"Michael Black" wrote in message
...
"SWL-2010" ) writes:

I havn't had time to sit down and tune it much yet, but so far so good.
I
can't detect any drift to amount to anything. The sound is great. The
two
tone controls make it rich, or flat, any way you want it. And so far,
like
my older S350, the sensitivity is very good. I've used my S350 a great
deal,
so I thought I would get the newer verision since the price was right at
only a hundred bucks.

What some people forget is what it was like to have a low end receiver
forty years or so ago.

I bought a Hallicrafter's S120A (as I've mentioned before, it was a solid
state receiver) in the summer of 1971, and paid something like $80, maybe
a
bit more, here in Canada. It was about the cheapest new receiver I could
buy, and it was barely within my price range.

It got the really strong signals, and not much else. It overloaded badly,
it seemed to be from FM broadcast stations or maybe TV. The BFO was so
weak that it wasn't useable for receiving SSB. The dial had all kinds of
exotic locations listed on it, but not only was the calibration way off,
but frequency readout was like "it's closer to the .5 than the .0 mark".
It had horrible backlash on the tuning knob. It was awful.

I claim it was the world's worst shortwave receiver, but I suspect it
wasn't that different from many of the low end solid state receivers from
the period, before real advancements had been made in making good solid
state shortwave receivers. We suffered through them because we couldn't
afford anything better.

I imagine a $20 shortwave portable from Radio Shack today couldn't be
worse than that old Hallicrafter's. Plus, you'd get a digital readout,
and likely the tuning knob (if it wasn't tuned by up/down buttons) would
have less backlash than that first receiver of mine.

That doesn't mean that relative to better receivers of today the low
end are perfect, merely that they can't be worse, and may be better
for the simple reason that design has changed.

Michael

Well, I've been buying radios and other electronic toys for many years now,
and I never expect anymore than I pay for. I am rarely dissapointed, and
often times pleasantly surprised. If I buy a hundred dollar radio, I pretty
much know what to expect. However, with the Grundigs, I get some pretty good
radios for that price range. I bought a 29 dollar Grundig last month and
have had a ball with it. I never factor out the fun factor in anything.
Shortwave radio has been my hobby for close to 50 years now, and I still
have fun with it. And for my money, that the central point.