"JJ" wrote in message
...


If you want if for a shelf queen and never used, then leave it
original,
but if you want to use it (which a fine receiver as this should be),
then by all means recap it, that won't reduce it's value as much as a
burnt out IF can or power transformer because of a bad cap.


Actually, I don't want it, at least at that price. I enjoy fixing up
"affordable" junkers. So my chances of ever having a SX-88 range from
none to slimmer than none.

It's worth remembering that the SX-88, while expensive, was hardly the
most expensive radio of the mid 50s. The Hammarlund SP-600 and Collins
51Js were in the $900+ class. Hallicrafters sold the SX-73 in the $900
+ class a few years before. No doubt Bill Halligan saw a hole at the
$600 price point and decided to make a radio to fill it. But the $600
SX-88 didn't take over the market of the more expensive radios, nor was
it cloned by the other manufacturers. I've never used any of these
radios, but the guys who spending big bucks for radios back then weren't
buying many SX-88.

That's what starts me thinking that the SX-88 is more than just a radio.
Hallicrafters bought alot of advertising in the 50s, and I'm sure alot
of kids who were saving their paper route money to buy the S-38 were
drooling over all those Hallicrafters ads with the S-85s, the SX-96s and
that beautiful, unobtainable SX-88.

For alot of those grown up kids, coming up with a few grand is now
easier than coming up with sixty bucks was, almost fifty years ago.

I don't have any compelling reason to chase after the elusive SX-88.
The other high end radios of the mid 50s seem like they'd perform at
least as well.

But if I ever pick up a pristine SX-88 at a hamfest for $100, it would
be, not a shelf queen, but a shelf princess, waiting for the prince to
take her to the castle. No new caps, maybe no AC. I'd preserve it for
the guys who see that there's more than a radio in a SX-88.

Frank Dresser