[Hallicrafters] SX-96 production

[Langston, Mike]

I bought one last year from a friend in Alaska. He told me he bought it
new in 1954 along with an R-46A speaker. I agree with you that there
don't seem to have been many made, but there were enough made that they
also made the SX-96A which must be even rarer. Other than dial skirts on
the 96A, they may be identical. Anybody know?

It's a decent receiver and probably very similar circuitry to the SX-100
except for the calibrator, notch, ant. trim features. The ease of tuning
ssb signals surprised me considering the lack of a product detector. I'm
going to add an outboard calibrator. Without one, you really have no
idea where you are frequency-wise when using the band spread. My biggest
gripe aesthetically is the size and cheesiness of the main tuning knobs.
The paint on the dial glasses tends to be flaking off of most units I
have seen and nobody is doing these yet (probably due to the lack of
demand). 

Mike KL7CD
Dallas-Ft. Worth   

-----Original Message-----
From: hallicrafters-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:hallicrafters-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Mike
Everette
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 5:09 PM
To: hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [Hallicrafters] SX-96 production

Does anyone have any idea as to how many SX-96
receivers may have been produced?

This radio had a short production life.  The first of
the design lineage was the S-76 which was made from
late 1950 or early 1851 through 1954.  The successor
SX-100 was remarkably long-lived, catalogued from 1956
(or maybe late 1955?) through 1963.  But the SX-96 was
only catalogued from 1955 (or late 1954) through
(mid?) 1956.

All this time Halli was bound to be making a LOT of
other ham products, and doing a huge amount of
government work.

Could they have had time to produce many SX-96's?

Did Hallicrafters use "batch" production, i.e. making
one product run for a week or so, then another?  Seems
like they'd have had to.

Judging by the regularity with which they appear on
auction sites, SX-100's are dirt common.  The SX-96
was pretty infrequent until the last couple or three
months when a rash of them surfaced -- more than I
have seen over the last couple of years, in fact.

Any ideas?  My "SWAG-method" guess is, hmm... a
thousand or so?  Maybe two thousand? This was, after
all, an "upper mid priced" radio and they'd have sold
a lot more S-38/S-85/S-86/SX-99.... those radios were
featured in the Sears 'n Rareback catalogue.

Uh-oh... is this thread going to trigger a huge jump
in SX-96 prices....?  (It's a "nice" radio, but...)

73

Mike  WA4DLF


		
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