Well, I am beginning to have some doubts about the likelihood of finding
an excellent-quality Hammarlund HQ-180 at a price I can afford.

Certainly I am going to keep looking, but meanwhile I guess I need to come
up with a few alternatives that I can "settle" for if, as seems likely,
the HQ-180's have priced themselves out of my reach.

I need something that is all tubes, and works well on SSB. I plan to use
it mostly on CW but I need decent SSB performance. AM is relatively less
important (it should work on AM but doesn't need to be a spectacular
performer).

It does need to be general coverage 500 KHz to 30 MHz.

R390's and 51J4's would be good (but of course, more expensive than the
HQ-180) but none comes with a product detector and so performance on SSB
is likely to be marginal at best, right?

I have looked at a few Hallicrafters SX-100's (that is to say, looked at
their pictures on eBay... haven't actually seen one up close in at least
30 years). How does that model and other comparable models from
Hallicrafters and National stack up?

Did Heathkit ever make a general-coverage communications receiver that was
worthy of the name "communications receiver"? I know they had one, I
think the model was AR-3. I had one when I was a kid and it wasn't much.
Everything else I've seen from them seems to be ham bands only, and mostly
80-10 (no 160).

Any suggestions, places where I should start looking?