justice wrote:
Wayne wrote:
Hi Jim:

I have a SONY ICF SW7600GR and enjoy it. As with most portables, It's
best to use batteries. I use rechargables in mine and they work great
lasting around 30+ of play hours before recharging is necessary.

If you need to turn up the volume like I always did at work then expect
20-25 hours. You'll know when its time to change batteries as it'll
just shut off instead of getting quieter.

What Sony does is they drain the batteries down to something like 0.6V,
then cut off the radio operation so that the battery retains the
memory. This puts a strain on rechargable batteries that are not
supposed to be drained below 0.9V.



Some helpful hints: The RF attenuator works on both AM and FM. If you
live in a city, you may need to attenuate the FM to avoid overloading
and unwanted images.

Very good advice.



You'll love the sync detect for AM. It allows you to dratically reduce
interference from strong stations when listening to weak ones on a
nearby frequency. For example; if you are trying to listen to a signal
on 1200 KHz and there is an interfereing one on 1210 KHz, switch the
set to lower sideband and turn on the sync detect. The interference
from 1210 KHz virtually vanishes! If there is an interfereing signal on
1190 KHz, switch to upper sideband with sync detect on.

This is the best thing about the 7600GR!

The SONY ICF SW7600GR has pretty good sensitivity on MW, but not
excellent. It's a coat-pocket size set and obviously doesn't sport a
big internal ferrite bar for MW. However, place it in the circumfrence
of a proximate loop and its MW sensitivity becomes supercharged and
will hear just about anything out there!

A loop wiill help on MW, though it is quite sensitive on its own (but
no match for an RF-2200). Very selective with the synch so that'll
help.

The SONY ICF SW7600GR does quite well on SW. I use mine with the
optional SONY AN-LP1 amplified SW loop antenna. That combination works
quite well. You can use a long-wire as well.

Definitely find an AN-LP1. Much better than using a wire on SW here.
Worth the money.

The audio is good for a radio of its size. But if you want bigger
sound, you can feed it into an amplified speaker system or just listen
through headphones. Speaking of headphones; the FM stereo simply sounds
awesome through good headphones with this receiver. I find that there
is a bit of amplifier hiss heard through good headphones, but most good
headsets have an in-line volume control which one can reduce slightly
to make the hiss unnoticeable.

I really don't like the audio from its speaker at all, but if you are
using it at home you can indeed use a speaker system.

Wayne

Wayne knows what he's talking about, all good stuff.



Any quirks that I should be aware of also would be greatly appreciated.

This may not count as a quirk, but I found that the 7600GR makes a
terrible bedside radio. The tiny switches on the side need a firm push
to move and there are too many buttons to accidently hit when trying to
change memory frequencies, all of which require getting up to play with
the radio instead of relaxing with it. The Sleep Timer is nice,
though.



Jim

wrote:

justice wrote:
Wayne wrote:
Hi Jim:

I have a SONY ICF SW7600GR and enjoy it. As with most portables, It's
best to use batteries. I use rechargables in mine and they work great
lasting around 30+ of play hours before recharging is necessary.

If you need to turn up the volume like I always did at work then expect
20-25 hours. You'll know when its time to change batteries as it'll
just shut off instead of getting quieter.

What Sony does is they drain the batteries down to something like 0.6V,
then cut off the radio operation so that the battery retains the
memory. This puts a strain on rechargable batteries that are not
supposed to be drained below 0.9V.

The Sony SW100, which is basically the same design miniaturised, and
has very similar if not identical performance, runs off 2AA batteries,
and therefore cuts them off at a higher voltage which is perfectly
kind to rechargeables.

Incidentally, with resepct to being a bedside radio, not only are the
SW100 buttons easy to distinguish and operate in the dark, but they've
thoughtfully put a little wart beside the headphone socket so that you
can easily find it by feel in the dark.

--
Chris Malcolm DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

The 7600GR, if you just leave it around for a month or so running its
clock, will badly wobble the weakest cell, which will be reverse-charged
by the stronger cells, if you use rechargeables (which everybody does).

Replace the batteries very regularly even if you don't play it.

I can generally revive the weakest cell using an old charger to
start it off, and then cycling it in a modern charger a few times,
but it would be better not to let the other cells get to it at all.

It's not a matter of running the voltage down to .6V, but that by
that time, the weakest cell is already charged backwards by the others.

--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

Ron Hardin wrote:
The 7600GR, if you just leave it around for a month or so running its
clock, will badly wobble the weakest cell, which will be reverse-charged
by the stronger cells, if you use rechargeables (which everybody does).

Replace the batteries very regularly even if you don't play it.

I can generally revive the weakest cell using an old charger to
start it off, and then cycling it in a modern charger a few times,
but it would be better not to let the other cells get to it at all.

It's not a matter of running the voltage down to .6V, but that by
that time, the weakest cell is already charged backwards by the others.

--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

Actually, both issues are something to worry about. The radio is
designed for alkaline cells AND to use them to retain memory settings.
This scheme works fine, but will overdischarge secondary cells.