and i wish he opened it up to see the circuit but he did not so thank you for opening it As for the radio circuit it is a am/fm front end with rf /if and build in amplifire the volume signal control it happen in side the ic but the volume control key it control a voltage and the voltage go to the electronic volume control circuit that feed the audio signal to the amplifire in put circuit inside the ic there is an smd type with the same part number it is made in china license by sony corp and it is from cxa1..... family the radio that banggood give you and you build it the am / fm one it has the same type of ic but smd but it is a from the cxa family
You might give the AM an "F" but it's way better than my old portable tube radio which on a good day can pick up a distorted version of WBZ (the strongest station around me). But if I change a few caps and redo the alignment the situation might change a bit.
This actually looks pretty decent, I've heard that India actually has a decent manufacturing sector (much better than China IIRC) Sad thing is these sorts of radios can't be sold in the EU because of some B-S DAB laws requiring all new radios sold to come equipped with a DAB receiver
I remember, as a kid way back in the mid 90s, my dad used to buy me matchbox sized radios which I believed were manufactured in India. I was probably 7 Or 8 years old. It was 1999 when I first saw a computer which was the only one in our town in a small computer training center. I had interest in radio signals. I figured out that the cordless phone that we had communicates to the base station over FM at 90 MHz and one day I surprised my dad by playing back a call he had a while back, on our two in one cassette recorder which had the ability to record from radio. 😁
Iv just repaired a little radio but the reception is terrible, the antenna broke off so I put some copper wire for the antenna but it doesn't work very well, however when I wrap some solder round the copper it works well, is it that copper is not a good metal to use as an antenna ?
i must admit to being moved to tears just watching this video on the 5 core radio and all its glory truly a top radio in its dumpster sorry i meant class no really really i meant class HONEST
It looks like it is made for the rural Indian market. Where buying power of the public is very limited. Most people in urban India listen to the radio on their smartphones (4G LTE data is cheap) or in their cars. No one listens to the radio at home in bigger cities. Also, Philips has been making a large variety of high-quality radios in India for the last 50 years. None of this is exported to the US or Europe. Most of the exports go to Africa.
Based on this, and the other review, I bought one - should have it by Friday. I got the other model. I have an old Magnavox D-1066 AM pocket radio made in India. 📻🙂
2:45 - "First thing we need to do is sniff it!!!" Funny, the first thing I do is shake hands! Thanks for opening day - your video followed VWestlifes' and we're happy ;-)
As I said on VWestlife's dismantle video, the speaker is simply ludicrous for a ½ watt amplifier!! Unlike most modern junk, which would have a 1¼ inch speaker behind a 5 inch grill, this 5 core has a speaker so large, it goes behind the dial scale!
12:20 The "F" for AM and SW probably has more to do with the damage during shipping than the way the set was made. A whack hard enough to break off that fer-rite rod could easily have messed up the settings of half the IF transformers. I'm surprised that the FM tuner works as well as it does.
I love to see the TH-cam community getting inspired by each-others videos. This is what TH-cam is for, not the million-dollar channels which are slowly taking over TH-cam. The tech TH-cam community is what TH-cam was made to be!
-Nick (Mazz-Gras Radio youtube channel) (Other account).
Yes, but... thats how libraries about books already in them get started. Gets stale fast
Exactly Nick. Is indeed nice to see.
I agree with you! I'm just afraid of the damn "money" people, they seem to win too many times.
"When you pull it out of the box, just rip the antenna off and throw it in the trash." I cracked up! Best quote about a portable radio ever!
My previous truck was Indian. The interior fit and finish was much like this radio. It was a strong truck though, and you could fix anything on it with just a hammer and shifter.
Brand?
@@WaltrWyte It was a Tata TL4
I saw your truck on FILCKR with your comment!😂😁😀
Yes, the blue one on Flickr was mine. I do miss it. It was a great truck.@@Aneesh.Asokan
Mine isn't nearly that wideband on AM, but I'm not next door to a 50 kW transmitter like you are. And the loopstick is supposed to go the other way around, so maybe that has something to do with it. Neither the Sony chip nor the loopstick were designed for shortwave, so that's why it's so poor on that band. And its sensitivity on FM is indeed impressive.
maybe shango's radio has a fault, why its so wide? bad IF transformer? i'd think the 3 plastic cased cans are the AM IF and metal ones for FM..???? with that ceramic filter for FM , looks like it has empty position on the board for another ceramic filter, for AM?
