As luck would have it, I found myself perusing through a Salvation Army store, and found an old portable radio. The sticker read $6.00 and "it works". I snatched it up quicker than you could slap a tick. I turned it on to see, and shazam...radio worked. It also has a headphone jack and a line-out jack to connect to an external speaker.

I couldn't wait to get home & get to work.

So off to the workshop to get busy. Took off the back panel, removed the batteries and battery holder, and started looking around for the radio signal wire.

There it is. Took a while, since the components were pretty tight around the on/off volume potentiometer. I cut the wire right where the wooden skewer is touching in the photo above. I solder/spliced a new length of wire to each, then created a simple wiring diagram to remind myself what I needed to do.

The wire from the am/fm circuit that I cut & spliced was sent to one side of a new on/on switch, with a 1/4" guitar input jack added & connected to the other side of the switch. The middle lug of the switch was connected to the other end of the original line from am/fm circuit, which was already connected to the on/off volume potentiometer. All that was left to do was connect the negative lug of the input jack to the common ground of the radio, drill & install the switch & jack, and re-install the battery holder & batteries.

I may look into adding a wall wart dc power jack. But for now, its back together and best of all, the radio works as it always did, and the guitar amp sounds great. I will work on a demo video tomorrow.

Funny thing...here in Canada, all our am radio stations ceased to operate a few years ago. But when I tested the radio, I was getting 1010 WINS radio out of New York all the way to Nova Scotia. Wasn't expecting that.

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Replies

  • Nice job you did there, did you ever post a video of it in action?
    • I made a video, but my webcam mic is crap, will redo when I get a decent microphone

  • that's what I love about this stuff!!!!...that is sweet and way better than buying an amp....plus its got history,,....and how can you not love 6 bucks!!!!!!!!!!!!! awesome

  • 1010 wins, LOL, I use it for traffic on a regular basis.

    Nice amp!

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