1955 Sony's 2nd Radio Ever TR-2K

Today we're looking at a rare early Sony radio. How rare? Well, this may be the only one left.

And we've looked at quite a few early Sony things on this channel--their first transistor radio which was this... or this...If you're curious which, you can go watch that video. It was.. the first transistor radio made in Japan. And we looked at this early Sony, the TR-33. And this one, their TR-6. All these were made in quite small quantities and so they are very rare. But rarer still is the one we're looking at today.

It's the Sony TR-2K two-transistor radio.. from 1955, Sony's second commercially released transistor radio. This was the very first transistor radio made in Japan that fit in a shirt-pocket. It was able to be so small because, well, they left out the speaker! That's right, these grid marks on the front that give a loose impression of a speaker grille, are just for looks. This radio plays through an earphone only. But if you had one of these in your pocket in 1955, you were high tech. This radio--available only in Japan--was sold... as a kit. That's right, a Sony product that you put together yourself. This particular example is said to have belonged to an executive at Matsushita, also known as Panasonic who liked to keep tabs on what the competition was doing.

These ancient batteries in here are Lamina brand, from the Toyo Dry Battery Company. There's no label inside the radio, and very little documentation of anything. You can see printed on the board little illustrations of the parts as you might expect of a kit. The two transistors are branded Sony. A couple of other parts are from NEC. The volume control is marked TBM, so that's from Tsubame Radio Company, if I'm saying that right. They'd been making such parts since 1929, long before Sony came along, in 1946. And TBM is still at it, making it a point of pride that they still make products in Japan even while most of their Japanese competitors have moved their plants overseas. Sound familiar?

I don't see what this hole is for on the side near the volume control. This little plastic ball here on the side is I believe a kind of fancy plug for an external antenna wire. That wire would be coming out the other end of this ball and be several feet--or yards--long to aid the little radio's reception. You could even run such a wire up a tree if you wanted to. I don't see who's going to stop you.

This early Sony advertising piece shows their TR-55 to the left and right. Top center is their TR-33. I mentioned these earlier as having their own videos on this channel. And center bottom is the TR-2K, here referred to as the TR-22L, for some reason. It's shown assembled, and in kit form, with the packaging all in Japanese.

We see a larger, clearer image of the kit on THIS Sony FLYER. Sony's brand new logo is on the front edge of the box, as you can see at the extreme bottom left. In the box are cabinet, dial, earphone, small parts, and off to the right, the circuit board. I believe the little boxes along the top contain the transistors, getting the special treatment of being in their own boxes,.. and the antenna bar. And Sony's logo appears on the top of the box. The radio itself does not have the Sony logo, or say Sony on it anywhere on the outside. All that's visible are the raised letters that say "Transistorized Radio" on the front, and "Made in Japan" on the back. I'm just guessing but my thinking is that Sony did not want to put its name on something that YOU soldered together. Though Sony had been around since 1946, they were not then named Sony. This was their corporate name. The Sony name was first used in 1955 and this radio is the second Sony-named product, even though the name is present only on the box.

The earphone is branded Crown. I don't know what to make of that. We see that style of crystal earphone all over the place in the later '50s and '60s, especially used with crystal radios. As this book shows, Crown was a prolific maker of earphone-only transistor radios with low transistor counts, like one or two... and also crystal radios..in addition to their larger, full-featured models. At the time this Crown earphone was made, the company was still officially Asahi Radio. This style of crystal earphone is still made today, as far as I know, in Hong Kong or China... Why isn't this a Sony earphone? Well, if I could see another example of this radio it could certainly help confirm whether Sony did indeed source this earphone from Crown, or made one of their own, or did something else. But this is the only known example of this radio in existence. I don't really have any objection to the idea that Sony used a Crown earphone on this radio. I think it is well within the realm of posssibility. I further wouldn't be surprised if Crown or, as I say, Asahi Radio was the original designer of this crystal earphone, and was in those days the go-to source for them. I mean, somebody had to do it. I know of no older examples of this style...