Unboxing classic Truetone 3 transistor radio made in Japan, ads, more - collectornet.net

Students of fine transistor radio literature know this book, and those who know this book know the primary author, Roger Handy, loved this radio. Authors don't fill a page with something they are indifferent about. Want to see the whole radio, and the box it came in? I do!

So here it is! The Truetone DC3090--in one of the cheesiest boxes in all of transistor radio-dom. Yes, I said transistor radio-dom. It's the kind of box you usually saw on toy radios, or on radios with fewer than six transistors. And indeed this is a three-transistor radio.

The radio's styling is bas ed on the Sony TR-610 radio, the most copied transistor radio design of all time. And this is one of the more fun adaptations of that design. Anything with the flying "v" or any kind of wings on it is all right in my book. There's quite a tradition of these wings and V's in mid-20th century design, as I have elaborated on elsewhere in other videos.

This handsome little radio has a wire handle that doubles as a stand. It's only seen in black, as a Truetone anyway, but variations of this radio appear with other names on them in other colors including a nice aqua.

Opening it up we see a nicely made little goober that the final inspection has revealed to be OK! It's got TEN transistor in it. I thought you said it had three? It does. It has 3 TEN transistors in it. OK. Who's on first?

No, what I mean is the three transistors in this radio say TEN on them T-E-N. If I wasn't such a smart-aleck I would have already told you that this is a brand of Kobe Kogyo Corp. That TEN is not meant to be a number, or initials either. It is a translation of the Chinese character which means something like "Heaven" in Chinese and Japanese. Kobe Kogyo, or TEN started in 1920 as Kawanishi Machine Works, and eventually evolved into a name that might be more familiar to some, Fujitsu Ten. The company still exists today, as Denso Ten, making car audio, video, and other stuff under the Eclipse brand.

But it's not believed that Kobe Kogyo made this radio. Some of those other variants I’ve seen have NEC transistors in them. Here’s an ad for one of those variants, the six-transistor “Dream Six.” I’ve seen three, four, and six-transistor variants with names like Hearever, Suntone, Elgin, and this Dream Six. When I saw this ad, I thought ah! here’s the actual maker of this radio. But no, T. Chatani & Co. was, and still is, a middleman or distributor, or to call them what they call themselves, they are a “trading company.” Well, they’ve been at it since 1909 so they must be good at it.

And who was the retailer of this Truetone radio, and in fact, all the Truetone radios? Where could you buy them? Well, you know that Sears sold the Silvertone brand radios, right? And Montgomery Ward sold the Airline brand. And Penncrest was a Penney's brand. W. T. Grant stores sold the Bradford brand. And this list goes on. But who sold Truetone? Well you often see a "W-A" logo crest on Truetone radios, though there isn't one on this radio. W-A, what could THAT stand for? And look at this battery specification on the inside of this radio. It calls for a regular 9-volt, to be sure, but not an Eveready, Ray-O-Vac, Burgess, Mallory, or any of the rest. It calls for a "Wizard" battery. Now where would you get a Wizard-brand battery?

Here's that battery! And it's got that crest on it that I told you about--with the W-A on it. Western Auto. That's where you got Truetone radios and Truetone TVs for that matter. And Wizard batteries and Wizard garden hoses for that matter. Western Auto out of Kansas City, Missouri. You'll find an entire video on the Western Auto catalog on this channel and I invite you to check it out if you're a person who likes shopping for stuff you can't buy, at unbelievably cheap prices, in a store that isn't there anymore.

And here is a Western Auto ad for this exact radio, on sale for $18.88. It says: "Cigaret-pack size! But this gold-trimmed black beauty packs power to keep you tuned in anywhere. With easel stand, less battery. A great buy!" That’s what it says.

A great buy is right! At that price, I’ll take all I can get! Now where is that store that no longer exists? And how late aren't they open?

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