All this talk about such a sad day, the R-8B now discontinued. I say: good
riddance!

The death of the R-8B was a slow and painful one. The price crept up to
$1500 and it lagged behind the DSP technology of the last five to ten years.
It's platform was based on the R-8 designed around 1990. It was almost a
joke that such an expensive radio had a cheasey plastic tuning knob with no
"feel" whatsoever.
The radio was built like a Muntz TV set, lacking adequate shielding. It's
RF front-end was overloaded with a mulititude of internal birdies. My R-8B
had a hunk of printed circuit board crudely cut and mounted behind the
display board....a very cheap and ineffective effort at shielding. Drake
service and its service manager Bob Frost were in a total state of denial
when I complained about the internal birdies, some hovering at S-9 in the MW
Band.

I dumped my R-8A and 8B on ebay years ago. I would have loved to keep them,
but they just were not up to the standards of my (keeper) Japanese sets.

I am keeping a Drake R-8 (the original) as the best example of the series:
no birdies, no sync hiss, a real metal knob......

patgkz wrote:

All this talk about such a sad day, the R-8B now discontinued. I say: good
riddance!

Huh?

The death of the R-8B was a slow and painful one. The price crept up to
$1500 and it lagged behind the DSP technology of the last five to ten years.
It's platform was based on the R-8 designed around 1990. It was almost a
joke that such an expensive radio had a cheasey plastic tuning knob with no
"feel" whatsoever.

Are you looking to hear something, or feel something?


The radio was built like a Muntz TV set, lacking adequate shielding. It's
RF front-end was overloaded with a mulititude of internal birdies.

Huh?

My R-8B
had a hunk of printed circuit board crudely cut and mounted behind the
display board....a very cheap and ineffective effort at shielding.

That's not a shield... it's a heat sink!

Drake
service and its service manager Bob Frost were in a total state of denial
when I complained about the internal birdies, some hovering at S-9 in the MW
Band.

No problem like that here.


I dumped my R-8A and 8B on ebay years ago. I would have loved to keep them,
but they just were not up to the standards of my (keeper) Japanese sets.

The ones with the bad audio?

I am keeping a Drake R-8 (the original) as the best example of the series:
no birdies, no sync hiss, a real metal knob......

I'm keeping mine too!

dxAce
Michigan
USA

patgkz wrote:

All this talk about such a sad day, the R-8B now discontinued. I say: good
riddance!

The death of the R-8B was a slow and painful one. The price crept up to
$1500 and it lagged behind the DSP technology of the last five to ten years.
It's platform was based on the R-8 designed around 1990. It was almost a
joke that such an expensive radio had a cheasey plastic tuning knob with no
"feel" whatsoever.
The radio was built like a Muntz TV set, lacking adequate shielding. It's
RF front-end was overloaded with a mulititude of internal birdies. My R-8B
had a hunk of printed circuit board crudely cut and mounted behind the
display board....a very cheap and ineffective effort at shielding. Drake
service and its service manager Bob Frost were in a total state of denial
when I complained about the internal birdies, some hovering at S-9 in the MW
Band.

I dumped my R-8A and 8B on ebay years ago. I would have loved to keep them,
but they just were not up to the standards of my (keeper) Japanese sets.

I am keeping a Drake R-8 (the original) as the best example of the series:
no birdies, no sync hiss, a real metal knob......

One other point... Drake never made an R-8, an R-8A or an R-8B.

If you have ever looked at the front of any one of those sets you'd soon be able
to see that they are the R8, R8A and R8B.

dxAce
Michigan
USA