Sony ICF-SW55 World Band Radio Recapped and Upgraded by a Pro Sony Tech

Description: For sale is an excellent Sony ICF-SW55 worldband AM FM radio. Over the years, I have owned several of these very nice SW55 radios and the cosmetic condition of this particular copy is one of the best I have encountered. Please view our hi rez pictures to see how this radio appears. There are two very slight scratches on the screen, that are only visible from a side-lit angle. The whip antenna is perfect, as is the case and buttons.This radio has been electronically restored by a former Sony technician, who replaced the commonly targeted electrolytic capacitors and upgraded the dial lighting. So the radio is ready for many more years of service. Note that similarly restored radios are being sold on eBay for hundreds more. Included in the sale are: SW55 radio and soft caseoriginal manuals and literatureoriginal AN71 roll-up antennaoriginal earphones (appear to be unused)original accessory antenna connector original Sony power supplyoriginal hard transport case in excellent conditionThe SW55 has some really neat features that are not often found on shortwave radios and it is a great radio to have at home for radio reception or to take on the road during travel. For reception, the SW55 receives Longwave from 150 to 530 KHz, Mediumwave from 530-1700 KHz (AM broadcast), Shortwave from 1701 to 30000 KHz, and FM from 88 to 108 MHz. Because it receives all of the primary entertainment and communication bands, this radio is a great all around radio for casual or even emergency use.Sony has really done a fantastic job of design with the radio and the SW55 has many important features and a couple other features not often found on other receivers. The designers of the SW55 have really outdone themselves with the feature laden set, and in doing so, have made it really compact. It measures only 7 1/2 inches by 5 inches and is about the size of a small book. Typically a portable radio's size is somewhat somewhat determined by the need to have a speaker on the front, and thus, a radio is often larger to accommodate the speaker and operating controls. Well, the Sony engineers designed a way around this....by placing the speaker on the back of the radio and having a sound duct that directs the reception to the front through a letterbox port. You can see this port by looking just above the large LCD display as can be seen in the picture at the top of the listing. The sound is surprisingly stout for such a small radio receiver.Another nice feature of this radio is the way you can locate world time (also known as Universal Time). If you press the world time button you can see either local or world time as it relates to the world map on the display. Lines will actually appear on the screen to show you the location of the time pressed. What we find to be helpful is that once you program in your local time, you can press the night / time diff button and the world display will show you a world map highlighted by lines depicting night time in the affected areas of the world. Thus, when you listen on shortwave, you can get an idea of the time and the daylight as it is shown across the world. Really cool !The radio has up to 125 memories and many of the shortwave broadcasters main frequencies are already programmed into the radio. You call up the page of the station you want to hear and can press the memory button to tune into the station. If you happen to tune around and hear a station, you can actually save it to one of the pages for future recall. The pages actually have alpha characters so that you can easily identify which page you are on as the page will read "BBC" or "China Radio" or something else, but you get the idea. Think of it as an electronic logbook.Using the radio and its advanced features is rather easy to master due to its intuitive layout. However, there is a user manual included and we are also including the manual on CD along with the radio to assist with those features that may require a little more learning. This receiver also receives amateur radio signals as it can translate from upper or lower sideband and even has 2 bandwidths to be able to eliminate side channel interference when listening on shortwave. While it does not work as well as a professional amateur desktop receiver on sideband, the translation certainly is good enough to satisfy for casual listening and is impressive in its own way.As for the bandwidths, there is a choice of wide or narrow to balance fidelity vs immunity from side channel interference. You would leave the Sony SW55 in the wide bandwidth for most casual listening. However, if the band is crowded, you would shift into narrow to slice the signal better. This is similar to shifting a vehicle from 2 wheel to 4 wheel drive in more difficult circumstances and it is a nice feature to have available when listening and you need to call upon it.We could go on and on about all the features and how to use them...the sleep and recording timers, built in alarm clock, tone control, sensitivity control, various methods of tuning, programming, etc. but this has been covered in other professional columns. If you want to read more, we suggest you look at these pages:http://www.mwcircle.org/mw_rec_sw55.htm (please copy and paste this link into your internet browser)Eham.net offers some great reviews for this radio that help the reader realize what an outstanding radio this is. You may find the Eham reviews here:https://www.eham.net/reviews/view-product?id=2955 (please copy and paste this link into your internet browser)Flat rate priority shipping by USPS. This cost includes proper packing materials for safe delivery and insurance cost against damage or loss.USA shipping only please. Sony ICF-SW55 (from Shortwaveradio.chManufactured by Sony, Tokyo.In 1991, Sony added