Yeah. I think this specific radio is a partial dud, both due to the fact that it was damaged and its performance on everything other than FM is really poor.
Yes agreed. He is in a very unusual market. I turn on am in ohio and I have maybe 5 stations, only 2 close by. Poor selectivity means better sound. Am is Almost dead too. I was really impressed with your review and loved your am740 spotlight. That's from where I was born. It's a terrific station and not just for music. It's time to change the track...
@@Trance88 certainly possible, unless shango has a few very strong stations nearby swamping it out, i'd say 'something' is wrong.... i've made trf sets using the famous/infamous ZN414 and its equivalents with seemingly better selectivity, on average strength stations, on a single tuned circuit!
even nearby to a strong station, IF selectivity should be better than that.....
I watched the vwestlife video, and I thought the same: I wanna see inside of that!
Yes, is a great channel, everyone should sub.
He did a followup where he opened it up
I saw it too. But I happy with my Realistic DX-440.
I was thinking, I don't want to see the inside or outside of it. Cheap. Just looking at it screams CHEAP!!!
If it was less money, like $14.88, I might splurge. But 25 plus shipping from India is just too much money for such cheapness.
Oh great. Vwestlife showed it off and now everyone is going to want one! ☺
V for Viral Westlife. I love his asmrish voice.
I don't think so...
India's GNP number will shoot through the roof!lol...
*NO NEVER*
@@Detroit8V92tta I kind of want one lol
Perfect for fishing 🎣 trip or a workshop ,sounds like the average 70s radio my dad would have used in the basement while working..
Here in Brazil, we had a company called Motoradio. It was pioneer on automotive radios and sold a lot of portable radios.
Will be interesting if you grab one of those to check the quality, especially the units made in the '70s, when Motoradio used Sony components.
Get a MotoBras Dunga VII. Fantastic old school transistor portable. They are impossible to find here in the USA
@@MrRadioRover unfortunately, the models after the Dunga iii are all DSP garbage.
@@joseislanio8910 not all DSP based radios are garbage.
@@madmax2069 I agree with you. But that's not the case here.
Also, DSP is best used when you can actually set the frequency digitally, not with an analog dial.
@@joseislanio8910 Sony fully transitioned into DSP based portable radios not too long ago, the ICF-P27 as example you can't really tell that you're tuning a DSP radio.
Some quality electronics right there. Not every defect in that thing can be blamed on USPS.
Bought a vintage radio, very scratchy volume pots and other maladies, seller blamed it on USPS lol
I don't need to pay $25 for the Sound of India. All I have to do is answer the phone and talk to the extended car warranty guy.
I like to watch Indian guy on TH-cam tutorials
@@Rainbow__cookie Take a listen to KITBOGA on Twitch.
Ok... Not gonna lie... That made me laugh!
Indeed...they are verdy verdy goud Johnny Quest. Me, I can't understand their perfect English Indian dialect most of the time.
In indian talk v is w and w is v. So wave is vawe
Shango, "5 Core" is not the only Indian- made radio. They used to make the Èton E1 (Grundig?) in Bangalore, India. Its circuitry was based on the Drake SW8. It also had an FM band and provisions for XM radio. It's been discontinued. I still have mine and it's a darned good radio -- so the Indians can make a good radio!
The e1 is a great radio. Just rubber coating on case had to clean off as became sticky.
Philips' still make radios in India. Philips Prince, Champion are to mention a few. I'm pretty sure that the circuitry in this 5core radio is a copy of philips Prince (with a philips chip in place of a sony)
I saw the same video and kept saying "I want to see the inside of that"... THANK YOU!!!!
