Hello All,

Found one of these and was wondering if they were as "hot" as was written in a couple articles I found on-line ???

Think I remember where a couple of people here had one.

How is the performance and sound quality ? Imagine they do pretty well being made by Toshiba...

Looks like it might be a later model with the "push down" handle...

John

Realistic 90L611 appeared in SAMS TSM-46 in 1964
and photofact Set-575 Folder-11 earlier in 1962

Greg.

My uncle bought one when they were first offered. He was a big Yankees fan and needed a radio that could receive a distant station that carried the games. The set did the job but it used a hard-to-find, round 9-volt battery that didn't last very long. Somehow, the radio got lost in his travels. Then some years later, I found one at an estate sale and gave it to him as a birthday present. As I recall, it was a great performer compared to other radios I had at the time. I changed the battery snap connections to accept the more common rectangular 9-volt battery that had become standard. With the newly introduced alkaline versions, playing time was greatly extended. Sound quality was typical of small transistor radios...good enough to listen to ball games.

Dave

Thanks Guys !

Greg---These actually have a readable schematic glued to inside of back cover (found picture on-line).

Dave---Thanks for the story. Bought the one pictured and am sure curious on how it will do compared to my earlier Toshiba 8TM-294 which is an excellent performer without any RF amplification...

Have passed these by for years because I thought the aluminum trim at top looked kinda cheap, but am in "radio withdrawal" after 6+ weeks of not finding any of the few radios left on the "list" and fell to the temptation...

Anyone else have experience with these sets ?

John

This radio arrived today---looks much nicer than pictures, but no time to give it a try tonight...

More info tomorrow...

John

Radio fine !

Connected battery with test clips since radio was designed for the old round 9V with different size contacts and turned on---radio worked great with excellent sensitivity, but poor selectivity with adjacent strong stations. ANT & RF trimmers were fine, but "tweaking" IFT's cured problem. This really is a hot little radio all across band and the volume control is noise-free. Plenty of clear audio, but like Dave mentioned, more suited for talk or ball games as it is flat and a bit on the treble side...

Since it works so well with original caps, may just leave it alone since it's in such good cosmetic condition and don't want to crack the fairly stiff leather at the back cover "hinge" area. Just carefully clean it for display.

More to come...

John

Gave it a "light" detail cleaning this evening and took a few pics...

Am still debating whether to replace caps as that may improve sound quality even though it does have plenty of volume...

Pics below including one with a Toshiba 8TM-294 of similar vintage...

John

Very nice!

^ What Colin said!

Hey John, you might try D/C one end of each Electrolytic at a time, and jumpering it with a new cap, to see if there's any improvement.

If so, and given the newer ones are of course smaller in size, perhaps hollow out the original and restuff it with the newer one. You could probably use either an axial or a radial.

Thanks Guys---glad I finally found one of these in good shape within "budget" !

Richard---will probably just use some test leads with mini-clips to jump the caps in audio circuit without removing PCB since radio works so well otherwise. Imagine the audio "tonal" quality is near normal, though, since both Toshiba's sound similar even after replacing all caps...

John