Gerald's Toshiba RP-2000F: What a Work of Art

The Toshiba RP-2000F, looking for all the world like a "Transformer." With an FM whip that pivots, rotates and spins,  appears as though it might be robotic. Stunning purple brushed aluminum face plate make this one of the most beautiful portable multibands ever produced. 

As i have posted in this forum before, Toshiba, Sanyo and others were driven to excellence in order to compete with Panasonic and Sony.

This model certainly doesnt disappoint as it stands tall (literally at 10"X8"X3") along side the big two from Japan. It  was produced to compete directly with the RF2200 from Panasonic and the ICF 5900 from Sony.

Introduced in 1977, the RP 2000 features standard shortwave bands, FM and AM. It has spread dial crystal marker tuning calibration as does its competitors. The set tunes very accutely on shortwave and falls just short of the Panasonic on AM reception. FM is the strenghth here as that massive FM whip snags signals with ease, surpassing the 5900"S FM efforts and equalling the 2200. As far as presentation, layout and overall beauty, its just stunning.

 

I have seen but few of these in ten plus years of monitoring Ebay. Of the five or so ive seen in that time, all but one had the japanese FM scale, 88 to 96 mhz only. Condition was also lacking in the ones id seen as some didnt       have intact antenna's, etc. I was fortunate to find this pristine model (with full FM scale) at a local garage sale, paying 45.00 dollars for it!

 

Keep looking, you never know what    pristine rarity awaits on someone's garage shelf or attic. And dont overlook other Japanese makes of the late 60's and 70's they are of excellent quality.

 

Comments

[Ed S]

Wow, that is a beauty! Great find. Never saw that one before.

[Dan]

There's something about a scrolling film tuning display ...

[Maurice]

Bought the same in Fiji 1981. FM range 88 to 108

MHz.

Got the handbook around somewhere.

Maurice

[Darren Davies]

I have recently been given this radio by an old work colleague and couldn't agree more with Gerald's review. It really is a thing of beauty and in terms of performance, particularly AM, it wipes the floor with my modern digital display radios.

Does anyone have an scanned copy of the manual for this receiver, as I'm not sure how to use the frequency calibrator?

Cheers Darren

[Victor Castaño]

Hi, I need the technical manual. COuld you please, send me this manual? Thanks.

[Stratman]

Thanks for posting this! I had the exact Toshiba RP-2000F like you do and it wasn't the Japanese market version. It had the standard FM coverage (88-108 MHz).

If my memory serves me well, I saw this one and only unit at a department store in Kuala Lumpur back in 1981 or '82. It was priced very low (about a quarter than that of a Panasonic RF-2600) and I asked my parents if I could have it as my forthcoming birthday present. They said yes, and it became my first shortwave radio that I could call my own.

It took some time for me to understand how the X'tal Band Spread Dial calibration worked and I wished it had an LCD frequency readout instead of the complicated mechanical calibration system.

The telescopic antenna was something to be marveled at. I had never seen one that could extend that long and rotate in almost any position I wanted. It was a very sensitive radio and received distant MW and SW stations easily. Later on I decided to hook it up to a random long wire outside my bedroom window and that resulted in an overload of static on the MW and lower SW frequencies. Luckily the RF gain knob was there to attenuate the signal.

I don't have the radio anymore. Sometime in the late 80s, the radio literally took a tumble onto the floor. I was careless to have put it up high on my vertical book shelf and it was the kind of accident that was just waiting to happen (and it did).

The Toshiba service center could not fully repair the set. I don't think their had technicians who were skilled at repairing shortwave radios, let alone a model that's not domestic to Malaysia.

When I got back the RP-2000F, I remember tthe scrolling dial was off-center and the X'tal Calibration lever was 0`give_ammo 1permanently stuck. It couldn't indicate the near-exact frequency. The radio still turned on and so did the internal backlight, but I could no longer enjoy DX'ing as before.

The BFO clarifier worked like before the tumble but it wasn't that easy to zero beat on ham frequencies. My radio's frequency drift became worse and it was annoying having to retune to the station after 15 minutes. I couldn't record a shortwave program unattended as the frequency would be off-center after a while.

One feature I wished this radio had was a permanent backlight. I guess Toshiba didn't want the D-sized cells running out of juice prematurely, so they gave an on/off switch for the light that stayed on as long as I held it down with my finger. I had even tried placing rubber bands on it as a hack, but it didn't work too well. They kept slipping off as the backlight switch's tab was too short.

This radio sadly spent its last legs strictly as an FM radio and I put it in our maid's room. She didn't really listen to the radio and my RP-2000F literally gathered dust over time. I recall that by then most of the tuning disc's numeral inscription had badly faded over the years' of neglect. Eventually I had this radio discarded as at the time it was irreparable.

I have good memories with this wonderful radio and often brought it to my grandmother's village near the coast off the Straits of Malacca, far from man-made interference like in my own home.

The only working shortwave radio that I have at this time is a recently purchased Tecsun PL-660 (firmware 6622). I bought it because I couldn't get my old Sony ICF-SW7600G to work on batteries and the Sony service center in Malaysia declined to repair it sometime in 2009 - they said it was a "long discontinued model" and they couldn't get the spare parts.

I actually saw the ICF-SW7600GR back in late 2007 for sale, but at the time my 7600G was in semi-retirement. I think I had forgotten to remove the alkaline AA batteries and they eventually leaked, causing the set to malfunction.

The reason I found your great review was because I have recently revived my old DXing hobby and remembered I once owned this amazing large black Toshiba shortwave radio, but could not remember the model number.

Thanks so much for this great post, much appreciated!