Nice video. I bought one of these and was surprised at how well it receives. Your short wave problem is the assumption that the loop is also for Short Wave, it is not. I connected the whip antenna to a Sangean ANT-60 portable wire reel antenna with great results on SW. Please don't throw out that antenna!!! Just treat it tenderly! This is a $25 dollar radio, and it's built like one. Everything about this radio is done on the cheap. It's amazing how well it works.
in the UK i saw a 70s Car Radio by PYE that was Made in India
One of the only things I can remember with a "Made in India" label was one of those cheap Raleigh-knock-off bicycles, either a Triumph or a Robinhood. Another was a storm-drain grate near where I used to park for work. For some reason, India doesn't export a lot of stuff to the USA; maybe they send more to the UK under whatever Commonwealth trade agreements are still in place.
Don't forget to give it an A for sound quality. The sound blows the old radio away.
I’m back!!!!! I forgot about this video because I went looking for the video by VWestlife and never came back. What a treat.
I couldn’t resist,,, just bought one..... it does sound very nice for such a small radio... now the only thing missing is another review from phononut.....can’t wait for his take on the five core
I have a feeling he'd shit all over it. He's a lot grouchier than even Shango, and that's saying something.
Hello from India
I want to see the inside of that too, and that's exactly what I thought when I seen Vwestlife's video. Thanks for stripin' er down!!
The datasheet of the IC provides a diagram and there is a ceramic filter for AM, and this radio does not have it, and it could improve selectivity at least to a decent level. Even if you look at the PCB there is space for it.
The datasheet says the IC has 500 mw output when supply voltage is 6 volts. This thing only gets 3 Volts from 2 D batteries. That must be a really efficient speaker.
Yes. CF2 is missing and CF3 is shorted out. It would be interesting to to fit the 2 missing ceramic filters.
Could you pull the bridge from the space marked CF3 and replace it with a 3-pin filter like SFU455Y?
I bought one. I've had no trouble, and it's been a great garage radio. Its also proved to be quite durable.
How is the reception in your experience?
Thanks 🙏 for reviewing Indian analog redio. It's finishing looking low but audio quality best other than well-known brand.
.
Best wishes from India🌹👍
I was surprised when he didn't open it, he's usually good about that! I'm glad you made this! This would be a neat radio to take out to the desert to include in a sensitivity test round-up video.
The bad selectivity does mean your audio is much better. It is always striking how good the quality of AM stations is in the USA, compared to the rest of the world.
Pretty much all european tube radios have 10-12khz bandwidth at most (transmitters RF 9khz to mayyyybe 11khz, except for Radio Romania that sounds good at 16khz with a wideband receiver) so you get audio just a hint better than phone quality. It was very much needed because every single european country used to have a bunch of 100-500kw medium wave transmitters, 10 times more power than the typical USA transmitter - otherwise you'd just have a jumbled mess all the time.
I can still hear stations from the other side of the continent in the Netherlands at night.
If I recall didn't the FCC limit AM stations to 10Khz bandwith back in 1989?
Many AM stations in the US have to lower their transmit power at night. Do stations in Europe have to do the same thing?
European broadcasters mainly limit audio to 6 KHz. Some reduce audio to 4.5 KHz to reduce adjacent channel. Very few are running 500kw these days. Not uncommon to find services running 100kw today which in the old days ran 500kw. Those services under threat of closure due to running costs.
Off-topic I know, but congrats on the 50k subs mate! Love your vids.
I love that you're wearing gloves when dealing with a brand new item in a box.
Yeah - I noticed this too :)
@@Seiskid I guess when you're used to stuff covered with condensed cigarette smoke, sprinkled with rat piss, and dusted with asbestos...
Man FM radio in LA is awesome. Even compared to my area (NYC)
That wide tuning on AM may be a bonus. Too many radios limit the bandwidth to 5KHz or even 3KHz, when the transmitters are putting out 10KHz. That wide bandwidth might cover weaker stations, but I'll bet what it does pull in sounds better than most.
Fm sounds really nice for a budget radio :-D
Narrower filters would help.
Shame about the postage system knocking it about, but no expanded poly in the box :-(
The Royal Enfield motorcycle is made in India and sold in the US. It is actually pretty good motorcycle for the price.
They make old school Triumphs that are good bikes.They do have new tech. fuel system.
They're 25 dollars too. 50 dollars with a built in 5Core sound system.
