Sony? Sounds more like SounDesign...
 

I've never heard a radio, let alone a SONY radio distort audio, and just sound so bad as this one does. The audio sounds "soupy" or maybe "muffled." The station It was set on played a song that I consider to be good for testing radios. It is a good bassy song. I've tested many a radio, with this song, and this ICF-9650 did the worst job I've ever heard. There was so much distortion at the climax. This radio does not play FM at all, even though it has been recapped, and the controls cleaned.:rant:

You nailed it, SounDesign is about as bad as it gets for 70s audio. So much for the hype regarding pre-Chinese Fony stuff; I think I'll stick with my Sansui 661.

I had the same FONY and gave it away. Muddled, distorted sound pretty much nails it and the sensitivity was poor too.

I have one from the early 80s that looks the same (maybe it's a different model number) and it sounds great, loads of bass and treble. The only problem with mine was a leaky bypass cap on the volume control, replaced it and cleaned the volume pot and all is well. No idea why my experience is so far off everyone else's...

You're not the only one. I've bought and flipped several of that same model over the years, and all had good sensitivity and sounded great. The bad experience of a few can probably be considered as "lemons" and certainly not typical of the majority of these Sonys.

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I have two similar to that; they have treble and bass tone controls and a "loudness" switch which acts as a bass boost. Both play and sound great. Sony must have made a ton of them because one or two are always on Ebay.

I wonder why I can't get the FM band to work? It's kind of annoying when my favorite AM station cuts their power at 19:00 and I can't receive it at all. They also have a station on FM, but this radio can't get FM. I tried replacing the capacitors, and cleaning the switch, but neither helped.