Bad modern cheap radios with really bad performance

[Sandy G]

The NICEST car radio I ever remember is the std AM radio that is in my '69 Lincoln. Wondered why, in '69, it didn't have an FM unit, too, but it didn't. It apparently was designed w/some thought as to how it would actually SOUND, which isn't that much of a concern nowadays.

[centralradio]

Those 1980's Delco car radios were great for sensitivity on AM and FM.
I made up a Frankenstein type boombox with my old Delco pulled out of my old 1987 Chevy Caprice wagon and mound it into a wooden box with speakers and a cig lighter plug.I modify the radio with line outputs so I can do on the road radio airchecking and DXing with my digital recorder in my summer travels.

I upgrade it to a 1980's Delco AM Stereo FM stereo about 6 years ago when I found the AM Stereo unit at the local fleamarket for about $10 bucks.

The local AM station here is in Stereo 24/7 with oldies music.It sounds great.

Those car Pioneer Super tuners were good in their day too.

[DavGoodlin]

I would agree that analog tuners such as those on Sony's dream machine continued to improve well after digital was an option. I have one of those Sony's in a bathroom as the house alarm clock and I got it in 1986. It's sensitive seems to pick up whatever the e-skip favors - owing to a crowded FM band and the short monopole antenna I added long ago to replace the 24" wire hanging out the back. I also had an AM-FM/casette walkman that had an crude but fantasic tuner.

On the flip side, we had an Aiwa portable CD-casette unit with a digital tuner, detachable speakers, etc. With a cheesy dipole or outdoor antenna, the selectivity was awful, unheard of in a digital tuner. after casette, then the CD part failed it was exchanged for a tiny Emerson CD portable with a good ANALOG tuner.

[Captainclock]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

I would agree that analog tuners such as those on Sony's dream machine continued to improve well after digital was an option. I have one of those Sony's in a bathroom as the house alarm clock and I got it in 1986. It's sensitive seems to pick up whatever the e-skip favors - owing to a crowded FM band and the short monopole antenna I added long ago to replace the 24" wire hanging out the back. I also had an AM-FM/casette walkman that had an crude but fantasic tuner.

On the flip side, we had an Aiwa portable CD-casette unit with a digital tuner, detachable speakers, etc. With a cheesy dipole or outdoor antenna, the selectivity was awful, unheard of in a digital tuner. after casette, then the CD part failed it was exchanged for a tiny Emerson CD portable with a good ANALOG tuner.

Yeah, its kind of interesting that some of your older alarm clock radios which you would think would be horrible tuner wise were actually quite good for what they were especially the ones from the 1970s and 1980s the ones starting in the early 1990s got really horrible when it came to tuner quality, and then there's the case of an old late 1980s vintage Emerson AM/FM Clock radio that I had for a while that said on the cabinet "super sensitive tuner" on it but when you actually tried DXing on the thing it would only pick up strong local stations and that was it, it wouldn't even pick up any of the long distance stations (stations that were between 30-60 miles from me like my old 1980s vintage GE Clock radios did) so I think Emerson used some false advertising on their clock radios...

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Captainclock

Yeah, its kind of interesting that some of your older alarm clock radios which you would think would be horrible tuner wise were actually quite good for what they were especially the ones from the 1970s and 1980s the ones starting in the early 1990s got really horrible when it came to tuner quality, and then there's the case of an old late 1980s vintage Emerson AM/FM Clock radio that I had for a while that said on the cabinet "super sensitive tuner" on it but when you actually tried DXing on the thing it would only pick up strong local stations and that was it, it wouldn't even pick up any of the long distance stations (stations that were between 30-60 miles from me like my old 1980s vintage GE Clock radios did) so I think Emerson used some false advertising on their clock radios...

Emerson products for the last 40 years were a gamble. Some good, some so-so and a lot of it, lousy.
It seemed, areas near a Target store, there was a lot of Emerson products around.

[Captainclock]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Emerson products for the last 40 years were a gamble. Some good, some so-so and a lot of it, lousy.
It seemed, areas near a Target store, there was a lot of Emerson products around.

Yeah but GE and Sony for sure were some of the better clock radios during the 1970s and 1980s as far as picking up reception goes.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Captainclock

Yeah but GE and Sony for sure were some of the better clock radios during the 1970s and 1980s as far as picking up reception goes.

It's some people that don't care about good reception and tone quality, just something to wake them up and listen to the local news and weather.

[jstout66]

I *HAVE* a GE (General Electric) clock radio/phone which has to have the worst tuner out there. I *NEVER* listen to the radio on it. We have a 50,000 watt AM station and it overloads on that, and the FM can only pick up like 2 stations. If it wasn't for the built in phone, I'd shove a Zenith *CIRCLE OF SOUND* clock radio back in there.

[dieseljeep]

Regarding the Windsor radios, they were give-aways at the bank, when you opened a savings account, around here, years ago.
They're always at the thrift stores.

