Uploaded December 2023 | Updated September 2026, 4 hours ago
The Hitachi Hi-Phonic. If you like quirky, interesting examples of vintage technology, this Hitachi radio is just the thing. It has just one knob, the on/off volume knob. So..how..do you tune it?
The Hitachi Hi-Phonic TH-600 model from 1964. The box here has a sleeve over it. A nice touch. And here's the owner's manual. We'll look at that a little later.
There's a little piece of flexible foam here that is, remarkably, just like new. Most times when you see this kind of soft foam that's this old, it has crumbled to dust.
We have a place for "Accessories" here, and inside of that is an earphone in a nice, small leather pouch And there's a block of styrofoam in here which, like the soft foam, looks like new. The radio may have been supplied with a battery included, and if it was, it would have been tucked in here.
Hitachi... housewives know the name.
It's a good looking radio. A bit hefty in both appearance and weight for a shirt-pocket I suppose, but it's a radio with a design personality, unlike many of its peers which by the time this radio was made, in 1964, were increasingly generic and plain-looking in appearance.
And here's how you get inside of it. A little tricky, but not impossible. It WAS impossible for somebody, though. I remember the first one of these radios I ever got was all broken out on the bottom. I spent a lot of time practicing plastic restoration techniques on that radio, mixing up toxic stews of goo and slathering it on this way and that. Then filing and sanding and polishing in an attempt to upgrade the results from horrible to merely awful.
The aluminum battery door here is very reminiscent of the Sony TR-620, and of the Panasonic T-601.
So since this radio only appears to have one knob, a volume knob, how DO you tune it? Well,... this is how. Did you see that coming? This.. is a far cry from the teeny tiny buttons often seen on things nowadays. Black buttons on black backgrounds with no words to describe what they do, just little icons. It's maddening. You know what I mean. It's like if the Encyclopedia Brittanica was printed the size of an index card and written entirely with emojis.
And now, the radio's little instructions sheet, as I promised. "On-Off switch and volume control," ......"tuning control," ..."earphone jack," ...and "battery replacement." Fair enough. ...And "Specifications." Hitachi Transistor Radio.
I like this Hitachi and I'm happy to have found this nice example in the box. Not just because it's nice to have the original box, but also because the radio replaces that earlier example I had, on which I experimented, and which continued, every time I saw it, to mock me.
The Hitachi Hi-Phonic. If you like quirky, interesting examples of vintage technology, this Hitachi radio is just the thing. It has just one knob, the on/off volume knob. So..how..do you tune it?
The Hitachi Hi-Phonic TH-600 model from 1964. The box here has a sleeve over it. A nice touch. And here's the owner's manual. We'll look at that a little later.
There's a little piece of flexible foam here that is, remarkably, just like new. Most times when you see this kind of soft foam that's this old, it has crumbled to dust.
We have a place for "Accessories" here, and inside of that is an earphone in a nice, small leather pouch And there's a block of styrofoam in here which, like the soft foam, looks like new. The radio may have been supplied with a battery included, and if it was, it would have been tucked in here.
Hitachi... housewives know the name.
It's a good looking radio. A bit hefty in both appearance and weight for a shirt-pocket I suppose, but it's a radio with a design personality, unlike many of its peers which by the time this radio was made, in 1964, were increasingly generic and plain-looking in appearance.
And here's how you get inside of it. A little tricky, but not impossible. It WAS impossible for somebody, though. I remember the first one of these radios I ever got was all broken out on the bottom. I spent a lot of time practicing plastic restoration techniques on that radio, mixing up toxic stews of goo and slathering it on this way and that. Then filing and sanding and polishing in an attempt to upgrade the results from horrible to merely awful.
The aluminum battery door here is very reminiscent of the Sony TR-620, and of the Panasonic T-601.
So since this radio only appears to have one knob, a volume knob, how DO you tune it? Well,... this is how. Did you see that coming? This.. is a far cry from the teeny tiny buttons often seen on things nowadays. Black buttons on black backgrounds with no words to describe what they do, just little icons. It's maddening. You know what I mean. It's like if the Encyclopedia Brittanica was printed the size of an index card and written entirely with emojis.
And now, the radio's little instructions sheet, as I promised. "On-Off switch and volume control," ......"tuning control," ..."earphone jack," ...and "battery replacement." Fair enough. ...And "Specifications." Hitachi Transistor Radio.
I like this Hitachi and I'm happy to have found this nice example in the box. Not just because it's nice to have the original box, but also because the radio replaces that earlier example I had, on which I experimented, and which continued, every time I saw it, to mock me.
