WShoots1 wrote:
The best receivers were those of the tube days, and were determined by the
number of tuned RF stages BEFORE the first mixer. (Three stages seemed to be
the maximum, but even one was very good.)

Uh, most tube (consumer) radios didn't have *any* RF amplifiers before
the mixer. They did have one tuned circuit before the mixer - which is
more than you can say for most radios today.

I don't recall ever seeing a radio design with more than one amplifier
stage before the mixer.

Today's crap, as you put it, lets everything in through the barn door front end
and then tries to sort it out with whiz bang, floor noise generating circuitry.

I'm not so sure the radio is usually the problem today. It's not that
hard (or expensive) to make a decent AM radio. The problems with AM
reception a

- Noise. Back in the 60s the only real noise source in your car was the
ignition system, and that was relatively easy to filter. Today your car
is full of computers - which seem to do a pretty good job of drowning
out the ignition noise! Home environments are even worse.

- Interference. There are roughly 5 times as many stations in the U.S.
as there were in 1950. More recently, the vast majority of daytime-only
stations have been allowed to run at least a few watts at night. New
stations have been authorized on channels where formerly only one
station was allowed to operate at night. (for example, I remember a
time when WOAI was the ONLY station in the US or Canada allowed to
operate at night on 1200. Today, there are 17.)

IMHO the most important component of good AM reception is the antenna.
A few hundred feet of wire hooked to just about any halfway-decent radio
will bring in plenty of DX.
--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66
http://www.w9wi.com