Michael Black wrote:

David Nebenzahl ) writes:

Which implies that, at least sometime in the past, there were those who
repaired those radios. Did they? I remember when those things appeared
on the market, and I always thought of them as disposable items. Did
people actually take them in to be fixed?

Who knows. But early transistor radios, that would have used germanium
because there was no choice, were not cheap radios. They cost significant
amounts at the time. Even later, one could still get decent transistor
portables that would have cost a fair amount at the time. I once found
a Sony portable from the early sixties, and it has metal casing and is
quite heavy, complete with the large speaker. People would have been
having those repaired, there's no way they'd toss them if they stopped
working.

The cheap transistor portables came later. Likely they were less likely
to be repaired, but circuit wise they weren't that different from the
expensive portables.


A lot of transistor radios were repaired in the '60s and & '70s. Sams
published 159 different TSM manuals, covering about 1000 models. B&K
made a piece of test equipment specifically to repair transistor radios,
as well. It had a power supply for the radio, a signal generator, signal
tracer, and voltmeter all in one package so you could quickly locate and
repair the faults. Most of the problems were bad transistors at that
time, followed by bad volume controls and variable capacitors.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida