Time for another radio?

As long as all you are looking to listen to is FM then almost any cheap radio with an external antenna (either extending pole or wire) or an antenna jack will work fine for you.

__________________
Remember, when seconds count. . .
the police are just MINUTES away!

Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. . .Davy Crockett

There are couple Sony pocket radios in the $10 to $15 range that have caught my interest. Sony SRF59 and Sony ICF-S10MK2. Supposed to have amazing tuners for such cheap radios with little to no station drift. And they seem to hold up pretty well. Just convert them to table radio by plugging in cheap set computer speakers in the line out jack and I think I could rig them to run off a small wall wart rather than batteries. It gets down to it, all I am wanting is to tune into local NPR station for news, dont need long distance tuner capabilities or extraordinary sound quality, though the clock radios I've been getting by with last couple years are pretty marginal sound-wise.

If the Sony pocket radios arent up to it, there are bunch cheap mp3 players with built in FM tuner. The older Sansa model was supposed to do ok. Apparently the Zune 30 has an especially good FM tuner, but Zunes arent down into my price range yet and they seem to have had lot software problems.

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

Not really, one of my bargain clock radios from thrift store can tune in the NPR station fine, but has a very annoying tuner that needs constant fiddling to counter station drift. I dont like constant fiddling, makes me want to turn off the radio and toss it in the trash. Cheap radios tend to have crap tuners, crap controls, and crap sound cause they use the tiniest cheapest speakers they can find. They wont even pony up for equivalent of $2 computer speakers which should be minimum in any table radio.

Modern marketing is all about promising but falling short on the delivery.

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

"So then I got couple old clock radios for couple bucks at thrift store. One needs constant tuning so too painful to use. The other did ok for couple years until volume control went wonky. For while I had choice of no sound or full volume. Now I have to jam a qtip in the volume wheel to get full volume. That isnt going to work long. Believe it or not, it actually has an input jack (in a clock radio??? really???) but no output jack or I could plug in cord from pair computer speakers. They have their own amplification circuit...

So first question, can I just hook onto wires going to the internal speaker and patch them to the computer speakers or solder them to an output jack? "

If you want to play around... take it out of the case, use some spray contact cleaner on the audio pot and turn it up and down fifty times. If the pot is salvageable, that should do it. If not... IIRC a 10K audio taper potentiometer is pretty standard as a replacement - or just rip the one out of the clock radio that drifts. Speaker - most likely yes, you can hook it to a computer speaker. Small speakers are usually 4 ohm and will take some mismatch without too much of a problem.

Another thought - car radios are often better design. A 12 vt. power supply from a dead computer and a car radio...

I've never had a radio which drifted. I picked one up just the other day at the local goodwill for $2.50 to use at work, it has trouble tuning up the local lower power AM station but its in a metal building. Other than that it has worked well.

I have found that digital tuners are much better/easier at tuning than analog. But you have to watch out, some of the cheap ones used to have a digital display but an analog tuner. Talk about hunks of near worthless junk

As for the bad speakers as you pointed out if the radio has a headphone jack you can hook it to a set of amplified speakers.

__________________
Remember, when seconds count. . .
the police are just MINUTES away!

Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. . .Davy Crockett

My experience is just opposite, in that its the unusual one that doesnt drift. There just arent that many cheap digital tuner radios out there yet at thrift stores and such, so not a lot experience with them, just that Phillips shelf stereo I had and also some previous owner stuck a no name cheapie digital car radio in my Festiva before I bought it. The Phillips tuner did good until lightening killed whole thing. The car stereo on other hand would jump channels if it couldnt hold the one that was tuned. It would would also turn itself on and off if you hit bumps. Some idiot told me he wanted to buy the car radio cause it had lights flashing to the music. Told him $10 and I would remove it for him. He never came back.

And why in world do I have the most expensive thrift stores in the country apparently? Thats how I ended up with the clock radios, they were only cheap radio in the store, the wonky boom boxes were priced $15 to $20. I even plugged couple in and they were wonky, in other words junk.

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

Its not 1970 anymore with car radios having a red wire and a black wire and an antenna. The thift store OEM radios have some crazy mishmash of a wiring harness so you would need to have wiring diagram for the car it came out of to figure which of the fifteen wires goes to what. I cant imagine what all the wires do and why they need so many. The new aftermarket car radios, which should come with a wiring diagram, start at around $40 and I am not thinking they are exactly a super high quality radio.

Sometimes fiddling modifying something like a wornout clock radio isnt worth it when I can just buy a $10 pocket radio brand new with a headphone jack on side of it or get a $15 new mp3 player with a FM radio built in. Or another $3 clock radio...

Will see though, getting around time to go buy groceries for the month, see what I find at town. I also havent went out and looked at that old stereo tuner, might do that before dark. Always nicer to not buy anything.

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

Its like shopping pawn shops, you have to keep checking til you find one. It took me quite a while to find one for that price.