I am a longtime shortwave listener. When listening to shortwave radios, you have to turn the tuning dial slowly, especially if all of the shortwave bands are on one universal band on the radio. The stations tend to be crowded in a handful of locations on each shortwave band. Turning the tuning dial too fast can make you miss some stations, especially when some of them have signal fade issues. Not every international broadcast network will have a good, strong signal. Another factor affecting reception quality is the time of day you are listening. In the Eastern Time Zone, the best time to listen to shortwave broadcasts is between 7:00 PM and 11:30 PM. Some of the international broadcasters broadcast their programs for Pacific Time Zone listeners between 7:00 PM and 11:30 PM also. Solar storms on the surface of the sun can hinder or block shortwave signals, so that has to be taken into consideration when listening for important news broadcasts on shortwave radios.
Shango may wish to consider taking this for a reception test in the desert the next time he goes there. That 1960's-era Sylvania radio appears to be a post-CONELRAD receiver -- they sure don't make 'em like *that* anymore!
That or an exploding radio test.
I thought you would have tried to do an alignment & 'squeeze a bit more juice out of the lemon' (so to speak).
I wondered about that. It might improve the selectivity on AM as well.
I would like to see that
Maybe mount the pcb on something else and trash the cabinet
Glad to see you test one. Strong locals can really wreak havoc on more recent true analog tuners on AM. Ironically, the tuner I had the issue with is the opposite of Vwestlife's problem where it is an analog tuner with digital readout (from around 2010) instead of a digital tuner with analog readout.
Vwestlife also did another video on the radio where he took it apart so yes that is an actual Sony chip from what he said in His Radio.
I wonder if AM would be better if the postal service had'nt thrown it around?
Exactly
Based on the lack of quality, selectively and performance, this radio appears to be a good candidate for an E.O.L. video
Maybe you try for fun to realign and/or install missing ceramic filters on AM band? Sounds like it has too wide IF.
Agree, CF2 and CF3 are definitely curious.
I live in Europe. Never have I ever seen a speaker size in metric, whatever its origin.
Russian Soviet speakers are in millimeters
Tire sizes are always metric in width, but inches in diameter. Bizarre, but that’s how it is. There was an attempt to make both metric in the late ‘70s, but it failed.
Used to see metric speaker sizes in Japanese radios from the late 60's through the 70's. 10 CM was a common size-just a hair under 4 inches.
Never seen anything electronic manufactured in India myself.
Cool to see this radio and it being an analog format design.
And yeah cool way for the board to separate from the tuning
string track set up. Yeah not much competition in the AM tuning
arena to the American analog portables, but a lot of them do as
good as this one on FM I think. Thanks for showing it! Cheers! 🍻 -AL
I recognize the ferrite antenna by its color and flat sides: it's the common 10x100mm Chinese ferrite rod that goes between $1 and $3 a piece on ebay and aliexpress.
Thanks to you customers know exactly what they're buying from the inside.
No1 Radio in world🇮🇳❤📻🏆🇮🇳❤📻🏆🇮🇳❤📻🏆🇮🇳❤📻🏆🇮🇳❤📻🏆🇮🇳❤📻🏆
@shango66 Just wanted to say congratulations on passing 50,000 subscribers. You deserve it!
One nice thing about it, uses full size electronic components rather than surface mount junk. Would make it easier to repair or improve with ceramic filters.
WHAT A GREAT PORTABLE RADIO! I'm not sure what your quality criteria are, but from where I'm standing, this looks like a great little radio. The sound is about 1.35 million times better than any western portable radio I've bought lately - you know, the ones that have a huge speaker grill in the plastic, but inside you have a piezo element. This one has a proper speaker and it actually has bass too. The power consumption is remarkable. 5 milliamps plus speaker drive, that's remarkable, the modern digital tea5767 based units have 4 times bigger power consumption. This would play for months from 2 D cells. And it picks up stations really well. From U.S. big city point of view the selectivity is not great, but for rural areas, travel, hiking, this has great sensitivity. In short: a great piece of proven design, they really did do these better in the analog days.
