Herculodge

Best AM Radios for the General Listener

Woeful AM on a radio is depressing and downright unacceptable. If a radio has lousy AM, no other features, no matter how admirable, can redeem it. Fortunately, there are several excellent AM radios out there. I will list the ones that not only pull in AM stations with remarkable power, but lock on the stations without drifting and have a minimum of background noise.

Number One: Kaito 2100. Perhaps the best general purpose radio available because of its unparalleled AM and FM. My only complaint is that you have to toggle through a preset button, only moving up, to go through your presets. A minor peeve: The buttons require firm pressure. But still this is the AM king.

Number Two: Sangean PR-D5. This features a huge 200mm internal AM ferrite antenna, and it shows. Outstanding AM. At around $70, I'd say you can't get a better radio for the money. I'll be curious to see if the new Sangean PR-D7, featuring a monoaural 3-inch speaker, unlike the dual 2.5 speakers on the PR-D5, is implanted with the same AM antenna.

Number Three: The now defunct Boston Acoustics Recepter. BA does an amazing job with their tuners. The sound quality and absence of background noise is amazing.

Number Four: Boston Acoustics Horizon Solo. The AM on this new radio may even be better than its older brother the Recepter. I've had a few minor problems though and readers have been reporting MAJOR BUGS. If you buy one, keep the receipt and make sure yours isn't full of gremlins. I suspect newer models will get better. For a high-fidelity bedside radio, the BAHS, in the absence of bugs, may be the best of its kind.

Number Five: Sangean WR-2. This is the clock radio I use. AM is outstanding. FM is better in my new model than it is in the one I bought back in 2005. Highest recommendation.

Number Six: Eton S350 DL. Outstanding AM and FM and very similar in look to the Kaito 2100. However, the 2100 does a better job of hiding the birdy noise when AM gets weak at night or in hard-to-get stations. Still, a great AM radio.
 

The Gastronomical Inferno: Part Three

Recently I witnessed an extended family, all fat, coming out of the buffet. They were limping, bloated, sickly, full of crapulence. The matriarch, the grandmother, had a huge travel bag full of donuts and biscuits that she had pilfered from the buffet tray. Apparently, she hadn’t stuffed herself enough. The donuts and biscuits were falling out of her over-packed tote bag as she hobbled across the parking lot. You could see the baked goods rolling across the asphalt like rot-gut bowling balls.  This grandma’s butt was too big to get into the back seat of the banged-up, rusted Mercury Topaz, so she had to swing the door all the way open. Seemingly oblivious, she rammed the right door into the left door of  a brand new dark gray Honda Accord parked in the next space. The Topaz door was wedged right into the once-pristine Accord and I could see sparks and gray paint chips flying off it. All the while the grandmother, straining with her cane, was lowering herself into the Topaz while grunting like a pig. She squatted lower and lower while gagging and squealing. Spittle flew out of her mouth along with bits of semi-masticated biscuit clods.

It gets worse. Grandma’s weight sunk the back of the Topaz so low that the car’s rear hit the asphalt and this made the door wedge deeper and deeper into the Accord. By now the door had violently gashed that poor new Honda. I was just standing there with my gym bag in my hand wondering if I was the only person who saw what was going on. It then occurred to me that someone’s Accord was getting thrashed. I rushed into the gym and explained the situation to the manager and he let me tell everyone what had happened over the PA system. A guy ran off the StairMaster while screaming hysterically and I followed him to the parking lot. The family was still sitting in the Topaz. They were so stuffed from their feeding that they were now “recovering” inside the car with the windows down, fanning themselves with the buffet’s take-out menus. The Honda owner was irate. He screamed at them and they just looked at him with bovine indifference, their chins glistening with drool. A bunch of clueless gluttons destroying and devouring everything that comes into their path.

PART ONE    PART TWO PART FOUR

Looking for a Replacement for the Now Defunct Superradio?

For $49.95 plus $14.95 shipping, Radios4You is selling the Emerson MBR1, which reportedly gets good AM/FM reception but not as good speaker sound as the now extinct RCA (formerly GE) Superradio. Shortwave is reported to be weak.

