Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
Bob Dobbs wrote:

Wonder why neither the 2010 nor the SW77 had it,
or why it isn't on newer units like the G3?

The 2010 is an interesting story. The ICF-7600D aka ICF-2002 had already
came out, which was a much better (and smaller) radio than the ICF-2001.
The then obsolete ICF-2001 design was sold to Sangean, who was producing
them for Radio Shack and selling them under their own brand name ATS-803.

Meanwhile Sony found that AM stereo had bombed and they had a warehouse
full of AM stereo decoder chips with no one interesting in buying them.
There were four competing systems of AM stereo and in the US, the FCC
let the market decide. The market, as it were, decided that AM stereo
was not something they were interested in buying radios for.

A Sony engineer figured out that he could use the AM stereo decoder chip
as a selectable sideband synchronous detector chip. The sync detector
of the 2010 worked the way it did, because that's how it worked. No one
said "let's design a sync detector" and made it that way, it was
the other way around.

Considering that the Kahn system used independent sidebands there was
not much to figure out. Left was one sideband, right was the other.


The 2010 was a combination of the 2002's design, the sync chip and the 2001's
ergonomics, put together to produce a new radio. It added some features
(such as air band) that were not available before in addition to the sync
detector.

Eventually, Sony sold many 2010's and still had more chips, so they
"improved" the 2010 and sold that as the SW-77. One of the noticable
improvments was 100 memory channels instead of 32. From what I
understand shortwave performance was not as good. :-(

Eventually Sony sold out of the chips and since they had been manufactured
in the early 1980's was unable to produce more. It would have required
a re-design to use manufacturing techniques 20 years newer, which would
have required a new radio design and there was not enough demand for it.


But they had the chips for the 7600G/GR, so having a chip to make the
radio wasn't the issue. Demand for a $500 portable was much lower than
that for a $150 portable.

BTW, the 7600-GR, is a descendent of the 2002 with similar size and
ergonomics.

Geoff.