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Cette vue éclatée n'est pas un tutoriel de réparation. Pour réparer votre Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio, utilisez notre manuel de réparation.

  1. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown, Teardown: étape 1, image 1 de 3 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown, Teardown: étape 1, image 2 de 3 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown, Teardown: étape 1, image 3 de 3
    • A bit more trivia...

    • The huge success of the TR-63 helped Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (aka "Totsuko") decide to change its company name to Sony Corporation in 1958. For the few years prior, "Sony" had simply been a brand name attached to the company's fledgling line of transistor radios. (Check out the retro Sony logo - I like it!)

    • At the time, the company's co-founders felt the Japanese name was too hard to pronounce and remember by foreigners. They decided the name change would help them expand and become well known worldwide. And as they say, the rest is history.

  2. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 2, image 1 de 2 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 2, image 2 de 2
    • OK, enough babbling, let's get to work! This is the real Step 1...

    • On the top of the radio you'll notice the earphone jack.

    • Unscrew and remove the metal jack collar using a flathead screwdriver or other flat tool.

  3. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 3, image 1 de 2 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 3, image 2 de 2
    • Unscrew the large decorative screw in the center of the tuning dial by hand...

    • ...and then you can remove the screw and lift off the tuning dial.

    I have one of these beauties but it misses the decorative golden screw. Do you have any idea where can I get one?

    Regards!

    galessa

    galessa - Réponse

  4. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 4, image 1 de 1
    • Turn the radio over with its back facing you.

    • It's safe to say the warranty on this radio long ago expired -- so we're going to fearlessly open it up in the following steps...

    • In these photos, the gridlines on the green background are 1 cm square, so you can get an idea of the size of the radio.

  5. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 5, image 1 de 2 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 5, image 2 de 2
    • Carefully pry open the case from the bottom edge.

    • Boy, this is a lot easier to open than an iPod! (Spudger not required.)

    • On the inside of the back cover, you'll find the product label. Notice the official company name, Tokyo Tsushin Kyogo Ltd. I've seen photos of later versions of the TR-63 which say "Sony Corporation" there instead.

    • I'm not sure what happened to the corner of the label - perhaps after all these years in the back of my closet it was likely eaten by a grue?

    Tokyo Tsushin Kyogo-->Tokyo Tsushin "Kogyo"

    reik - Réponse

  6. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 6, image 1 de 1
    • Here's the circuit board inside, in all its glory.

    • This radio takes a user replaceable battery! (Standard 9V transistor battery.)

  7. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 7, image 1 de 1
    • Using a Phillips #1 screwdriver, remove the lone screw in the center holding the circuit board in place

    • Fortunately the Torx screw wasn't yet invented when they built this radio...

  8. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 8, image 1 de 1
    • Now gently lift out the circuit board.

    • You may need to wiggle it a bit - you have to get the volume dial to clear its opening before the circuit board will come out of the case.

  9. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 9, image 1 de 1
    • Set the circuit board beside the case, being careful not to damage the thin wires going to the earphone jack and speaker.

  10. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 10, image 1 de 3 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 10, image 2 de 3 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 10, image 3 de 3
    • The earphone jack is composed of a few strips of metal. It also acts as a switch - when the earphone is inserted, contacts are opened to disconnect the built-in speaker.

    • Carefully lift out the earphone jack assembly and set it aside from the case, still connected to the speaker.

  11. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 11, image 1 de 1
    • The speaker is fastened to the case with small clips held down by two nuts.

    • Use a 5mm nutdriver to loosen the nuts.

    • You may find the space a bit tight to fit a nutdriver in close to the case edge. If so, you can try using needlenose pliers instead to loosen the nuts.

    • Once the nuts are loosened, you can separate the speaker from the case.

  12. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 12, image 1 de 2 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 12, image 2 de 2
    • Here's the circuit board, earphone jack and speaker after they've been removed from the case.

    • Notice that there are components mounted on both sides of the circuit board. Perhaps the resistors and capacitors on the solder-side were a last minute design change?

    • On the other hand, the circuit board is so tightly crammed on the component side there probably wasn't enough room for everything on one side.

  13. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 13, image 1 de 1
    • Here's a closeup of the solder-side of the circuit board.

    • Unlike modern electronics, you can tell this radio was assembled and soldered by hand.

    • I wonder what mark my old high school electronics teacher would have given to this work? :)

  14. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 14, image 1 de 3 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 14, image 2 de 3 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 14, image 3 de 3
    • Here's the component side of the circuit board.

    • You can see the various components in these views of the circuit board. Remember, these are all discrete components here -- no integrated circuits! But state of the art at the time, a lot of circuitry crammed into a small space.

    • Six of the gray components with an oval cross-section (marked or stamped with "Sony") are transistors.

    • The 7th similar looking gray component is a varistor. It's the one at the front left of the circuit board in the 3rd photo in this series.

    • Say, do they still teach the resistor colour code in schools these days? :)

    They do! But there's also an app for that. ;)

    David Patierno - Réponse

    aha! I should have known there'd be an app for that :)

    bac - Réponse

    They were still teaching a few color codes when I took a class in the late 90's. This was all so much simpler back then! Things have become so much more complicated.

