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Here in Torrance, powerhouse 640AM may be too powerful. I'm getting the same surges of slop background noise on my CC Radio Plus, my CCRadio-SW, my Sangean LB-100, and my Grundig S350. It appears to be a location problem. Rotating the radios sometimes helps; sometimes it doesn't. Today I was able to get rid of the horrible background noise (a distant police whistle or boat horn) by rotating the Grundig S350.
Two radios that don't seem to have the problem: Sangean WR-2 and Sangean WR-5.
If the SR3 is garbage, I can still get listenable reception on a 500-watt station on 1290 from 195 miles away in the daytime: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEHpddXU3Gk
then I'd expect the great SR1 or SR2 to blow the SR3 out of the solar system. For example, the station causing the het on 1180 kHz inhttp://youtu.be/1Awwywr_xDc?t=14s (1k het generated by LO in other radio - 729+450=1179; 1180-1179=1) is KERN Wasco-Greenacres, CA. Splatter is from local 1170 KCBQ, whose 50kW transmitter blasts me with 112kW ERP from 9.3 miles away and is the strongest station on the dial here in the daytime.
For comparison, here are a couple recordings of Tecsun PL-606 reception on 1180 KERN one day when KCBQ was off the air for several minutes... barefoot: http://www.mediafire.com/?ao92526zxj2ty6g with Select-A-Tenna: http://www.mediafire.com/?6k0lm6z97zvy23c Would the SR1 and SR2 get better barefoot reception from 1180 KERN, with 1170 KCBQ on, than the PL-606 got from KERN with the SAT when KCBQ was off the air? Or better yet, could the SR1/2's reception of KERN compete with this video -http://youtu.be/cq6KSavcVMI?t=32s - of 1242 JOLF? :)
Hope you're well! I just posted this review of the 90's era Lowe SRX 100. Cute radio, in a built-in-the-uk utilitarian sort of way. Good audio, respectable AM performance:
It took me several tries to find a "good" SR III, but I finally did, so they are out there. I also have the original (aka the SR I) and the II. The II is probably the best of the series overall, but the III has the best speaker audio, IMO.
Several months ago, I pulled the trigger on what was advertised to be a GE SR III from Amazon. An RCA arrived instead (apparently the Amazon Marketplace seller never updated his listing). I checked it out and it basically offered clock radio-level reception with the SR III's great speaker sound. Tuning was off by a good 500 kHz on AM and 4 MHz on FM. Sensitivity and selectivity were fair to poor. Needless to say, it went back immediately.
I'll never again buy anything with the RCA nameplate again. Which is a sad commentary on what happens when a cheap foreign company buys a venerable trademark. At one time, RCA radios were of high quality. But today's iteration of the brand bears NO resemblance to the brand's products in those those halcyon days of yore. Now, they're at the same level as a Coby. In a word: junk.
Looks like the GE SRIII is much different than the RCA SR as Brian writes:
Something that may have been mentioned on this blog before - buying a radio at the Salvation Army, Goodwill or garage sales or similar.
I know the Superadio 3 is hit or miss on quality control, and the latest version with the RCA name on it is pretty much junk, but I recently found a GE Superadio 3 at Salvation Army for $4.99
It looks like it used to belong to a UAW assembly line worker here in the Detroit area. The previous owner's name is on it, along with the shift he worked and some other stuff like a Dale Earnhardt #3 stenciled on it. It looks like he replaced the original whip antenna and also marked the dial for his favorite station, 101.1 WRIF.
I got lucky though, my $4.99 investment happened to have batteries already in it and this GE SR3 is one of the good ones. The difference between this one and the RCA version I owned previously is night and day. It is absolutely brilliant on FM when it comes to pulling in the low power and obscure high school and college stations at the low end of the band. Strong local AM stations like WJR 760 sound amazing with the AM wide band setting.
Keep your eyes open and stop into a resale store now and then. There are definitely quality radios out there for cheap if you watch out for them..
I saw that someone was still worried about the bad wr-12's a while ago, and I was about to buy one, so I called up Sangean's american office, and a very pleasant man answered the phone, and told me that they've recovered almost all of them. He said that it would be impossible to buy one of the messed up first run ones from a reputable dealer, which I hope Amazon is. I'm going to take the plunge and get one, I'll leave an Amazon review when it shows up.
Thanks, Gary:
More info on the Superadio 3:
http://earmark.net/gesr/sr3.htm