Mark Updates His Comparison of the Sony SW7600GR and the Tecsun PL-660

 

I promised an update on performance on bands other than SW. On MW the Sony wins by a hair, and that just may be due to the Tecsun's auto squelch. (I'm going to have to disable that). When it came to stations intelligible enough to make an ID, the station could be heard equally well on both receivers. Neither receiver comes close to my Grundig Satellit 750 as an MWDX box.

On FM the Tecsun is sadly a bit of a disappointment. Everywhere else it's been neck and neck with the Sony, but not on FM. Distant stations that come in with full quieting on the Sony are a staticky mess on the Tecsun. Even the addition of an external antenna only helps a little. Local stations are fine in mono, but an FMDX machine, this is not.

Air band and LW… I tuned quickly through the Air band and heard one intermittent station. Not enough to keep me interested. LW is pretty vacant here. The occasional strange noise but I haven't heard a beacon in years, though I haven't looked for anything down there in a long time and I guess looking down there during the aftermath of Sandy with the power outages in my area didn't help much, though it was a boon for MW, SW and FM.

All in all I think it all comes down to tuning aids, ergonomics, build quality and reliability.

The Sony has nice, clearly labeled buttons, hidden slide switches and pots, a dim display containing only the frequency or clock and synchronous detector state along with rudimentary memory and alarm information. The backlight is dim and only stays on for about 10 seconds. There is no meaningful signal strength indicator, the audio is optimized for voice and is distinctly LoFi.

The Tecsun has long rectangular buttons sitting in horizontal channels. Attractive, but it makes direct frequency entry unnecessarily difficult. The display is gorgeous! Bright and filled with all sorts of useful information. Unfortunately there is no way to keep the display from turning off, but it can be extended to 30 seconds and comes on when certain controls are used. One great feature is that on certain memory pages, mode is stored along with frequency. The audio is quite nice, but unlike the Sony, begins to distort when the synchronous detector is engaged. The Tecsun also has two bandwidth filters as compared to the Sony's one. The narrow filter compares favorably to the Sony's single filter, doing an excellent job mitigating adjacent channel interference. The wide filter, on the other hand, is virtually useless. It is so wide that a strong station can be mistuned by 5 kHz with virtually no degradation of signal! I'm guessing that the wide bandwidth is between 12 and 15 kHz. You could fly a 747 through that.

Even lacking a tuning knob, the Sony scans the bands as well as the Tecsun does. I doubted that this would happen, but as it turns out, Sony managed to do an excellent job designing this radio back in '94 when they came out with the "G" version. Even the AM/SYNC/SSB and LSB/USB sliders and fine tuning control are simple to access when holding the radio in the position used to tune the receiver with the right thumb. the forefinger sits naturally by all these controls, and with a bit of practice they become second nature to manipulate.

So which radio is better? Aside from the Tecsun's relatively poor performance on FM and its tendency to introduce distortion when using the synchronous detector, I'd say both are pretty evenly matched.
I love my trusty, battle worn Sony ICF-SW7600GR, but I'm so pleasantly surprised by the Tecsun PL-660, I can't declare a clear winner.

The Sony feels sturdier, but it's heavier so that may have something to do with it. Give me 5 - 10 years and I may have a definitive answer. As it stands, I really love both receivers.

Mark

Note, the design problem referred to (way) above, and the link provided refer to the first generation of digital 7600s the SW7600D / SW2002, introduced in 1983, and concludes with the statement: "Note that Sony fixed this problem in later (approx. 1985 onwards) samples, so these will not require this mod." The SW7600GR was released in 2001, 16 years after the reported fix.

Comments

[Bob C.]

Wow, the part about FM reception is disquieting (no pun intended)! My Sony is TERRIBLE on FM with poor selectivity and lackluster sensitivity, so if the Tecsun is worse..... Well, that would be pretty lame indeed.

With all due respect to Mark, I think I'd like to hear a second opinion on this aspect of the comparison.

[Brian]

I dunno, My experience with the FM on the Tecsun is FAR superior to my experience with the FM on the Sony.

[Mark3785]

I enjoy doing side by side comparisons but I'm more comfortable comparing receivers on shortwave. If there's anyone interested in doing a more intensive comparison on FM, MW and LW, I'd love to read it.

In the case of FM I started with an unusual station on 87.7, outside the officially allocated FM band. It's actually an analog TV station out of NYC, that broadcasts nothing more than a test pattern on video but has a fairly complete audio programming schedule, mostly in russian. This station came in with full quieting on the Sony while there was a lot of static on the Tecsun.

I started tuning both receivers up from there and noted that the 7600gr did a better job pulling in weaker stations, and this trend continued all the way to the top of the band.

The Sony did seem to be relatively worse in terms of selectivity, but it isn't easy to make a definitive call when the two receivers are so mismatched in terms of sensitivity.

Maybe the sensitivities I saw were simply due to variations in production lots. In testing from 530 kHZ to 30 mHz and seeing almost identical performance, the FMBCB was the only area that showed a marked difference.

Again, if anyone else is willing to do a side by side comparison, I'd really enjoy reading it!

[Gary]

Mark - In my experience, many Chinese radios have quite a bit of sample to sample variation, so this may have affected your comparison on FM.

[Robert Richmond]

I do not have much to offer on the FM side of the discussion, but I find the PL-660 roughly "equivalent" to the 7600GR for HF reception. PL-660 certainly wins on audio quality; a known deficiency with the 7600 series. I have a sync modified 7600GR currently needing repaired, and I have not even bothered since moving a PL-660 into its place as a bedside radio.

With that said, my bedside radio is fed via a choice of an 150' beverage-on-ground or an 18' end-fed vertical depending upon bands and conditions, along with a preselector and active amplifier. YMMV if comparing radios using the onboard antennas.

[Doug]

Hmmmm. FM reception, both sensitivity and selectivity, on my 660 is about as good as that of any radio I own, certainly superior to that of the 7600 which I owned for about 2 years and now longer have. And the 660 audio as per Robert's comment, is much, much better.

Maybe sample to sample variation at work here?

Doug

[Wals]

My G5 speaker went dead after I was in the case trying to repair the antenna. The earphones and "out" jack still work though. I love the radio but the durability just wasn't there. At that price you more than 3 years of good service.

I may give the PL-660 a try if I can get one at a decent price. I have to say a tuning knob is a must for me now.

[Sailcat]

If the sample variation is so wide as to persuade some owners that FM sensitivity is great and others it is poor, is this any recommendation to buy the product? I'm not so sure...

[FARMERIK/Richard Hayden]

I have both the '7600G and '7600GR and like the audio much better on the GR. With the G model the audio is too thin with little of the audio frequencies of a male voice.