I personally wouldn't buy the Emerson. If you're new to radios and looking for a "substitute" for the Superradio, you might be better off forking out $99 for the Eton S350 DL. I have one in red and it rocks.

The Gastronomical Inferno: Part Two

In front of the all-you-can-eat buffet is a sign of rules and conduct. One of the rules urges people to stand in the buffet line in an orderly fashion and to be patient because there is plenty of food for everyone. Another rule is that children are not to be left unattended and running freely around the buffet area. My favorite rule is that no hands, tongues, or other body parts are allowed to touch the food. Tongs and other utensils are to be used at all times. The rules give you an idea of the kind of people who eat there. These are people I want to avoid.

But as I walk to the gym from my car, which shares a parking lot with the buffet patrons, I cannot avoid the nauseating smell of stale grease oozing from the buffet’s rear dumpster, army green and stained with splotches and a seaweed-like crust of yellow and brown grime.

Often I see cooks and dishwashers, their bodies covered with soot, coming out of the back kitchen door to throw refuse into the dumpster, a smoldering receptacle with hot fumes of bacteria and flies. Hunchbacked and knobby, the poor employees are old, weary men with sallow, rheumy eyes and cuts and bruises all over their bodies. I imagine them being tortured deep within the bowels of the fiery kitchen on some Medieval rack. They emerge into the blinding sunshine like moles, their eyes squinting, with their plastic garbage bags twice the size of their bodies slung over their shoulders, and then I look into their sad eyes—eyes that seem to beg for my help and mercy. And just when I am about to give them words of hope and consolation or urge them to flee for their lives, it seems they disappear back into the restaurant as if beckoned by some invisible tyrant.

Lately, I’ve been having a recurring nightmare that a giant hairy claw with thick talons emerges from the kitchen door, from which flames flicker, and then this monstrous claw grabs one of the dish-washers around his torso. He flails his arms and screams for mercy, but to no avail. The claw pulls him back into the fuming hell of stale grease and rancid chicken fat. Whatever the significance of my disturbing dream, I am haunted by these images of those poor men trapped at their job and I am overcome with dread and anxiety every time I pass them on my way to the gym.

PART ONE PART THREE PART FOUR

Save Your Manhood Tip #53: Your Watch Shouldn't Just Look Manly. It Should SOUND Manly.

As men who refuse to compromise our masculinity, we can rejoice that the Big Watch is in back in full power, complete with fighter pilot, paratrooper, SCUBA, espionage, and other daring adventure themes. These macho watches feature a bezel diameter of 50mm or more. But if you want a watch that doesn't just look manly but SOUNDS manly, then get off your duff and buy a TW Steel Canteen Watch #TW11. Just say "TW Steel" and you feel your chest hairs grow, you're overcome with the urge to crush beer cans with your bare hands, and you find that your forearms have instantly grown discernible striations and salient bulges.

I'll Miss the Sangean PR-D5

I sold my Sangean PR-D5 today. It is an excellent radio both on AM and FM, the ergonomics are user-friendly, it has RDS, its speakers are well above average in sound. I can't say I was in love with the way it looked, like a white purse. Nor did I like its cheap-feeling buttons, which one reader described as "tinfoil." But overall, I think it's one of the best radios you can get for the money. I had to sell it though. Since I obsessively review radios, I constantly buy new ones and this means my house needs to be purged of radios every now and then. My wife worries that someday she and I will sleep in the garden shed as the house bulges at the walls with hundreds of radios. To assure her that the we still reign over our master bedroom, the kitchen, and the living room, I had to put some of my radios for sale and the PR-D5 was the first to go.

Another radio observation: My black Sangean WR-2 is the most elegant looking radio I've ever owned, but I find myself obsessively doting on it, gently wiping dust off it with an old white T-shirt. Last night my wife and I couldn't agree what it's made of: Is it laminate, real wood, plastic? I'd like to know so I can buy the appropriate cleanser. As I dusted it for the umpteenth time yesterday, my wife said, "Dude, you're scaring me."

