A 30 year old GE clock radio, never before removed from its original box, will not play any radio stations. Should it still work or has radio gone digital too?
The clock part works.
There are several stations that come in strong on the car radio so we do have receivable broadcast here.
Should the old GE still work?
The radio format hasn’t changed, so it is possible for a 30 year old radio to still work.
I’m not all that surprised that it doesn’t work, though. Consumer grade electronics aren’t designed to last very long, maybe 5 to 7 years under normal use. Even if you never take it out of the box there are a lot of components in there that don’t necessarily age all that well, especially electrolytic capacitors (the electrolyte tends to dry out and the capacitors fail).
There are plenty of radio stations that broadcast the same way they did 30 years ago. I am listening to a 23 year old radio right now. Is this literally the first time it has been turned on? It may be broken but there is also the chance that you need to hit another switch or something to get it to play. Check the radio function selector, AM/FM toggle, the volume, and the station selector.
Can you hear static or just nothing? Clock radios often need a simple wire antenna to be hooked up before they will pick up much of anything.
I found that an old clock radio tended to not “radio”, usually due to bad connection in the volume pot. This I always attributed to bending from constant twisting of the volume thumbwheel. the giveaway was that contact was erratic and the radio would cut in and out when I played with the volume, until it went completely. If you are seeing something similar maybe it’s a form of corrosion; twist volume up down quite a few times and see if that does anything. Mechanical tuner? Maybe the tuning capacitor is no actually moving either? (A good way to test this, IIRC if you have 2 small transistor radios tuned to the same frequency, put the antenna coils in close proximity and the signal was much louder… assuming you can find a mechanical tuner AM transistor radio today.
If its a transistor radio, it should work fine…although the volume control might be a bit scratchy. I have a 50 year old Zenith radio that works fine.
a radio that age could be fine. a unused old radio might not due to a deteriorating electrolytic capacitor, which are better if used some.
old clock radios are often poor radios. the FM antenna is often the power cord which might need a screw on connection in the rear (see if it is attached) if you don’t use another external antenna. the AM antenna should be internal and work fine.
work the switches back and forth and the volume control, a bad connection may have developed with nonuse.
“My” old radio does (it’s not mine any more), but it’s been used frequently for all its life. It was part of a shipment waiting to be sent out of Valencia when the 1974 flood hit; the radios were sent back to the factory in boxes full of mud. They were listed as losses but, rather than throw them away, the workers spent free time cleaning them with paint brushes and toothbrushes.
Dad got the first one to be cleaned because he’d been the manager who’d pushed hardest to get this “recovery” idea (which had come from one of the workers) approved by the company’s owner. I nabbed it when I left for college, left it back home when I finished college; when the cassete player died, a friend of Mom’s who only listens to music over the radio asked her for it. It still sits on her kitchen table, playing the Top 40 or Radio 3 depending on who’s within hearing.