another „World Band Receiver“ to their range of different travel shortwave radios, the ICF-SW55 filled the gap between the „big“ ICF-2001D or ICF-SW77 and the „small“ receivers of the ICF-7600D series, as far as reception performance as well as dimensions and weight are concerned.The ICF-SW55 has a unique design with a large frequency and world time clock display, many different pushbuttons, a thumbwheel tuning knob and no front facing speaker, it is rather a big slot, where the sound of the internal speaker leaves the cabinet. Technical dataPrinciple: Double conversion superhet, IF 55.845 MHz, 455 kHz / FM 10.7 MHzOperation modes: A1 with BFO, AM (A3), FM (F3)Frequency range: FM, LW, MW, SW (150 kHz - 30 MHz (intl. version) / 26.1 MHz (German version))Frequency display: Digital display 1 kHz, fine tuning 100 HzFrequency memories: 125 station memories (with alphanumeric labels)Signal strength indicator: LCD bar displaySignal processingFeatures: clock, timer function, FM stereo via headphonesSensitivity: AM (A3) / Selectivity: kHz (-6/-60 dB)Power supplyMains operation: with mains adapter 110, 220 VBatteries: 4 x 1.5 V (UM-3)Dimensions194 x 127 x 39 mm, weight 0.9 kgAccessoriesPlastic case with mains adapter, antennaOperationThe Sony ICF-SW55 is a shortwave receiver with a very futuristic design, or a quite strange external appearance, I will let it over to you, what you think about the form of the receiver cabinet, for me it looks like a Sony design study for a game console from 20 years ago.The receiver is 19,4 x 12,7 x 3,9 cm wide and has a fold out plastic stand at the back to bring it to a slightly tilted position for easier operation.The wealth of different features and functions is too complex to be completely dealt with here. The speaker is located in the inside of the cabinet and sound leaves the cabinet through a rectangular slot (it looks like a vent) at the top of the front panel. Below it, you find the large liquid crystal display providing informations about the operation frequency, time and status of several receiver functions. The keys M1 - M5 give access to memories, but also act as menue - keys to access special receiver functions.The main switch is located in the left upper corner of the receiver, it can be set to a mechanical lock position to prevent the radio being switched on inadvertedly during transport in your suitcase. The buttons next to it activate sleep timer and alarm clock functions, the black round keys below are used to control the different possibilities of the world time clock. When local time is set and the actual location is selected with the „tuning“ thumbwheel, you can scroll through a list of different capitals in the world and find the local time displayed, you can toggle between two time zones and set the radio to summer daylight saving time by pressing one single button. Another button will set the display to indicate, in which timezones, it is day or night, this tool is useful to study propagation conditions.The white keys below are used to organize memory contents: the total of 125 memories is divided in 25 pages with 5 memories each. Use the MEMORY PAGE +/- keys to navigate through the memory pages and the M1 - M5 keys to recall memory content. One „memory page“ gives access to timer functions and on/off times, another „page“ to special functions active in the AM band like reception mode and i.f. filter bandwidths. The pushbuttons below the M1 - M5 keys give access to the different reception modes and wavebands.At the right of the display, you find the thumbwheel tuning knob, small keys are used to lock the tuning mechanism and to switch between the tuning steps 100 Hz and 1 kHz. The numbered keyboard just below is used for direct frequency entry and for alphanumeric tagging of the memory channels. To set the receiver to 6155 kHz, set the radio to AM mode and press 6 - 1 - 5 - 5 - EXE, two up/down keys can be used to tune the radio a little bit up or down.At the top of the display you find a world time map and display for local time and difference to UTC world time. Below, the reception frequency is displayed with an accuracy of 1 kHz, the indicator for the SW broadcast band in meters and the LCD bar signal strength indicator. The big alphanumeric display at the bottom shows you the labels of the memory pages (for example VOA_WASH, LONDON or TROP-AFR for african tropical band channels), the number of the memory page and a triangular indicator, which memories are in use.Like in most Sony shortwave radios, You won't find much technical information in the user's guide. The ICF-SW55 is a double conversion receiver with a high first intermediate frequency of 55,845 MHz and a standard second i.f. of 455 kHz; in presence of very strong local signal levels, the dynamic range seems not to be too wide, so that „ghost stations“ and mirrors might appear on some frequencies. It's indispensable to use a preselector or antenna tuner, when you connect a long wire antenna. The ceramic filters are of average quality, the small 2,7 kHz filter is well suited for SSB and the wide filter can only be used for free AM channels. For single sideband reception, you can select the sidebands, the small tuning steps are useful to listen to some maritime and amateur radio communications, they are too wide to operate the receiver properly in connection with a radioteletype converter.The ICF-SW55 is a portable shortwave radio with a quite unique design, it has some very useful features like the graphic world time clock and alphanumeric memory tags, but also some weakness, as performance on the shortwave is concerned - in my eyes, the Sony ICF-2001D / ICF-2010 is the better performing receiver, this is partly due to their AM-Sync mode.

Price: 549 USD

Location: Morro Bay, California

End Time: 2024-11-17T02:00:36.000Z

Shipping Cost: 24 USD