The Gastronomical Inferno: Part One

My Los Angeles health club looks like an enchanting pleasure dome, an extravaganza of taut, sweaty bodies scandalously exposed in spandex tights contorting on space-age cardio machines, oil-slicked skin shrouded in a synthetic fog of dry ice colored by the dizzying splash of lavender disco lights. Tribal drum music plays loudly. Bottled water flows freely, as if from some Elysian spring, over burnished flesh. The communal purgation appeals to me. My fellow cardio junkies and I are so self-abandoned, free, and euphoric, liberated in our gym paradise.

But right next to our workout heaven is a gastronomical inferno, one of those all-you-can-eat buffets, part of a chain, which is, to my lament, sprouting all over Los Angeles. I despise the buffet, a trough for people of less discriminating tastes who saunter in and out of the restaurant at all hours, entering the doors of the eatery without shame and blind to all the gastrointestinal and health-related horrors that await them. Many of the patrons cannot walk out of their cars to the buffet but have to limp or rely on canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids, for it seems a high percentage of the customers are afflicted with obesity, diabetes, arthritis, gout, hypothalamic lesions, elephantiasis, varicose veins and fleshy tumors. Struggling and wheezing as they navigate across the vast parking lot that leads to their gluttonous sanctuary, they seem to worship the very source of their disease.

PART TWO    PART THREE PART FOUR

Sirius Promises That "No Radio Will be Obsolete" with XM Merger

The good news is that if, unlike me, you have a satellite radio, you won't need to get a new one in the face of the Serius-XM merger as announced on SiriusMerger.com

Here in Los Angeles, I enjoy too many terrestrial radio stations, Internet stations, and podcasts to justify a satellite subscription.  But if I lived in an area lacking good terrestrial stations, I'd probably subscribe. And the Sirius Stiletto SL 100 looks appealing.  It matches well with the SL-EX1 Stiletto Executive Speaker System.

For People Who Suffer from iPod-Separation Anxiety

Not content with listening to your iPod everywhere you walk, by your bedside, and while your multi-tasking in your home or work office? Does the idea of removing your iPod from your person in the event that you might need to take a shower cause chronic anxieties for which there is no Zoloft pill big enough? Worry not, my friend. Hammacher Schlemmer is selling The Waterproof iPod Speaker System. And after you've dried off your squeaky-clean body with your 300-count Egyptian cotton towel and you've had your nightly warm milk with chocolate toll house cookies, you can snuggle in bed with your Plush Teddy Bear Squishy Pillow iPod Speaker. 

The Mistake of Making Absolute Judgments About Radios

As many of you know, I really wanted to love the Tivoli Model One, which has a great look, feel, and speaker sound. Sadly, I ended up selling it, like I did with the Model Three, because neither gave me good FM performance. Especially, both would drift on FM. However, I've learned that the same radio performs differently in different environments. Cyril from Canada attests this with a recent comment:

I know you had trouble with your Tivoli Model 1, but I still think anybody looking for a high-end radio without presets or clock owes it to themselves to at least try one... They do sound great when they manage to grab and hold the station you want (which is 100% of the time for me).

I never experienced the FM drift problem you reported -- in fact my impression is that the radio even improves after "warming up" a bit. The FM reception on the BA Solo I tried was not as good as on the TM1. I never tried the Sangeans because I can't find any in store.

My impression from reading too many reviews on-line is that all the "usual suspects" can be excellent radios. Reception may be highly dependent on your particular physical settings though.

I completely agree with Cyril. Don't judge a radio based on any reviews, even mine, until you've tried the radio yourself because your environment is the final determiner of the radio's performance. Case in point: One Amazon reviewer actually wrote that the Kaito 2100, the best reception-radio I've ever owned, gave him "lousy" FM. I have no doubt that the problem was his environment, not the radio. If 99% of Kaito 2100 owners rhapsodize about its great reception powers, then there's a high probability that it will perform to your expectations, but there are no guarantees.

So to be fair to Tivoli, you should give the very well-built Model One a chance before dismissing it. And we can apply this principle to most radios.