Brings back memories of the days when we turned the tuning knob to see what we could find
The shortwave band on mine worked really well. Unfortunately, something's wrong with the speaker. I contacted the seller and they're sending me another, no questions asked.
I ordered one the same day VWestLife put up his video and it's still not here (FEMA Region III). Hope it's not all smashed up like yours.
Edit: No physical damage but the dial pointer was off the track and jamming the tuning - easy 1 minute fix. Circuit board and speaker identical to yours. AM performance is better than expected but has poor electrical noise rejection - bandwidth was a little wide but nothing like yours. FM antenna broke right away but this thing doesn't care and gets really good FM anyway. SW is useless. The sound is better than expected and should get better as the speaker breaks in. I got this thing as a throwaway radio for working on stuff outside but I'm starting to like it more and more.
As you say, the FM reception is awesome. In earlier days, they used to make cabinets using bakelite. The cabinets were sturdy, but the transistor radios were heavy. To make it lighter and better portability, plastic cabinets were used. Honestly I feel that by charging a little more than $25, they could have given better finishing/reception. I am from India, and I have used high quality transistor radios especially the ones made by Murphy, Bush, HMV, Philips etc.
Sadly, very few people are enamored of the transistor radio. Even many Japanese electronics giants have stopped making transistor radios. And Sony has already announced that they will no longer make SW radios. But a very good and informative video. Keep rocking.
Ever since you mentioned K-Jazz I've been listening on the app. Good station. Another great video as always!
I am from India. Never seen this brand in any electronic or music shops in my country. It's a new local brand by a small scale manufacturer under the govt's Make in India initiative. You can buy Croma brand of modern digital radio made in India by the Tata group. By the way there are few radio enthusiasts in India these days and they are no longer interested in these antique or rather assembler models.
Hi there, greetings from Ireland. I'm into all about radio and love your content.
Just by looking at the PCB of this radio, the AM selectivity is none but you can fix this easily. there is unpopulated 455 KHz IF filter on the board.
Just remove jumper and solder one in. I think it's worth it. then the sensitivity desert test would be nice:)
So, pull the bridge from the space marked CF3 and replace it with a 3-pin filter like SFU455Y?
E-Mail the seller tell them to send you a replacement as it was damaged when you got it. Shortwave sucks on it as you hear FM bleed though on it.
Gotta love intermod!
I can appreciate the fact that it has a true analog tuning capacitor. Most don't even have that
What is going on with that one transistor in the upper left of the board? It looks like they moved the emitter to another point on the same trace.
On many of these receivers with SW, the single transistor is used as an antenna buffer. It's a cheap attempt at an active antenna. They need all the help they can get. On many of these radios with more than one SW band, they run the RF stage in the front end unturned.
I love those fake feet. So stylish
Same
That's how you tell high quality
Inches is still used for speakers and screen size just about everywhere. Back in the tube TV days we (in a metric country) used cms but for some reason when flat panels came out everyone suddenly switched to inches... I don't really get it, cm is always a higher number, wouldn't they want to use that for their marketing??
Here in the UK they tried going over to cm for TV screens around 20 years ago but went back to inches again.
@@christopherhulse8385 UK bad
Lindybeige I think wants to use the imperial system in england
Without antenna, how do you get shortwave radio station ? Open the telescope antenna for good signal reception.
Love how the speaker is mounted off center in its speaker grill!Climbing to new Heights!!!
gotta love the the birds singing in the background. . .
Nice video dan i seen the v westlife video and i wish he opened it up to see the circuit but he did not so thank you for opening it
As for the radio circuit it is a am/fm front end with rf /if and build in amplifire the volume signal control it happen in side the ic but the volume control key it control a voltage and the voltage go to the electronic volume control circuit that feed the audio signal to the amplifire in put circuit inside the ic there is an smd type with the same part number it is made in china license by sony corp and it is from cxa1..... family
the radio that banggood give you and you build it the am / fm one it has the same type of ic but smd but it is a from the cxa family
You might give the AM an "F" but it's way better than my old portable tube radio which on a good day can pick up a distorted version of WBZ (the strongest station around me). But if I change a few caps and redo the alignment the situation might change a bit.
