Hitachi KH-1290H radio (made in Japan, circa 1970)

Описание: Imgur photo gallery: https://imgur.com/gallery/jcJm3FE
Got this radio off the flea market for the equivalent of two cigarette packs...
When I tested it at home, surprise, surprise, it wasn't working. So I tried to find a service manual, another surprise, nothing, no schematic, even on radiomuseum. There's some similar models but the insides differ. This radio was specifically made for the communist East European countries, it has the FM band from 63 to 74 MHz.

By some miracle I managed to bring it back to life. Some caps leaked and corroded traces. some other traces interrupted. I had to do quite some troubleshooting with it. The PCB is dual layered, so the usual Japanese spaghetti mess of wires is a bit more tamed in this radio.
The communist FM? Another miracle... i started tweaking what i thought were the RF in coils and capacitors and finally I shifted the FM band to the modern one (don't ask me what's the procedure though :)) , although now the sensitivity is kinda low. In the city though it isn't that much of an issue.
The AM reception is okay, no problems there, even the shortwave works (although with some FM bleed through)

Despite all my efforts and using different contact spray cleaner types, the pots are still scratchy. Not ideal, but bearable.
A peculiar thing - the dial has illumination by 3 bulbs.
The radio runs on 6 D cells, or external adapter, no AC mains.
It has audio transformers and what I assume to be mostly Germanium transistors in it.
The audio quality is okay, though it could do with a bit more bass. The speaker is about 13m, but i cannot remove it from the case without risking to damage it. It sounds okay, gets really loud, I think it's not broken or anything, the lack of bass is probably due to the fact that almost all Japanese and US radios of the era did NOT have physiological loudness correction taps on their volume potentiometers.
Its design though is the thing I like the most. All that shiny chromed plastic just screams Bling! And I do think it's a thing that stood the test of time , aesthetically. It is a radio worth keeping in my collection.