[Heathkit] Any SB-102 Experts out there?

[Grant Youngman]

Long version of the short story ...

In 1970 my wife gave me a the best of all Christmas presents -- an SB-102.
I was operating from Hawaii at the time, and it was a lot of fun to be (even
if not so rare) DX.  In the late 70's I sold it, but still have fond
memories of the radio and all the matching green piece-parts.

Last year I found a beautiful radio.  It was "restored and working", and
while it was one of the best physical specimens I've come across, of course
it didn't work, period (Grrrrrrrr!!! - should have gotten that guys call
sign!).  So I sent it to RTO for a rehab not too long ago since my bench was
full.  Got it back, and finally made space on the table and fired it up
yesterday.  And noticed, alas, that even though everything has been wrapped
in thick towels, I had somehow chipped the perfect paint on the speaker
cabinet -- groan :-(

So after the work by RTO, there are still some lingering issues:

1.  The S-Meter won't zero.  I know there are some resistors to check, etc.
and hopefully that will be relatively easy to rectify.  Swapped out V3/V4
with a couple of other tubes, to no effect.  I was surprised that this
immediately obvious problem hadn't been noticed and fixed.

2.  The receive and transmit audio are just a bit "rough around the edges".
I don't know how else to describe it.  It may be that that's just the way
these things are, and frankly it's been too long since I've owned one to
really remember first hand what to expect.  But that isn't my recollection
of the radio.

So -- finally -- the question:  Can anyone who has recent experience suggest
whether the latter issue is normal, or if not, where the usual suspects
would be?  There's no obvious hum, but I'm going to R&R my two HP-23A's with
the HP-23R rehab kit just because.  

Could be I've been listening to a TR-5 for too long, and that makes almost
any radio sound "rough" on a relative basis :-)

Any suggestions, help, advice, etc. would be appreciated.

Thanks ... Grant/NQ5T
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