[Arcanine]

I tend to buy older Realistic, Panasonic, Sony, and other brand Japanese radios from the old days. I love finding old Multi-Band radios.

Most of the ones I have picked up get excellent AM/FM reception. It makes modern radios look like junk. I have never messed with those radio on chip pieces of crap they sell these days.

I have no real "local" stations. I have a 6kW station on 96.1 in Lake Geneva, and it's transmitter is 8 miles from me, so even the worst radios get it. All they play is tween music, and stuff little girls would like. I have 95.1 out in Kenosha, it's 50kW and plays rock, and 30 miles away, I listen to them commonly in my car because it reaches so deep in to both Milwaukee and Chicago. I also think there is some religious station on 88.5 or something like that pretty close, but no one cares about those stations and no one listens to them. The programming is an abysmal so who cares.

As for AM stations. There used to be 1550 in Lake Geneva. A little 1kW station with two directional towers aimed east/west. They came in great, and I got the pleasure of them coming back on the air in December last year, and they played classic music and Christmas music. I had them on constantly on a little 1946 Arvin radio I own, it was a delight. They signed off January 1st, and the WZRK call letters were turned in to the FCC, so the station is dead.

I suppose for the best. The company that bought WZRK is a pathetic joke, they have another station in Milwaukee that plays only Gospel, and in my area there is zero market for such a station. I think they just killed it, and moved the transmitter up to Milwaukee for their crap station.

As for other close AM signals? WTMJ, WISN WBBM, WSCR, and WGN from Chicago & Milwaukee are the biggest locally. WSM from Nashville powers in here at night, so does CHWO or whatever 740 from Ontario at sunset, as well. Both nice to listen too on vintage sets.

I find a radio to be worthless if I can't hear Milwaukee on it in my house. It's made of amazing stuff if it let's me listen to Chicago in my house.

[Titan1a]

One of the joys of moving out of Omaha, NE was getting away from the overwhelming signals of local AM. Unfortunately, there was a trade-off of QRM (man-made noise) from all the wi-fi equipment. Getting a strong signal, particularly at night, means going to great lengths to out-power or null out the noise. The cure has been large ferrite bar antenna (preferably amplified). I have other plans afoot to try alternate means to null out noise and increase gain. Some are cheap; others aren't. Also, I have to consider the whims of the atmospheric reflecting layers. Signal can be fickle!

[dieseljeep]

Not to get too far OOT, I bought a Jensen branded AM-FM desk clock radio, in the original box. It doesn't sound too bad on FM, but the AM can't be tuned to proper resonance. It's a synthesizer tuner and evidently it was designed for foreign countries, where the stations are 9KC apart.
It was intended for the US, 120 volt, 60HZ.
Must have been rejects, as the were sold at the JC Penney outlet store.

[jr_tech]

Apparently there is no external 9-10 khz switch on the radio, but did you check the circuit board for a strap (or possibly a low ohm resistor) that could be clipped or moved to the 10 khz position?

jr

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

Apparently there is no external 9-10 khz switch on the radio, but did you check the circuit board for a strap (or possibly a low ohm resistor) that could be clipped or moved to the 10 khz position?

jr

I looked at the board, next to the PLL chip, but didn't see anything marked as such.
I can't see the chip number. It looks like it was marked over with ink or paint. I wanted to see the pin-out and figure it out.
It actually looks like an almost decent performer. It has a rather good sounding speaker and the output chip, has a heat sink on it. It seems to be a better looking piece of junk.
Ordinarily, you should be able to look up the chip number on the I-net for the function and pin-out.

[davet753]

A few years ago, the radio world has it's most dramatic change since the introduction of the transistor. Silicon Labs began marketing an IC chip that consolidates about 75% of the typical radio onto a single chip, smaller than a postage stamp.

This can be good and bad. Tecsun manufactures some great portable all-band receivers. They can take one of these Silicon Labs chips (like a Si4820), add a decent RF amp to the front end, and audio amp to the back, and end up with a radio that performs great. I have a model PL606 ($40) that brings in FM and shortwave stations better than my 15 year old Icom (that cost about $800 in 2001). I just bought a $159 model PL880, and it blows anything I've ever owned out of the water, and sounds great to boot.

Sadly, there is a flip side to this. Some foreign manufacturers take these Silicon Labs chips and add very little to it, save for a cheap little audio amp chip with a plastic speaker. These sets perform like pure crap, mainly because there's not a decent front end.

These chips sell for less than $3, eliminate the need for manual alignment, and contain all the control functions needed in a radio (from band selection, volume and tone control, digital tuning, and all of it operating on only 3 volts with minimal current draw.

As to the 9 or 10 kHz question, that switching is built-in to these chips. Some manufacturers offer a way to switch this from the keypad, but if not, they have to be programmed manually.