Nolan Woodbury said:
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I think a lot of the answer is found in the various set-ups of verious radios. With the Superhet formula (antenna, r.f. amp, converter, i.f amp, detector, a.f amp then loudspeaker) signals are boosted to pretty sensitive levels. I'm not quite sure how it's done with solid state.
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A superhet is a superhet - it doesn't matter whether it's hollow state or solid state! A single tube has possibly more gain than a single transistor, hence common mantle radios for local stations may have only needed 4 tubes in the radio circuit, where most SS radios had 6 transistors of which 3 were in the audio stages! Now that we have radios with hundreds of transistors in only three or four integrated circuits, it's possible to build digital display phase locked all-frequency super-sensitive radios for less cost than ever before.
Mind you, I would still like to see a shoot-out between a R390A against a WJ HF1000 on sheer performance, not the bells and whistles.
Best wishes for 2009 to everybody.