Quote:
Originally Posted by darklife
An update:
After letting this radio sit to the side all of this time I got bored the other night and decided to give it one last try.
I noticed the (VCO) potentiometer inside was shifted far off center. After playing around with it and testing it with a ohm meter I noticed it was making bad wiper contact. Replaced the part and put it on a good strong signal, tuned the pot and voila stereo!
The stereo/mono switch also seemed to be dirty so that needed a cleaning.
Guess it was a much easier fix than I ever thought.
Also learned it's not Tozaj but rather Tozai. That I looks like a J on the label 
I peaked all the slug tuned coils inside for best reception on AM and FM with the tuning at a station near the center of the dial.
Yes the stereo separation of those tiny speakers is a joke, but you plug in headphones and it really sings. Besides even those tiny speakers sound good for the tiny portable it is.
The audio of this little thing through headphones is really good for being a cheap radio. The AM end is nice and wide open giving clean bass and highs well up to the top 8-10kHz with a bit of usual rolloff.
FM sounds decent with little to no hiss on stronger signals. Oddly this radio will light up stereo with even the weakest signals making for the most distant stations give stereo with the obvious noise from long distance separation of the channels.
What amazes me about this supposedly cheap radio (and the cheapo brand) is how well it pulls in stations. I compared this radio to the common sony ICF S10MK2 and they are equal in reception strength, but the Tozai has much better audio through headphones even when in mono.
It seems to have a nice hot end, or maybe it's just because I really tweaked the little bugger 
Anyways if any of you here see another one of these I recommend picking it up, you'd be surprised. |
I have a Zenith clock radio with stereo FM. The set has two small speakers (can't be more than 3"-4" or so) at either end of the cabinet and sounds fairly good, but the audio sounds 1000 times better when I listen with headphones.
I had a real surprise some time ago when I plugged a pair of stereo phones into my Midland weather radio with FM. Ordinarily, this radio's 3" speaker (might be smaller) does a good enough job reproducing the weather forecast, but not nearly so well with music -- in fact, FM sounds downright tinny, with almost no bass whatsoever. Connect a good pair of headphones to the external speaker jack on the back of the radio, however, and the sound is, as with my Zenith stereo clock radio, 1000 times better.
However, it must be remembered that this radio is primarily to be used a NOAA weather-warning receiver, not a hi-fi FM tuner. The designers intended this set to be used for reception of weather warnings over NOAA weather radio stations, not hi-fi FM, which is almost certainly why it was built with a small speaker. After all, who cares about high-fidelity FM if a severe thunderstorm (or worse) is headed for your area? As long as you can hear and understand the weather forecasts and/or warnings, that's all that counts.