I had an SX62 until about seven years ago; worked great while I had it. Got rid of it when I moved. Oh well. It was too big and too heavy for the apartment I moved to; wouldn't have been able to find a desk or anything strong and/or stable enough to support it. That receiver weighed a ton, like all early Hallicrafters sets. It was also the first communications receiver I ever saw with the American FM broadcast band. I only used it with a small speaker from an old car stereo, but if I had had the original Halli extension speaker, I bet the FM would have sounded fantastic. Even with the small speaker, however, the FM didn't sound half bad. AM radio reception on the broadcast band sounded great as well (this was when Cleveland and other cities still had AM music stations), and shortwave reception was also typical Hallicrafters quality, probably much better than the receiver section of my Icom IC-725 ham radio transceiver.
BTW, I wonder if Hallicrafters is still in business, even in this age of most American electronics firms having gone overseas.
I haven't heard much if anything lately about the company Bill Halligan founded ages ago, so I think Hallicrafters either went broke or is now a subsidiary of some offshore company. If either of those is the case, it was a darn shame, as Hallicrafters had some of the best shortwave and amateur receivers around in their heyday. I had a Halli SX-101A Mark III in my first amateur radio station in the early 1970s; served me well then (I really liked the step-variable selectivity down to 500 Hz; great for Morse code reception) and also 10 years later when I reactivated my ham station under then-new FCC amateur rules. It got lost when I moved, but again, it's probably just as well, as I don't have much room here, and certainly no room for two huge boatanchors such as the SX62 and 101.
