Its been nice knowing you all

[Dan Strassberg]

I had one of those Zenith AM-FM radios when I was in college and for many
years afterward. Both the AM and FM were excellent, and I believe that a
side-by-side comparison with my GE Super Radio III (a very fine receiver by
today's standards) would reveal the Zenith to be superior to the SR III in
almost all respects on both AM and FM. I also have a Tivoli Audio Kloss
Model One table radio. It's nowhere near as sensitive on AM as the SR III
(and it cost about twice as much as the SR III), but I think some people
would say that the tone (on AM or FM) is more pleasing than that of the SR
III. Adding a Select-A-Tenna tunable passive loop brings the Model One's AM
sensitivity up to (and in some cases, past) that of the SR III. I've had no
luck augmenting the SR III's sensitivity with the Select-A-Tenna, however. I
think the SR III has such a large ferrite loop that the Select-A-Tenna just
can't improve on it. The SR III is large enough for it to have been built
with a flat (untuned) passive loop of the type that the Zenith (and all
other table radios) used before the invention of the ferrite loop. The SR
III has terminals for connection of external AM and FM antennas and it would
be interesting to salvage the loop antenna from an old tube radio such as
the Zenith and connect it to the SR III. I wonder whether that would improve
the SR III's already very respectable AM sensitivity.

--
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
eFax 707-215-6367

----- Original Message -----
From: Bill O'Neill <billo@shoreham.net>
To: <rogerkirk@mail.ttlc.net>; 'Scott Fybush' <scott@fybush.com>;
<boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org>; 'Kevin Vahey'
<kvahey@tmail.com>
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 9:18 AM
Subject: RE: Its been nice knowing you all


> Roger:
> > WADR and wishing this didn't sound like an old-timer whining about
> > the "Good Old Days" - BUT, these kinda things were extremely unlikey
> > with tubes.  Drift, maybe - but tubes kept things warm.
> >
> > ?Reboot? I don't think so.
>
> In the vein of oldtimer-sounding, I've rediscovered my 1951 Zenith table
radio
> (not valuable, tons still out there) with the metal pointer in the round
center
> dial, AM/FM. AM works much better.  I can't get this clean, round sound in
any
> other radios.  The Bose is tough to beat, however.  Just clicking on the
> power/volume knob, waiting about 30 seconds for the unit to start to
deliver
> audio, it seems emblematic of yet another example of how far we've come in
our
> "instant on" culture.
>
> Bill O'Neill
>