From: info@turneraudio.com.au   
      
   I said....   
   > Should you wish to fuel up the flame thrower, be my guest, gas should be at   
   rock bottom prices because the Ay Rabs can afford to sell oil at much lower   
   prices......    
      
   Peter Wieck replied.....   
   Far from it - AM radio once upon a time was a world standard and pretty good.   
   I have a Zenith console from the 1930s that is capable of producing excellent   
   sound - if fed a decent signal.    
      
   Sadly, AM today is a hodge-podge of compressed, limited bandwidth garbage   
   shilling religion and the likes of Rush Limbaugh with little redeeming social   
   value in very much most cases. I solve that problem for myself by using a   
   small, full-range (20-20K    
   uncompressed) transmitter from a CD changer. Most older AM receivers are much   
   better than the signal fed to them.    
      
   Peter Wieck    
   Melrose Park, PA    
      
   There is much BS on AM stations here which have talk-back with crazies with   
   nobody to talk to, with mix of endless adds and pop music.   
   Some have HF emphasis to compensate for poor receivers so a tone control is   
   essential.   
   Govt owned ABC Radio National and a couple of local ABC have high quality   
   content without adds. Print Handicapped has good AF signal. The same hourly   
   news program goes to Govt ABC Classic FM stations and to AM stations, fed from   
   same source and AM from    
   tubed tuner sounds better than FM from bunch of generic 1980 ICs.    
      
   Many old radios I re-engineered has loudspeakers with stuffed voice coils and   
   cones after previous 70 to 40 years. Sound was dreadful, and when I changed   
   speakers to something modern and with decent AF amp with triode and GNFB, and   
   treatment of box to    
   lessen colorations, THEN there was always better sound than when someone   
   bought the radio. A trioded 6L6 is better than 6F6/6V6 tetrode, EL34 triode   
   better than EL84 pentode.       
      
   But nearly all the old radios made by so called leading brand-names only gave   
   100Hz to 3.5kHz AF bandwidth with usual THD 5% at all low levels and much   
   higher when AF level was increased. Trio and later Kenwood made AM sections of   
   AM-FM receivers with    
   switch for tertiary of IFT1 to extend IF BW, thus extend AF BW.   
   But the old tubed Quad AM Tuner WAS GOOD, IMHO, nicely made and MUCH better   
   performance than local stuff made in Oz.   
      
   I know the majority of old radios were crap, easily seen when you do have a   
   good signal source with ability for 95% mod with envelope shape THD < 1%.   
   HP606A could manage a fairly good AM wave, but the one I just built for 380kHz   
   to 1,750khz is much    
   better.    
      
   Better still might just be an IC for AM production; I don't know which chip.   
   But Topward Instruments made a function gene with FM and AM and I recall it   
   had a pretty decent AM signal. Only trouble was the horrid potentiometer for   
   Vdc to control the Fo.    
   The output amp had no protection, and even when I fitted some diodes to limit   
   accidental contact of Vo to +/- rails of gear I was testing, I still managed   
   to fry the output bjts. One day, I accidentally let output RCA lead touch   
   240Vac Mains. I got    
   crackling sound and smoke as every single chip which could fry - did. :-) Into   
   the bin it went.    
   Patrick Turner.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)