CCrane Radio EP Technical Page

A recently introduced radio, the CCrane Radio EP, has been touted as a replacement for the legendary GE Superadio series. But what is the reality? A claim like that is extraordinary, and extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

Out of the box, the radio did not disappoint. I am a skeptic by nature, fooled by years of marketing hype and suspicious of every lofty claim. In every way, it excels at AM reception - the selling point of the Superadio series. While I cannot yet verify FM performance, it is a solid performer easily bringing in the entire group of local and near fringe stations near Houston. Some of the very weak stations in the non-comm part of the band are easily receivable. But - the dial calibration was way off on the high end of the band. This radio needed alignment - an excuse to get inside and see what makes this radio so good.

1. Turn the radio over, remove the battery cover, and extend the handle. Angle the antenna as shown, and remove eight screws in locations shown. One screw is under a white QA sticker - there is no turning back! When re-assembling, the two longer screws are in the center row, the shorter screws are top and bottom rows.
   
   
   
   
2. Turn the radio back over, and remove three knobs from the front of the radio.
   
   
   
   
3. Carefully separate the clamshell case from the bottom of the radio. This gives up our first peek at the inside of the radio. I will comment more on the circuitry below the disassembly instructions. For now, I will continue with disassembly instructions
   
   
   
   
4. To remove the chassis from the back case, remove screws in indicated locations.
   
   
   
   
5. Remove three knobs from the right hand side of the radio. The main part of the chassis can now swing free of the back case, although to completely separate it, some of the smaller boards below must be removed. Those removal instructions, though, would be trivial.
   
   
   
   

The circuit board view reveals much about the design. The RF design is based on an LA1260 integrated circuit, one of the many excellent Sanyo "radio on a chip" IC's. This radio takes the basic idea of simple implementation in a single IC, and adds tuned RF stages and good IF strips to the design, making a really excellent radio.

The FM front end is shielded under a can at the left, but is obviously tuned RF, and there is easy access to alignment points without removing the cover. AM Oscillator, RF, and Antenna stages are also clearly visible.

IF for the FM is composed of one can and two ceramic filters. The ceramic filters are 280 kHz Murata types - a real area of easy modification. Since this radio has an FM stereo setting, one can only assume that a MPX decoder is on the board, so it would be important not to go below 150 kHz bandwidth on ceramic filters. The IF for the AM is similar - one can and two ceramic filters. The ceramic filters are each a three element stagger tuned variety, one that I am familiar with from salvaging wireless mice, and one with a slightly different part number.

The picture below shows the "twin coil" ferrite bar antenna.

There are smaller auxiliary PC boards as discussed above: