[Elecraft] K2 SSB problems?

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

... Decision time for me.  I have asked Wayne about the possible 
SSB problems.  He answered me.  Still, I would like to get a few other 
opinions on K2/SSB before I commit my post-retirement dollars.  Tnx and
73's.
Gary Freeman

Congratulations Gary. As you must know, there is NO "perfect" rig,
including the Elecraft rigs. The technology advances constantly and the
personal desires of each operator make sure that you are always making
some compromises in what you have.

The first question I would ask is whether you want to get your hands
inside of a rig, or is your interest purely that of an "operator" who
simply wasn't to get "on the air".

Back when many of us got out licenses (myself included) there was little
choice. Either we built our own or we didn't operate. The costs of
commercial equipment were simply way to high, if any commercial
equipment was available at all. That is no longer true. 

I have continued to build because I find that operating a factory-built
rig frankly boring. I am "addicted" to the thrill of putting together a
mass of parts and making a radio out of them. Even just following the
assembly instructions of a kit radio like the K-rigs is far more fun for
me than turning on a factory-built rig. 

But I know that there are others who could not care less about building
a rig. It doesn't make them "less" of a Ham. Indeed, there are old-time
commercial CW ops I have known who had little interest in opening up
their gear. They spent their lifetimes at commercial stations pounding
brass with "state of the art" equipment and never developed any interest
in what went on "under the hood". Nowadays there are far more pure
"operators" on the Ham bands because factory-built equipment is so
readily available, at least for the commonly-used Ham bands and common
modes of operation. 

If you are excited and interested about the idea of building your own
rig from a kit, I can't recommend the K2 highly enough. It is a GREAT
rig. It is NOT a "perfect" rig, but it works beautifully. And Elecraft
has demonstrated a commitment to customer support that makes it almost
impossible to fail at building one. 

If you search the archives of this reflector or monitor the on-going
activity, you will see lots of questions and comments about
modifications and "fixes". That's largely the result of the sort of op
who builds a K-rig. We are tinkerers by nature. We make it work, and ask
"what if..."? Could we improve it just a little bit if..? That lends
itself to endless tinkering. Not tinkering that the K-rig needs to work
properly, but tinkering that is as much fun to many of us as working DX
is to others. 

I am one of the ops who built a K2 with the SSB option and then
discovered that my SSB audio quality was less than good. It turned out
that I had gotten a bad set of filter crystals in my kit. Elecraft
promptly sent me a new set as soon as they heard of my problem. Had I
purchased a factory-built rig, no doubt I could have sent it back to the
factory where they would have repaired it and returned it to me some
weeks later. Perhaps not. In my case I work so little SSB that I was
unaware of the problem for almost two years after I built my K2. The
only band where I had used SSB was one where the problem didn't show up.
Most factory built rigs would have been "out of warranty". Elecraft
never asked. The just stepped in and sent me the parts and instructions
needed to fix it. 

My philosophy is that as long as humans are not perfect, nothing we make
will be perfect. There is no perfect rig. There is no perfect design.
There are no perfect parts. So I don't evaluate a rig on whether I think
it is perfect, but rather on how the company behind it handles the
problems that come up. How the company treat its customers. And Elecraft
has done a "world class" job in customer support.

Ron AC7AC
K2 # 1289