Hi! I mentioned to the list that I was going to buy one of these radio sets and asked if anyone else had owned one to perhaps get some opinions.
I did own one of these radios some 20 years ago, I had to sell at the time and have made it my business to find one for my collection ever since. I also didn't go into details of the radio as I wanted to refresh my memory after 20 years and didn't want to give anyone miss-leading information. So to the radio itself and the first thing you notice when looking at the front of the radio is a large central screen. Above this screen is what looks like a letterbox, this is the slot for the speaker and - given the size - sounds very nice. A bar of 5 buttons below the display control your presets, there are only 5 buttons for presets but don't let this fool you, you navigate through pages of 5 presets with a rocker switch on the left front. Are you beginning to get the idea of the concept and the large display? Each page can be given a title such as "Voice Of America" thus a different page of presets for each broadcaster. Added to this on the display is a world map where portions of the map are shaded depending on the time of day in particular parts of the world. Suppose its 12 O'clock Midnight in Melbourne Australia then that part of the map will be shaded to indicate night time - Night is the period between 6 PM and 6 AM -. Obviously the display can show whatever cities time you're looking to receive stations from along with your own local time and GMT/CUT. So these functions aren't useful to those who can't see though I can assure you this functionality does enhance the whole Shortwave listening experience for anyone who has sight. On looking at the radio one can see why Sony once upon a long ago was one of the kings of the Shortwave radio game and one could argue that some aspects of modern-day Shortwave radio design have actually gone backwards. Let's take the external antenna of the SW 55 as a case in point. Most radios have this antenna running along the back top where as the SW55 has the antenna extend out from the radio itself near the top left hand corner which means the antenna is right out of the way and can swivel freely whilst you find the best orientation for the radio to comfortably use and hold, lay it down, stand it up, tilt the radio on the built-in stand or carry with the built-in wrist strap and the antenna still manages to keep right out of the way. The external antenna is around 60CM long - 24 inches - so its very short as far as external antennas go when it comes to Shortwave radio sets but Sony have done some magic to omtimise that short aerial to good use when searching around the Shortwave bands. I'd be extremely foolish in saying that the receiver beats the pants off modern-day Shortwave radio sets but for an older analogue set the SW55 shows us again why Sony had a well respected name in the Shortwave radio game. The radio comes with a fishing reel type antenna if you'd like to use this instead of the built-in whip or you can plug your own favourite external antenna right into the radio thanks to the 3.5MM antenna jack on the left hand side. The keypad for direct frequency entry is well designed and doesn't require too much pressure to operate having a foamy type touch but then again we all knew sony for the amount of detail given to controls. The radio can be tuned either by the tuning disc in the upper right hand corner front or the up/down buttons can be used. Note I say tuning disc as the thing looks far more like a flat disc than a knob but nevertheless the disc has a great feel to it when tuned. The radio is speed sensitive when tuning with this disc and can cover a wide range of steps, everything from 100HZ steps - great for tuning in USB/LSB modes - up to 100KHZ. The FM performance is about average when compared to many of today's modern FM receivers and this is no more than I expected given the advances made in DSP chips, today's average FM receiver would put the Sony and most other FM receivers of the day to absolute shame. AM reception whilst not brilliant is still above average with a very low background noise flaw so its a real pleasure to listen to those distant signals. The radio has a 2 position IF filter so stations that broadcast music can sound most reasonable through the radio particularly if you're using headphones or say a powered speaker connected to the stereo line-out jack. 3 independent timers can be set to turn the radio on and off, these timers can also activate/deactivate a recorder. The radio comes very well presented, first in a nice cary case which can hold the various manuals for the radio, the AC power adapter and other accessories. The unit itself is housed in a felt pouch within the cary case, everything there at your fingertips and well protected. So a few notes on the Sony ICF SW55 radio which I really like. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1188): https://groups.io/g/all-audio/message/1188 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/24629134/21656 Group Owner: all-audio+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/all-audio/leave/1074140/405281159/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
