Russ Stanton's Tecsun R-308 Table Radio

 

I've been putting the Tecsun R-308 through its paces for almost a month now and I am very happy with it. It has great AM reception and a low noise floor on weak stations. It seems pretty good at nulling stations but I'm not very experienced at that. I do notice that pulling in WABC - 770 KHz and 50,000 watts - I can rotate it and pull in a county and western station way down in the grass but still very copyable. 

I'm in a fringe area so this business with the noise floor is important. The big problem with the Sangean LB-100 Lunchbox is that while it might pull in a weak station, it sounds terrible doing it and I find it irritating to listen to under those circumstances. I find myself shutting the Lunchbox off and running for the Tecsun. 

The dial alignment was badly off by 30-40 KHz on AM and a corresponding amount on FM. I opened it up and decided to try a shortcut rather than completely disassembling it to get to the dial pointer. There's 3 geared wheels that tune the radio and operate the slide rule dial pointer. I tuned the Tecsun to a known station and then removed the center gear that has the dial cord wrapped around it. I lifted it up so the gears were no longer meshing and turned it until the dial indicator was reading correctly and then reassembled it. Whew! That worked like a charm. Good thing because it was really bothering me! If anybody gets one of these and needs help with the dial alignment, I'll be glad to take pictures and guide people through the procedure. It's easier than it might sound.

FM performance is also pretty good for an analog tuner. The problem here is that while the FM antenna is nice and long, it doesn't pivot. Tecsun provides a little stand on the back to rest the radio on an angle, so the idea is to rotate the radio for best reception, rather than the antenna. That's not always convenient or even possible in some circumstances.

Battery life is way better than average. I'm still showing 1.4 Volts on the 3 D cells I originally put in the Tecsun and it still plays loud and clear.  Sound isn't bad with the Tecsun either. It is indeed as described here by others - pleasant and well balanced. It has some bass but nothing like the Sangean portables (LB-100 Lunchbox and U3). But that makes it almost ideal for talk radio which isn't true for the Sangeans. The slider tone control is more of a bass cut control. You use it to bring the bass up to a level you prefer. Nice. It's plenty loud also. It distorts towards the end of the volume range but within reason.

I'm very impressed with the build quality and the price. I paid $20 and $16 S/H. It took 11 days to get here in Pennsylvania from Hong Kong. 

Comments

[Carlos]

I'm come to prefer analog radios especially for DXing.

I almost got the R-308 until I spotted the Sony ICF-F10s, which has AM and SW:

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-ICF-F10s-Band-Portable-Radio/dp/B002BS7V74/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1272483337&sr=8-2

This seems to be the less common sibling of the ICF-F10 AM/FM. It should arrive for me today, and I'll post first impressions.

[Huesby]

Carlos:
Sorry to rain in your parade but the Tecsun radio is better...I had both in the past and I can tell first hand that the Tecsun radio has a warmer sound (good bass),very very nice sound, bigger speaker, better FM sensitivity (Very very good), and on AM both are equally good, granted the Sony is more rigid, built like a tank while the Tecsun is more fragile.
Looking inside the circuit, the Tecsun radio almost say "Look but don´t touch me" while the Sony is very good built.

[Carlos]

Huesby: Thanks for the warning! No worries, I'll probably end up ordering the Tecsun as well! Plus I was curious about the SW on the Sony.

[Huesby]

Carlos:
If you are really interested in SW along FM and AM buy a REDSUN RP-2100 aka CCradio SW it is really a wonderful radio very sensitive in every band, besides a better sound than the Tecsun R308, great bass and above all...It use rechargeable batteries and it recharges them !!!.. Granted the US version it is expensive but the Chinese version is cheaper and it´s the same (Except for the 220v).
That radio is among the best I´ve had being old or modern radios.

[jeffrey McMahon]

Hugo, if one buys the Redsun version, what AC adapter do you suggest to mate with the adapter, included on Lipyn's eBay seller site?

[huesby]

Jeff:
Check the watts ratings of any adapter before you buy it, the bigger wattage the cooler it works and maybe the longer useful life it has.

About my RP-2100 radio:
My radio is an hybrid, I bought 2 broken radios one CCradio (15Dls) and the other one a 110v Kaito version (20Dls), these radios have 3 boards inside so I took 2 good boards from Kaito's and the other one from the CCradio, I used the more beautiful CCradio's covers and the Kaito's 110v section, now the radio seems as the CCradio is for 110v.
I wonder why the CCradio doesn't come with the transformer INSIDE ?