This actually looks pretty decent, I've heard that India actually has a decent manufacturing sector (much better than China IIRC)
Sad thing is these sorts of radios can't be sold in the EU because of some B-S DAB laws requiring all new radios sold to come equipped with a DAB receiver
I remember, as a kid way back in the mid 90s, my dad used to buy me matchbox sized radios which I believed were manufactured in India. I was probably 7 Or 8 years old. It was 1999 when I first saw a computer which was the only one in our town in a small computer training center. I had interest in radio signals. I figured out that the cordless phone that we had communicates to the base station over FM at 90 MHz and one day I surprised my dad by playing back a call he had a while back, on our two in one cassette recorder which had the ability to record from radio. 😁
[something floating around inside]
Only the best...
I think a $25 pizza 🍕 would have been more satisfying! 🤣
In LA, One can't tell the shortwave band from the FM band, ten languages other than English on each.
अरे वाह 😊👌🏻👆🏻🙏🏻
whats the disadvantage of a PLL tuner?
I didn't see a shortwave review. Did I miss it?
I was Impressed with the build of that .
Iv just repaired a little radio but the reception is terrible, the antenna broke off so I put some copper wire for the antenna but it doesn't work very well, however when I wrap some solder round the copper it works well, is it that copper is not a good metal to use as an antenna
?
i must admit to being moved to tears just watching this video on the 5 core radio and all its glory truly a top radio in its dumpster sorry i meant class no really really i meant class HONEST
Hi
Contact kijiye
It looks like it is made for the rural Indian market. Where buying power of the public is very limited. Most people in urban India listen to the radio on their smartphones (4G LTE data is cheap) or in their cars. No one listens to the radio at home in bigger cities. Also, Philips has been making a large variety of high-quality radios in India for the last 50 years. None of this is exported to the US or Europe. Most of the exports go to Africa.
It's a made in India product..much more durable & reliable from any Chinese or other asien country made goods😉😎...
Thank you for doing this ,,I almost bought this puppy .. I do love that speaker tho... :)
Hi his was a T22, yours a T291?
I'm A Classic Country Guy. Have Been All
My Life Ever Since I was 2 Years Old
when you did the band spread demo, I wanted to go to Taco
bell!
I like your vids. From MrShmanckles
Did the shock, or moved antenna throw it out of alignment?
Based on this, and the other review, I bought one - should have it by Friday.
I got the other model.
I have an old Magnavox D-1066
AM pocket radio made in India.
📻🙂
is there anything from south america?
2:45 - "First thing we need to do is sniff it!!!" Funny, the first thing I do is shake hands! Thanks for opening day - your video followed VWestlifes' and we're happy ;-)
This radio sounds better on AM, than on FM! :))
You found one. Very good.
I notice that vwestlife had the T-22 while you have the T-291. Any real differences?
I like that !! The high end staff from Cucumba technologies ;=) ^^
Never cut towards yourself like that with your hand there, that knife looked sharp! :) Thanks for the video.
As I said on VWestlife's dismantle video, the speaker is simply ludicrous for a ½ watt amplifier!! Unlike most modern junk, which would have a 1¼ inch speaker behind a 5 inch grill, this 5 core has a speaker so large, it goes behind the dial scale!
I have seen some stuff marked “Made in India” before; but it is kinda rare...
hi there
I am from India
12:20 The "F" for AM and SW probably has more to do with the damage during shipping than the way the set was made. A whack hard enough to break off that fer-rite rod could easily have messed up the settings of half the IF transformers. I'm surprised that the FM tuner works as well as it does.
had a vintage radio arrive with a broken rod... AM was basically reduced to nothing so i concur with your assessment
I like the fact the radio has made i india stamped on the back and not made i china.
Love from India. Here we just have couple of MW stations.
Thank you for the review!
Won't be buying this radio, but just installed the KJAZZ app so I can listen, too.
same
I thought the same thing watching that video. Thanks for this content!
I know that there aren’t many shortwave stations left, but how is the reception on SW stations?
este rádio parece ser muito bom 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷
Parece, sim. Talvez seja porque só trabalha a pila e pelo chip da Sony. Acho que vou comprar um