1985-2001 No longer manufactured. $300 in 1986.
Review
The venerable ICF-2010 has AM sync, USB, LSB/CW, and Wide/narrow AM
bandwidth, but no variable BFO. AM/FM (no stereo), continuous AM coverage
from 150 kHz to 30 MHz plus FM broadcast 76-108 MHz and AM Air 116-136 MHz.
This radio is very sensitive on HF, good on MF, but mediocre on LF. The inter-channel spacing for scanning in MW can be changed from 10 to 9 kHz for Asia and Europe. Has digital tuning; the tuning step can be switched from 0.1 or 1 kHz. Frequency can be entered digitally or stored in one of 32 presets which also saves the wide/narrow/USB selection. Moving the tuning knob changes the frequency by 1 kHz (fast mode), 50 kHz in FM and 25 kHz in Air. In slow mode, the tuning knob adjusts the frequency by 100 Hz. This fine-tuning is essential for SSB and CW, but while 100 Hz resolution is great for a portable radio, it's not fine enough for serious SSB listening, and some SSB signals that are off frequency will still retain a trace of a Daffy Duck accent. In my tests, most SSB signals below 7 MHz were centered almost precisely on 1 kHz boundaries. Above 7 MHz, the frequency calibration of the Sony 2010 was off by about 100 Hz. The fine-tuning adjustment made this problem manageable.
Has Tape, Earphone, External AM antenna, External, Air/FM antenna connectors on the side. AM RF gain and DX/Local switch. 10 LED Signal strength meter. Can scan a preset range or scan through the preset memories. This radio introduced AM sync to the general public. AM sync on the 2010 selects either the upper or lower sideband to reduce interference from adjacent stations. It's necessary to tune the radio up or down to select the upper or lower sideband. Sony and other manufacturers have improved AM sync since this model.
Specifications
FM broadcast reception, while sensitive, is only adequate, with frequent spurious images. Images of FM broadcast signals also sometimes show up in the 'Air' band. Part of this problem may be due to the high field strength of TV and FM signals in my area.
Has a clock with off-timer, sleep timer, and 4 programmable timers. LED has a backlight that automatically turns itself off after a few seconds. Bigger in size than most other portable radios (11 1/2" x 6" x 1 3/4").
Kiwa Electronics (http://www.kiwa.com/) offers some audio modifications and replacement filters to improve sound quality and make the RF bandwidth narrower.
The wide bandwidth and the lack of a narrowpass filter makes this radio less than ideal for CW; in the ham radio bands numerous CW signals are audible simultaneously, with much lower S/N than you'd get with a narrow filter. It's also tricky to get some of the SSB signals to sound right. The 2010 lacks a narrow-bandwidth crystal filter found in high-end receivers. Once you've used one of these for CW listening, no portable radio can even come close.
After a few years of use, the sensitivity of my Sony ICF-2010 began to drastically decrease. I was ready to throw it away, but upon close examination I discovered that some of the soldering on the printed circuit board was defective. This also caused the earphone jack on the side to come loose. After I re-soldered the connections, replaced the FET near the antenna, and tweaked some of the transformers on the PC board, the radio came back to life.
In an informal comparison with a Grundig 100 PE, the 100 PE had difficulty pulling in stations that were clearly audible on the Sony ICF-2010. The Sony also had much better image rejection than the 100 PE, which picked up some sources of noise and some signals that didn't seem to exist at all as far as the Sony was concerned. However, the 100 PE had a much crisper sound, and in contrast to the Sony ICF-2010, the Grundig receives FM broadcast in stereo instead of mono.
Specs measured by QST Magazine
Noise floor (minimum discernable signal)
180 kHz 1.64 uV
1 MHz 0.58
14 MHz 0.04
AM Sensitivity 10 dB (S+N)/N, 1 kHz, 30% modulation
1MHz 9.99 uV
14 MHz 0.78
120 MHz 1.55
FM Sensitivity 12 dB SINAD
100 MHz 1.15 uV
A common problem on the Sony 2010 is loss of sensitivity, caused by the front-end FET being blown (usually from a static discharge). There are many sites on the Internet that describe how to diagnose and fix this problem. The fix involves replacing a transistor and adding four diodes to prevent it from recurring.
Another common problem with the Sony 2010 is "Error.3" on the display, which means the main battery was temporarily disconnected. This is caused by the fact that the battery terminals are not physically attached to the radio, but merely press down on a solder pad on the circuit board. If the back cover is loose, or if the radio is bumped, these contacts disconnect, causing the Error 3 message. The solution is to solder two wires from the battery compartment to the circuit board (or better yet, use a small Molex connector).