[Boatanchors] Collins receiver distortion

Tue May 10 14:57:34 EDT 2005

Hey 'Boomer', how many years has it been now since you were on the air anyhow?
The last I knew you either were lacking an operational station or antennas, ever
get that corrected?	

I fyou even know a red haired female in CA, my money is on Phil's XYL to take
her two out of three falls! Then Phil will have her doing 5 WPM CW before hse
leaves!

----------
From: Todd, KA1KAQ <ka1kaq at gmail.com>
To: Philip Atchley <beaconeer at sbcglobal.net>
Cc: boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] Collins receiver distortion
Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 12:03 PM

On 5/10/05, Philip Atchley <beaconeer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Well, so much for the legends of "Tube Audio" and "Collins Quality" 8^(
> 
> Runnin' 'n' Duckin' somewhere in Central California

Now now, Phil - you can run but you can't hide: I know a little
redhead in Merced with a hammer and some Vice Grips, I can send her
over to your shop at night! (o:

Collins Quality: Indisputable, even in today's world. They built gear
to a much higher standard than any other maker of the day,
consistently. This shouldn't be misconstrued to mean they were somehow
'perfect', I'm sure they had their share of flaws (as the Service
Bulletins would indicate). Maybe truth or fable, but Art apparently
sold ham gear at a loss as a means of enticing broadcast engineers and
others who were often also hams then to recommend Collins gear for
their station's needs. Something that I feel proves this out is the
price increase on ham gear instituted by Rockwell after they took
over. One old tech told me that he got a letter informing him that as
of such and such a date, all prices would be double. I do recall
seeing late KWM-2As listed in 73 for well over $3K in the late 70s.
They eventually dropped all ham production, because there was no money
in it (or not enough for them to bother with).

Tube audio: Sometimes old, faulty components are to blame, or it's
just the design. We need to keep in mind that these radios were built
as communications devices, *not* high end stereo gear. Collins in
particular eventually tailored their gear to 'communications-quality'
audio, the KW-1 is a good example: approximately halfway through
production they changed the values of coupling caps and did several
other things to restrict audio. After all, the object was to get
through and be heard under difficult conditions, not sound as broad as
the Lawrence Welk Orchestra. This meant restricting audio power to a
more usable bandwidth, distortion and all (clippers are notorious
interference generators). Having said that, it's tough to beat the
audio from an SX-28, SX-62, SP-200 or any of the receivers running
push-pull 6V6s, with audio filtering in the 'wide' position. Even the
single-ended audio of the AR88 series is pretty impressive.

We're lucky to live in a time with better technology and instruments
capable of measuring and finding things we couldn't witness before.
While I don't disagree with someone wanting to improve or even modify
their own piece of equipment, I often wonder why. Sure, it's 2005 but
guess what? These are still OLD RADIOS, not the latest, greatest
technology. Receiver doesn't do sideband well? Get one that does, it's
a lot easier than trying to hack up the one you have in an attempt to
make it something it was never meant to be. Same thing goes for audio.
My SX-115 sounds a lot nicer on SSB than the 75A-4, for example. And
why not, it's a 5-10 year newer design with newer tubes and
technology. The A-4 has mechanical filters that ring, uses tubes not
as quiet or whatever else as later tubes, and so on. But it still
sounds pretty damned good for a 1950's cutting edge receiver, and it
is excellent at cutting out noise and interference with the filters
and passband tuning. They do what they were made to do then and sound
like they were made to sound.  We should keep sight of this and
compare apples to apples, not apples to cows and so on.  Or, perhaps
we shouldn't expect them to be as 'perfect' as a new ricebox might
seem to be. Just speculation on my part.

I look at it all as a reason to get more old radios to play with. And
yes, I appreciate that some folks may not have the space or even
desire to have more than one radio. All I'm saying is that these
radios were made with the materials and technologies available at the
time. We shouldn't be surprised that some sound better than others, or
that new radios are better in some ways, or any of it. I enjoy them
for what they are, not what they are not.

Besides, I'm not smart enuff to re-engineer all them wires and circuit-things.

de Todd/'Boomer'  KA1KAQ
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