[Elecraft] K3S and expectations

[Jim Brown]

You are completely missing Elecraft's philosophy, which is to maintain 
support for existing products, upgrade them as much as is economically 
feasible, and continue to stay at the front of the pack with respect to 
performance and usability.

The K3 came on the market in 2008, using parts that were available then. 
It was a huge step beyond the K2, designed before the turn of the 
century! Three years ago, the KX3 hit the street with a different design 
goal, and with advanced parts that did not exist in 2008. This is 2015, 
yet more advanced parts are available, and Elecraft has continued to pay 
attention to customer complaints and requests.

Those of us who own K3s can get much (most?) of the performance upgrade 
for $210 by adding the new synth board, which significantly improves 
performance with strong signals and contesting, and gives the RX first 
rate performance at MF and LF. The way in which the K3 was designed does 
not allow upgrading the audio amp that drives the speaker without 
replacing the RF board. Two other weak spots, audio I/O and low noise 
performance on 6M and 10M, has been addressed with a new I/O board and a 
new preamp, and will be available as an upgrade to the K3. I think I 
heard prices of about $200 for each.

As the owner of three K3s, I am quite pleased with Elecraft support for 
what are now legacy radios (that is, they no longer sell them).  If the 
radio in question were from YaeIcoWood or Flex, we would instead be 
buying a brand new radio and still be behind Elecraft in quality and 
performance. I've already bought the K3SYNA boards, will mod the K3BPF 
in the one radio that has it, and will probably upgrade to the K3IOB for 
the convenience.

The K3SYNA boards probably get me 90% of the performance improvement of 
the K3S, at about 5% of the cost of replacing the radio. That makes me a 
VERY happy camper. My radios are not investments, the are not on my desk 
to impress people, they are tools and toys I can USE.

73, Jim K9YC

On Sat,5/16/2015 7:04 AM, GDR wrote:
> Marketing gimmicks and flash don't impress me. Minor improvements and repackaging/repainting and increasing the price substantially doesn't impress me.  Exciting new products do. I believe a lot of folks share this view.
>
> For what I do with the K3, I wouldn't give a second thought to replacing it with the K3S. It is going to be interesting to see how many K3S units sell compared to the K3, if this is ever made public.