[Carlos]

Hugo: I thought the CSW was a digital tuner?

Have had the ICF-F10s fired up for about a half-hour now. Build quality very durable. The plastic is hard like the exterior of the Panasonic rf-888. I was disappointed that the silver isn't brushed aluminum but paint. Look of the radio is simple and classic. Also another surprise - it's made in Japan (like the 7600, I suppose).

This model receives SW and MW only. The regular F10 receives FM/MW only, no SW. I purchased this radio for the analog SW, to see about its DXing. WOW! This thing hears stuff my digital portables don't hear, especially higher up. I just found a great jazz station, sounds French. Plenty of stuff coming in, and the selectivity is solid. This is all off the whip. I had no idea all this stuff was out there.

AM is about what I expected. 660 out of NYC is about 150 miles away, and I can lock in on it fairly well, as most of my good radios can. Not an AM DXer.

Sound has a vintage quality to it that I like. For 50 bucks I'm very happy with the SW performance (which is why I sprung for it), the build quality, and the speaker sound.

Cheers!

[jeffrey McMahon]

Thanks, Hugo. I'll assume the CCrane version is a safer bet for the AC adapter. It will probably run cooler.

[huesby]

Carlos:
Congratulation for your new radio, Jeff should post your mini review to the top of the page.

About the CCradio..yes it's digital sorry I didn't mention that... I concentrated too much in the audio section.

[Chris]

Carlos- What is the SW tuning range of your new Sony?

[Carlos]

Chris - Tunning range is from 5 Mhz to 18 Mhz, on a single band.

By the way, forget what I said about the Sony not being an AM DXer. I played with it for about an hour last night on the AM band after being blown away on SW. On SW every little nudge of the dial brought in something new and clear! Phenomenal selectivity.

On AM I was also very impressed. I was pulling in things from Boston, Ontario, Chicago, New York, i.e. hundreds of miles away, and often very clear.

Also, I can't say enough about the speaker sound. Aggressive.

Runs on two D batteries (no AC option).

A bare-bones, outstanding performing analog receiver from Sony. Highly recommended!

[Gary]

Ultimately I returned my Sangean LB-100 due to its poor AM sensitivity. I also found the sound too bass-heavy for AM talk radio.

Based on Russ' review of the Tecsun R-308 here, I decided to buy one. I ordered it from anon-co on eBay for $38.99 with free shipping. anon-co had a special price of $13.99 with free shipping for an AN-200 loop antenna when purchased with an R-308, so I ordered one of these as well.

All of the radios I've bought from eBay vendors in Hong Kong are packed in a substandard way, by simply putting the manufacturer's box into a bubble envelope, rather than a box. The R-308 box had just a couple dings and dents, but the AN-200 box was crushed on one end. Luckily the antenna was fine.

Regarding the R-308, I have to agree with Russ that it's far more sensitive on AM than the LB-100. I like the sound much better on AM talk radio, even with the bass set to maximum. On FM music, it could use a bit more bass, but it's pretty good considering the small size of the radio (far smaller than a SupeRadio III or a CCRadio-SW).

The tuning knob on my R-308 scraped when rotated, so I had to pull it out a little. I'll put something into the hole in the knob to prevent it from pushing in too far. Luckily, the dial alignment on my sample is pretty good -- off no more than a little bit across the AM and FM bands.

I agree with Russ that a tilting and rotating FM whip antenna would be better, but the FM reception seems pretty decent nevertheless.

Tecsun should put some rubber feet on the bottom of the radio so it doesn't slide around. I'll add some of the clear vinyl feet that are available at Home Depot.

All in all, I like the R-308. I think it will make a great garage radio for my purpose, which is mostly listening to AM. That it runs a long time on a set of batteries is a big plus. I won't bother to get an AC adapter for it.

[Vimal Oberoi]

Tunning range is SW: 5.9-18MHz,to be precise.

[Vimal Oberoi]

Tunning range is SW: 5.9-18MHz,to be precise,(for Sony ICF-F10s).

[Aravind_mobile]

Could you post pictures on how to align the dial when you have time? Tuning is difficult since it is off by more than 50Khz on AM.