Hi folks,
Short story - I'm going to sell the R4A & keep
the 2B.
Long story - I hooked both rigs up to a mixer so I
could rapidly switch from one to the other. They were both tied to the
same antenna and tuned to the same signal. While under headphones I could
flip from one to the other easily. What I heard surprised me.
I had thought the R4A was sounding pretty good but
my 2B is a much better sounding rig. The CW tone is very pure in the 2B
and SSB & AM audio sounds fuller, cleaner & more relaxing in the
2B. My goal was to have a 2nd receiver in the shack that would give good
sound and allow me to monitor my TX signal from the main rig to check it for
"goodness". Well, the 2B will do that job nicely.
After listening to them together I came to the
conclusion the R4A still had an issue and that I'm not interested in doing any
more repair work on it.
Then I hooked my main rig (Elecraft K2) up to the
mixer and compared it to the 2B. Guess what, the K2 sounds a bit raspy and
"hollow" compared to the 2B. The K2's selectivity is far better. The
K2 at 1 KHz bandwidth is a bit narrower than the 2B at .5 KHz with the 2BQ and
the difference only gets more pronounced as the K2's bandwidth is
narrowed. Also, the K2's AGC is smoother than the old Drake's,
but the 2B is noticeably more pure in it's reproduction of a CW
signal.
Now I'm thinking the R4A may be a bit raspy but
maybe no more so than most other rigs.
I recorded the R4A on CW and SSB so y'all can
listen for yourselves. Let me know what you think. Would you say
this is raspy audio or no?
I'm anxious to see what y'all say. Oh yea, I
have pics of the rig as well at that same place:
73 & God Bless All
- Keith -
