Sony's simple four letter logo first appeared in 1958, replacing their first logo in use since 1955. Over the years, the letters were made a bit taller and the spacing between them tightened up. Collectors can date Sony products just from the spacing of the logo. But this little outlier, made around 1962, had a logo wider than ever.
It's a pocketable Sony transistor radio! Pocketable is a made-up word, attributed to Sony, in case you didn't know.
This vintage, boxed Sony radio is about as mint as it gets. Even the outer box is clean, straight, and "crisp," as collectors like to say. It sort of slides apart... and it's tight. I don't think I've ever seen 60-year-old corrugated cardboard look and feel this new. This kind of cardboard usually has a lot of acid in it-- the kind of acid that's NOT in acid-free paper--and this is why it's usually brown and crumbly by this age, like old newspapers.
Removing the inner sleeve... stuff falls down. Well, of course. As Schemer used to say on Shining Time Station, "darned gravity."
So here are the "InstructioN for Use"--Sony still isn't using the plural, "instructions," and won't for several more years. This booklet contains the instructions in four languages: English, German, French, and Italian.
And the Sony polishing cloth--still in its original bag.
And here's "When the Warning Sounds"--about the Civil Defense system, the loud warning sounds you can expect to hear in case of enemy attack, where to tune your radio and where to go for relative safety. Hmmmm.
And Sony's warranty reply card asking you all manner of questions. Collecting your data. Well, unlike today, at least back then, they asked!
And here is this nice little upholstered box containing the treasure we are looking at today. Let's take a look all around. Sony varied their box designs almost as much as their radio designs. You'll notice when the box is opened that you can see three different iterations of the Sony logo, the one on the upper lid of the box which is spaced much like the radio's case, below it, but is not the same. And then there's the radio that is much wider spaced. None of them match, but then in some sense they all match, you know? Nothing looks wrong about the differences. Or maybe we're all just used to it.
This case is just pristine. And inside of it an earphone in its own case, and an original Sony 9-volt battery that has never been unwrapped. There's a new, never-used leather strap in here too.
The radio is wrapped in a bag with little white Sony logos all over it.
This Sony shirt-pocket transistor radio, TR-817, had a tuned R. F. stage, which is technical talk for something that makes a radio more sensitive in picking up distant broadcasting stations. So Sony labeled this model "Super Sensitive" and put an "RF" on the box. The RF stands for radio frequency. This is roughly the same as having a built-in antenna booster.
There's a unique battery door here on the back that is hinged--and in this model Sony attempts once again to deal with one of the weakest links of the transistor radio, the battery connector. The typical dangling wires and snap-on battery clip have been replaced with this hinged holder. This solution is a little over-engineered perhaps but you've got to give them credit for trying.
Aiming this model at a more technically sophisticated consumer, Sony, for good measure, threw in a couple of other technical features to please that sort of buyer. The radio has a push-button on/off switch, so you can maintain your volume settings, and there is, of all things, a tuning meter to help you zero in on those distant stations.
And here's this radio with its successor model from around 1964, the TR-830. A pair of very nice radios, indeed. Quite unlike what most other players in the transistor radio market were up to at the time.
