Special J&R Sale for the Grundig G4000: $65

Matt has apprised us of this great sale price for the Grundig G4000, one of my favorite portables. Sale lasts one day. 

Comments

[Terry, the Portable Collector]

That is a good radio. Very good sound for the small speaker and very sensitive.

It used to be called the Yacht Boy 400PE.

[Tom Welch]

Passport to World Band Radio now in limbo.

http://www.passband.com/2009/07/

[Mike W]

I just told myself earlier today that I wouldn't buy any new radios till 2010.

Then I saw this and ordered one. I have new (and 'new old' vintage) SW sets piling up and I don't even listen to SW that much anymore.

Like you say, no cure.

[Jeffrey McMahon]

Mike, I do know that feelings. As far as portables go, I think you'll find it's hard to beat the G4000 for speaker sound. I took the G4000 to a family vacation in San Diego and my wife's relatives were surprised that the jazz music was coming from a radio.

[Mike W]

As you know, the G4000A is just the old Grundig Yacht Boy 400 with silver plastic pellets poured into the injection mold rather than black.

Radio design has been so stagnant that even I have an old review of the YB400 on eham, under the wholely bogus handle W5XTC :

http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/816?page=7

Even then I was talking about the YB400 in the past tense, and Clinton was still in the White House, for God's sake.

I've lapped myself.

[Kevin S, Bainbridge Island, WA]

I have often been tempted by the G4000 - wonder if I'll bite this time...

Receiver design has not been completely stagnant. Kchibo (yes, that hallowed name) just came out with a DSP portable, based on the same chip that the Grundig G8 uses, called the D96L. Initial tests show that it is just as sensitive and selective on FM as the G8, but with a better speaker. It also gives you access to the various features of the DSP chip (5 razor-sharp DSP bandwidths on AM, etc.) that the G8 does not. For $60, it's quite a little radio.

Stay away from the Kchibo D92L, but the D96L may be the reason that J&R is selling off their G4000s :-)

[Scooby214]

I am interested in the Kchibo D96L. Kevin, have you purchased one yet? I have the G8, and it does wonders on FM, though I am disappointed that there are so few filters to tweak.

Where can one purchase the Kchibo D96L?

[Scooby214]

The more I look at the D96L, the better it looks. I can only locate it on ebay so far, and I'm not a fan of purchasing from ebay. Perhaps I'll find it an online store, like Universal Radio.

[Mike W]

That's a fair point, Kevin, because there have been a lot of new radio designs coming out of China.

To me at least, most of the new sets are too small and cheaply built to compare to the Sony & Grundig sets of the 1990's. The YB400 was introduced in 1993 and can still be bought under a new name 16 years later.

I think that in 1993, almost any 16 year old design would have been regarded as obsolete. So I think of radio design as being stagnant relative to past decades, although not completely so. The world has moved on to other gadgets.

What I sometimes wonder is whether some of the technology that has been developed for cellphones and wireless internet will find its way into consumer-grade radios.

[matt]

I just took delivery of my second G4000A. I've gotten one from Universal, and one from J&R.

While I'm reasonably happy with the radio overall, I'm less than enthusiastic about the build quality. Both antennas have popped loose inside the cabinet the first time I attempted to raise them. I've superglued and hot glued the antenna on the first radio so that it no longer 'slides up', but is at least able to take the stress of rotating.

I thought about exchanging them, but it's obviously a design flaw.

[Jeffrey McMahon]

That's sad. I haven't had the problem, but the antenna, like the Grundig S350's, is a bit flimsy, and I worry about it bending.