Amstrad CB901 CB27/81 UK FM CB radio - NOS HK clone service/recap/repair/retune

Clearly not actually NOS, but looks to me like a mail order return that was repaired at the time & re-packaged. Large mail order companies offering weekly payments such as Grattan, Freemans, Great Universal & Littlewoods sold large quantities of CB radios in this way. They also had shops in various towns to sell-on returned merchandise. There was such a shop in Lincoln, 28 miles romme called Manor Grove & I bought an Audioline 342 there for £69.99 instead of the RRP of £149.99. Such items were serviced, not sold as faulty.

I've not seen the clone Hong Kong version with the early Jspanese type power connector on it before. Upon controlled switch-on I soon realised some capacitors were playing-up. TX VCO was all over the place, a capacitor in the 8V power regulator getting red hot & severe noise in the receive audio. I ended up doing a full re-cap, only being happy with two capacitors in the whole radio...which I still replaced.

The big let-down of this chassis...now remember the sequence:-

Original CB901, Made in Japan £89.99
Hong Kong CB901 officially made £59.99
Honk Kong Clone CB901 £29.99
The Spinneytronic CB199 & Harvard H646 are two others that use the clone chassis.

As more £29.99 versions were in use than the others, we ended up with "Oh, Amstrad 901's are crap", ruining the reputation of the Cybernet buit versions.

So, the clone version is cheaply made with mainly cheaper parts. Howerver, it works OK other than the squelch, usually maximum squelch (tight) is 3.5uV rather than the usual 100uV.

This set ended up doing 3.95W & having receive sensitivity of 0.27uV for 12dB SINAD.

Recorded 17-19th July 2023

Richard G0OJF

Lincolnshire, UK

(C) Tango Systems Group 2023