    P.S. I love the teardown.

    sedric - Réponse

  15. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 15, image 1 de 1
    • Here's a closeup of the volume dial / on-off switch

    • An eccentric cam in the middle of the dial opens and closes a metal contact (marked with green square) to disconnect/connect the power to the circuits.

  16. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 16, image 1 de 3 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 16, image 2 de 3 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 16, image 3 de 3
    • A few more miscellaneous views of the components, while we're at it...

    • The gray components with an oval cross-section are transistors.

  17. Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 17, image 1 de 2 Sony TR-63 Transistor Radio Teardown: étape 17, image 2 de 2
    • Finally, here are all the pieces of the fully disassembled TR-63 transistor radio, with both front and back views of the circuit board.

    • That's it!

    • This radio is just one of many Sony gadgets I would come to own over the years. I hope you enjoyed seeing it taken apart.

    This is phenomenal. I love the background grid. What size are the squares?

    Also, since we always get asked this: Did it work before you took it apart?

    This is such a piece of history, I feel like the parts should go in a museum somewhere, laid out like in your final photo.

    Kyle Wiens - Réponse

    thanks Kyle. the background grid is one of those self healing cutting mats that you'd find in an art supply store. the lines are on a 1cm square grid.

    Actually the radio does still need repair, I think there might be a break in the battery leads or connector but I didn't want to desolder/replace those before taking the photos and I didn't have time to debug further yet. But I definitely want to see if I can get it working again

    BTW, I don't know if I'll get a chance to tear it down but I managed to dig up another old Sony radio! this time a 1959 model TR-714, which was the first two-band (AM & SW) pocket transistor radio. with 7 transistors! and fortunately that one still works perfectly :)

    bac - Réponse

    The story I heard about Sony's entry into the US market went like this. At the time, IBM was building mainframe computers out of discrete transistors, having just phased out vacuum tubes. IBM was having transistors made by Fairchild in Mountain View, CA. One large batch of transistors failed to meet IBM specs. They were good transistors, but not up to IBM standards. An enterprising genius in the Fairchild marketing dept. took a bag of 1000 of these transistors, and a schematic of a reference design for a transistor radio he had Engineering draw up, and went to Japan. He plopped the bag of transistors and the schematic on the desk of the CEO of the Japanese company and said, "Would you like to make transistor radios out of these?" The result was Sony. Perhaps of you scrape the grey paint off one of those devices it might carry a Fairchild part no.

    mediasponge - Réponse

    This teardown reminds me of my childhood days. I was about 5 or 6 and I got my first transistor radio. I proceeded to take it apart to see if I could get distant stations in "better." (and I lived in Brooklyn, NY!) I never got the thing to work right after I tinkered with it, and the parents always said that it was the LAST radio they were getting me. However, with each subsequent radio, came the tinkerer in me that would tear it apart, and sometimes get it back together.

    It got me interested in electronics, and in Junior High School, I would roam the neighborhood on garbage day, with a friend, looking for old TVs that we could scrounge parts from. Zeniths were our favorites. We built up a great mass of parts, and built all sorts of oscillators, and neat things that made noises, but there were so many parts, that his mother got angry, and told us that unless we made something useful, she was going to throw them all out!

    Well, Brooklyn was the home to Eico, a manufacturer of electronics kits. Their warehouse was in an industrial part of the neighborhood, and it was a good place to go dumpster diving on Saturday, when they were closed. I found a schematic to one of their oscilloscopes, and realized that we had most of the parts. We built the thing, only having to go to Canal St., and get a surplus CRT from one of the many surplus dealers at the time. We built the o-scope, and donated it to the Jr. High School, to the awe of our electric shop teacher. (It wasn't much to us, just like reading a map)

    That was then, and today, I am a tech for a local government agency, maintaining about 2000 users and their network. PCs were a natural progression to me, and I have done my tinkering there too, but that's another story.

    Thanks for this nostalgic teardown, it really brings back quite fond childhood memories for me!

    RocRizzo - Réponse

    Dit verhaal is om van te smullen

    fietsen met KBO - Réponse

bac

Membre depuis le 10/13/09

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4 tutoriels rédigés

8 commentaires

This was really cool, thanks!

Chris Cline - Réponse

Wow, this is so cool. Seeing this makes me feel really young.

Nat Welch - Réponse

This is so awesome! And yes, it's 2014 and they still teach us colour code! Yay!

LauraFlu - Réponse

The first transistor radio hit the consumer market on October 18, 1954. The Regency TR-1 featured four germanium transistors operating on a 22.5-volt battery that provided over twenty hours of life.

jpguerin91 - Réponse

You guys rock thanks so much for the lesson in early electronics!!

sbarlow - Réponse

Please do a disassembly video for a Sony TR 620, I'm afraid to mess it up even with my experience. Even a chassis picture with the screws circled showing which ones. Thanks so much.

Ken Hoffman - Réponse

They were much easier to repair back in the day.

rrizzo - Réponse

Thank you so much!

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Alex Schneider - Réponse

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