As a youngster I had a fascination with radio and my Father gave me a wonderful red pocket MW radio that ran off two AAs when I was about 13. The interest grew from there and with the introduction of FM, I managed to rig up a speaker cabinet that housed two 15" speakers, to a domestic tape recorder with FM radio - the sound and bass were phenomenal. When the John Peel theme kicked off each evening at three minutes past ten the whole house knew about it. Of course I delved deeper and soon discovered the covert world of Short Wave radio - no longer was I confined to the UK or Ireland for listening pleasures, I could surf the world and all before surfing as we know it!It was a few years later before I bought the beast above and I'm glad to say that this is still in daily use in the office. The Sony ICF-SW7600G was purchased from Selfridges about fifteen years ago for an extortionate £175 - an awful lot for a small radio some would think. The other immediate irritation with this radio was that it ate AA batteries by the fours! So hungry in fact, I soon reluctantly shelled out another £49 for an AC mains adaptor that as we all know with these, pays for itself instantly but always seems such a massive amount initially.
This radio has truly travelled the world, having accompanied me throughout ten years of global travel shooting Sedgwick with Ed, been included on numerous family holidays to France, Greece and Italy. The aerial needs attention and has been repaired a few times but other than that it functions perfectly with the AC mains adaptor working overtime to save the world from AA battery consumption. In recent years the radio's role has shifted slightly when we travel as I can use an iTrip FM transmitter to transmit audio from an iPod to the radio via the FM frequency and be able to hear the podcast or music through the radio's speaker - much more social as one enjoys a sunset with the family.
One could also argue that the radio itself is redundant or soon to be . . . For a number of years now, one no longer needs to use such specialist equipment to listen to Radio Moscow or the Voice of America as the InterWeb (a Bushism!) has so brilliantly brought even the most local Radio Station within a few mouse clicks on the Mac. Almost any Radio Station worldwide worth its salt, will have a "Listen Live" button that takes one to the next minefield of which media player they use and one has to download and install before one can hear the latest news from Israel for example. Once that is sorted the listening is easy and repeatable and so much easier than the Sony Radio. With some additional software, one can also record or time shift the broadcast - almost too many options!
Getting back to the original Sony as detailed above, it is interesting to see that after all these years Sony have not really updated the "G" as the current model is a "GR" and sells through Amazon for £121
What this might suggest is that Sony got it right 15 years ago or more probably they haven't seen the need to update an item in a shrinking market. All I can say is that once again, if one looks after things as one should, they will last a lifetime! As discussed with Neil a while back, I am certainly not the typical consumer as I seem to extract more life, wear or usefulness out of pretty much everything I buy - the Sony Shortwave Radio is still going strong and at £11.66 a year so far - it seems great value!
Here's to the next fifteen years - but no, isn't analogue radio being cutoff soon?
DAB - that's next on the shopping list and I have already bought three of these but all as presents - have to be selfish soon!
