RadioBanter - View Single Post - superradio and icf6500; digital tuners too

Michael Black[_2_] · January 19th 16, 04:47 AM posted to rec.radio.shortwave

On Mon, 18 Jan 2016, wrote:

On Monday, January 18, 2016 at 2:54:39 PM UTC-6, Michael Black wrote:
On Mon, 18 Jan 2016, wrote:

On recommendation of many sources I purchased a used GE superradio II last year. It is obviously defective since it cannot perform as well as my old Sony ICF6500.

I have two questions.

1. Is a working srii that much better than this sony?

I have no idea. "SUperradios" often seem to be a kneejerk reaction,
something to mention when someone asks about a "good" AM receiver. But
there is a limit on what can happen, and then sometimes it turns out
people are talking about the quality of the sound, which the SUperradio
likely is better at than many radios, because it has a large speaker
and/or multiple speakers (I think depending on the specific model number).
They are fairly generic radios, no cutting edge design, I thought they
didn't even use ceramic filters in the AM section. But they have a longer
loopstick antenna than many radios, which may be more important than a lot
of things, and I thought a stage of amplification before the mixer in the
AM section, which many radios won't have (but that's an incomplete
comparison because any decent portable shortwave receiver will have a
decent receiver, and whatever the shortwave design, that will apply to the
AM broadcast band.

2. Is there a technician/company of known repute that repairs these
srii and what would it cost?

There is a page or two somewhere (I don't have a URL) that offers a
schematic and service manual, and tips about repairing and modifying the
radios.

and then...

I see new radios pretty much all have digital tuners. When tuning these,
do they all quiet as you tune? I had a digital tuning radio - now at
the bottom of a lake - which did so. I found it very hard to scan for
new stations as I had to stop at each new freq. to allow the thing to
produce audio. Do all digital radios act this way?

YOu're looking at it wrong. The radios lock and unlock as you turn them,
so tuning fast, you'd not hear anything good anyway. The muting is so you
don't have that junk. SOme radios people have found ways to disable the
mute, but you aren't going to get the same tuning as with an analog radio,
you still have to wait for the receiver to lock up again on the new
frequency. I suppose some are better than others, though if they use
common ICs there won't be much variation. IMproving lockup time can be
done, but at a cost.

Michael

Thanks for the info Michael but I disagree about scanning the dial. I can find a local station on an old analog am tuner in 1 second. I just whip the dial round and "hear". I didn't think am analog tuners even had phase locks.
Thanks again.

My point is that the muting on digitally tuned receivers is there for a
purpose. You can get rid of the mute feature in some cases by modifying
it, but you still get some effect because the receiver has to lock up to
the new frequeny. Most people don't hear what it sounds like becaus the
muting is there.

You're argument seems to be that you want a receiver to always be tuning
what it's tuned to, which means only an analog receiver (or some digitally
tuned receiver with a lot of effort spent on fast lockup) will provide.

I'd much rather have the ability to get back to the same frequency without
any fussing, so digital tuning doesn't bother me.

WHen I had a Hammarlund SP-600 decades ago, I could spin the dial hard and
it would traverse most of the band. I couldn't hear what was going on, it
wsa too fast too. But in that case, it was simply that it all went by too
fast.

Michael