__________________
Remember, when seconds count. . .
the police are just MINUTES away!

Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. . .Davy Crockett

You can usually find the wiring diagram online.

Here's one for a radio I suggest you avoid like a billy goat with a bad rash, the one from a ford focus:

Car Radio Battery Constant 12v+ Wire: White/Red
Car Radio Accessory Switched 12v+ Wire: This vehicle uses the can data network for accessory turn on.
Car Radio Ground Wire: Black/Blue
Car Radio Illumination Wire: This vehicle uses the can data network for illumination controls.
Car Stereo Dimmer Wire: This vehicle uses the can data network for dimmer controls.
Car Stereo Power Antenna Trigger Wire: N/A
Car Stereo Amp Turn-On Trigger Wire: Violet/Red
Car Stereo Amplifier Location: N/A
Car Audio Front Speakers Size: N/A
Car Audio Front Speakers Location: N/A
Left Front Speaker Positive Wire (+): White
Left Front Speaker Negative Wire (-): White/Brown
Right Front Speaker Positive Wire (+): White/Violet
Right Front Speaker Negative Wire (-): White/Orange
Car Audio Rear Speakers Size: N/A
Car Audio Rear Speakers Location: N/A
Left Rear Speaker Positive Wire (+): White/Green
Left Rear Speaker Negative Wire (-): Brown/Yellow
Right Rear Speaker Positive Wire (+): Brown/White
Right Rear Speaker Negative Wire (-): Brown/Blue



The problem is most OEM radios don't have any wires sticking out of them. They have plugs for the wiring harness to clip into. When you buy a replacement you buy a replacement you buy a car specific adapter.

__________________
Remember, when seconds count. . .
the police are just MINUTES away!

Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. . .Davy Crockett

Why not just go to Radio Shack & buy a new volume control/unit? There's an old radio buff in our town who still gets parts for his radios through the Shack.

Bose Wavestation.... but you gotta pay the price

Exactly, plus the thrift store radios tend not to be specific on model. They get them donated in box of miscellaneous. Lucky if it says Chevy or Ford on it....

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

Cause we are talking about a wonky old digital alarm clock with tiny tinny speaker. How much time and money do you want to put into a $2 marginal radio. The ONLY thing it had going for it is that it had fairly good tuner for some reason, no drift, maybe have to tweak it once every several months of use to get strongest signal. I learned my lesson, if I buy another junker radio, gotta have a headphone jack so I can plug in pair computer speakers. Still havent figured why radios cant have at least the speaker quality of a set of $2 chinese computer speakers but for some reason they dont. All that stupid pricepoint marketing BS I guess. Dont make the low end stuff attractive to the higher end crowd, dont make anything that lasts long time, always try to push people to more expensive model with the ethereal promise that its better and so on... In other words promise the chance at the goose that lays the golden egg, but in reality trade the kid a handful of beans for his cow.

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

Looks like when your radio strikes thirteen there's no way to rewind it back down to twelve....

geo

Don't invest in the Tivoli either. Mine is almost impossible to tune and station drift begins as soon as you take your hand off the tuner. Even connecting to an external antenna didn't help. But it does make a great looking paper weight.

But wait there is more to doing this! Finding a replacement harness plug with pigtails is not the big deal. I found site sells any plug you want for $12. The big deal is that car manufacturers decided they needed to protect OEM radios from being reused so they put in security antitheft code. You need to re-enter the code to make your radio work after dead battery or no battery. Like thieves are out looking for cheap OEM radios.... But anyway it prevents reuse of these radios unless its a very persistant individual that manages to find the code without paying the dealer $100. Means power to radio security system would have to be constant or you would have to re enter your code everytime you turned on the radio when using it as inhouse radio.

Now I did run into one site that said at least for car he had, that some owner of the car had to set up a code, otherwise there wouldnt be one???? Didnt get clear answer to that. And some others mentioning latest radios are hooked into Onstar and other such wonders. They really dont want people transplanting these to their 1970 Plymouth....

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

That sucks. They used to be the cream of the crop. My dad still uses his GE SuperRadio daily. It must be about 30 years old.

I have a 20 year old SuperRadio in the shop. I planned on replacing it with the same model when it dies. Now, I'll have to baby it.

I keep the Sangean DT-400W by my bedside. I like to fall asleep listening to distant AM stations and this one is the best. I've used it almost every night for 3+ years.

Quite possibly the best AM/FM radio ever made for the price. Can anyone even name one other radio model that has been produced for decades?

Check out Ebay for some vintage GE Superadios ==> http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from...All-Categories

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

Interesting. First bad feedback on them that I've read. I suspect you got a bad one, the feedback on Amazon and such were saying its one of easiest analog to tune around. But not to worry, I would go $25 tops on one at yard sale in pristine shape, just cause I like the looks and philosophy of simple design. Plus it would be very easy to make a tidy profit on it if I ever wanted to sell it. Not giving $100 for used one or $150 for a new one. My cheapness gene saves me again!!!

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman