5 kw FM Transmitter Recommendation

[dx7]

I would appreciate any advice on buying a new or used 5kw FM transmitter to replace the McMartin BF-5K at the small market FM station I recently purchased.

What's the most reliable brand to buy? What brand should I avoid? Does it make more sense to buy a new one instead of a used one? Tube or solid state?

Thanks in advance!

 

[ChiefEngineer]

Continental has great support on anything they ever built.

Harris is now discontinuing support on anything prior to 1990.

Nautel. Great boxes great support.

Found an old QEI recently and needed help with repair. Great support still.

Send me a message about the 5 cause I still have many Mcmartians in service and still have great support.

 

[Sgeirk]

I've seen good luck being had with BE's solid state boxes, the new Harris 3kw HD-ready solid state, and anything bearing the Nautel box.

Personally, I'd go Nautel.

 

[fm-engineer]

Continental has great support on anything they ever built.

Harris is now discontinuing support on anything prior to 1990.

Nautel. Great boxes great support.

Found an old QEI recently and needed help with repair. Great support still.

Send me a message about the 5 cause I still have many Mcmartians in service and still have great support.

I believe Harris is changing the cut-off date again to anything before 1995. ???

 

[level42]

At that power level it just makes sense to go with a solid-state box. You'll save the price difference in tube costs over time.


Hard to beat a Nautel...amazingly reliable and great factory service.


-Chris Hall
www.reelaudio.net (Reel Audio Broadcast Engineering)
www.rfspec.com (RF Specialties of GA)

 

[kyscott]

Nautel. Nautel. Nautel. Install it and forget it (for the most part). When you do need help, those guys are quick to respond. I have had Nautel transmitters in my care over the past five years. I never had any problems out of the 5kW FM. The only problem I had with the AM was a direct lightning hit.

 

[wgliradio]

Nautel or BE. DO NOT BUY HARRIS. For anything. Pretend they are out of business (which they should be).

 

[littlejohn]

I've not run the Nautel, but it gets excellent press. I've run the BE (703) and the Harris (Z10) transistor radios side by side. Both of them work. BE has a better service department, and is less predatory in their business practices than Harris. The BE radio is also somewhat less conplex in its control chain. Continental doesn't currently show a product at this power level.
If it was me, I'd probably hold off and attend the NAB shopw and see who might be showing something in that power range. Whoever pointed it out is correct - at this power level the transistor radio will give less trouble and probably cost a bit less to run overall. It will almost certainly lend itself to HD when you choose to add it.

 

[TVJunkie12]

Anyone have any thoughts on Armstrong? I installed an STL about 1.5 years ago and it's been rock solid. It was also a lot cheaper than any other composite STL I found at the time. I know some folks that are using 1kw Armstrong amps and have been happy but nothing bigger than that. I'm hoping not to have to wait until a big burn up and Harris refuses to support our FM5K1 to look in to a new transmitter.

 

[AMX]

Nautel! V5! No other brand comes close to Nautel overall (IMHO).

 

[GWOOD]

(Snip)

Harris is now discontinuing support on anything prior to 1990.

Hmmm .. not sure where that info came from but it's not correct.

Discontinuance of support notices can be found on the Harris Premier web site. https://premier.harris.com/broadcast/

Letters of discontinued support are sent to customers in our database but if you would like a copy of one in particular please let me know.

SX 2.5 and SX 5 support ends on April 1, 2008 .. The MW10 and SX1 support ends May 1, 2008 ..

Best,

Garrett Wood garrett.wood at harris.com
HARRIS CORPORATION
District Sales Manager - SE

 

[wgliradio]

(Snip)

Harris is now discontinuing support on anything prior to 1990.

Hmmm .. not sure where that info came from but it's not correct.

Discontinuance of support notices can be found on the Harris Premier web site. https://premier.harris.com/broadcast/

Letters of discontinued support are sent to customers in our database but if you would like a copy of one in particular please let me know.

SX 2.5 and SX 5 support ends on April 1, 2008 .. The MW10 and SX1 support ends May 1, 2008 ..

Best,

Garrett Wood garrett.wood at harris.com
HARRIS CORPORATION
District Sales Manager - SE

Ah... an actual Harris person!

Home of the discontinued product. Vistamax, the solution to more problems (not enough mix minuses, let's add a Comrex mix minus bridge... hey, it's 1985!).. but heaven forbid you buy Wheatsone, SAS, Axia, or any of the other router based systems that actually work. How about updating the tech so it actually works before even trying to compete?

How about using contractors that actually finish the job?

"What version of DX50 that we don't have parts for anymore do you have sir?" You company should go out of business and stay out of the broadcast business.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

Nautel or BE. DO NOT BUY HARRIS. For anything. Pretend they are out of business (which they should be).

I wholeheartedly agree!!! Har-rass is the WORST choice a guy can get. Their service sucks. Their parts are expensive and they can be quite rude in many cases. Add to that their making stuff obsolete much quicker than any other transmitter company, and I think a person would be FOOLISH to buy their stuff. No offense to the guy that checked in here, but I HATE HARRIS. Give me a Nautel anyday!

 

[lfuss]

Armstrong transmitters are good for the budget minded. I have installed several, including a 30kw unit. Still running fine.

Larry Fuss

 

[kyscott]

Nautel or BE. DO NOT BUY HARRIS. For anything. Pretend they are out of business (which they should be).

I wouldn't fool with BE either. No metering. I have an AM1A and the only thing metered is forward and reflected power. Along with incoming AC. No internal metering, no low level metering. You can't see what the transmitter is doing, you can't tell when anything is going to fail until it fails and you can't diagnose anything unless you drag out your multimeter and hang it off some "test points" inside the transmitter. They also seem to have followed Harris' lead with the one big loud fan. The one, big, loud fan fails and you are DOA until you get it fixed. I have several of Nautel's ND series, Ampfet and the new J1000 in my sted. You can tell what the rig is doing, what the power supplies are doing and the general health of the rig through the display. Also, each amplifier tray has an individual fan.

What Harris is hoping to happen is that when you call for support one one of their "discontinued" rigs and they can't (or won't) give you support, you will shell out to buy one of their new transmitters. However, what's going to wind up happening is it's going to back fire on them. They are going to piss off and alienate people and they will refuse to buy another Harris transmitter. I have a 40 year old Bauer 707 and a 35 year old RCA TT-25FH I can still get parts for, however after this year I'll have a 20 year old SX5 that I won't be able to get support for. I remember a time when Harris was the premier transmitter company, then the bean counters took over.

Like I said in a previous post. Nautel, Nautel, Nautel. Any questions?

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

I wished they'd finally go ahead and go out of the broadcast business so some small guy could buy and take over their transmitter parts division sorta like SCMS took over the non-branded stuff. (SCMS rocks by the way.. Best thing that ever happened to 1800-622-0022!) It is funny a guy can still get parts for a Bauer and a RCA that's ANCIENT in comparison to the Sux series Harris they are dropping "support" for. (If they ever did have real support to begin with!)

I have a funny story for everyone about a Harris experience. *(one of many, actually!) A friend has 100kw blaster FM on a huge 2000 foot stick out west of town 40 miles. A big storm with lightning came through the area and it knocked him off the air. His normal engineer that had recommended they buy a HT30CD in the first place was in California and unavailable. I am certainly less familiar with the Harris junk, but I agreed to try to come out and try to get them back on the air. I called 'tech support' whereas I got a less than helpful guy at home that was less than eager to hear from me. Appearently he was pretty distracted by whatever he was messing with at home, etc. When I told him I was off he reluctantly provided a read-though the transmitter book for me. I was looking for pointers, he was a reader. Since I can read, it was appearent I was wasting my time. I fought my way though the transmitter some more that evening. The owner had to throw a huge fit in order for someone with a clue to give us a call back and we were able to finally fix the problem the next day. Turns out their wonderful protection circuit for to short the HV in the power supply had a solonoid that wasn't working properly. The smart guy they have in their tech support pointed me right to it, of course AFTER the owner threated to return the damn thing as it was less than 6 months old. If it was CE I would have had that damn thing back on the air in an hour.

Then a storm went though the area one time and popped the plate blocker. 400 dollars plus 400 dollars for overnight delivery and a TON of sanding because they DONT STOCK THE METAL PARTS IN STOCK and a lot of praying and we got it back on the air. A CE transmitter of course would have been easy for a plate block problem as I could just rewind the thing around the tube differently and it would work fine. That wonderful quick-change of the tube in the Harris has a trade-off I'd rather not have.. A single-sheet plate blocker!

Another fun big H adventure was with the transmitter my station unfortunatly has. The IPA section of the transmitter stopped functioning. Good news for me is a had a Nicom amp that I was quickly able to put us back on the air with for a sub IPA. I called their tech support and together we guessed it was the IPA amp that failed. What neither of us noticed is the IPA supply volts was higher than it should have been. Needless to say it was the weekend, so I got some clown instead of the normal parts guy. He litterly told me to call back the next morning to order the part because he couldn't find the right one. I GAVE HIM THE PART NUMBER FROM THEIR PART LIST IN THE BOOK! So I ordered it for an airplane ride here. (400 dollars). They charged 4000 dollars for the IPA. Of course when I put it in it made no improvement. So I quickly figured out the real problem and ordered the regulator board. When I tried to return the IPA amp I was greeted by their 15 or 20 percent return fee. (I forgot which one it was). No special help for a 4,000 dollar device either! So 800 dollars for notta! If I would have admitted I installed the damn thing they wouldn't have even taken it back. I benched the IPA and it worked fine before returning to them just to make sure it was O.K. for their next victim.

I can go on and on, but the truth is stay the hell away from Harris if you like to retain your parts budget and possibly your sanity!

 

[skippertthomas]

Been doing some ENG maintenance with some AM's and I find NAUTEL the baby of the year.. Love their 5kW that is in with a local station that is 5kW day ND and 1 kW night DA(3)... Plus, I really like their small boxes for 1kW that apply to that power and down... Clean and mean... Best sounding thing, even when the ATB is out of tune....

 

[kyscott]

I really hope some of the higher ups in Quincy are reading this and taking notes. I believe that from the looks of it, Harris is about to go the way of RCA Broadcast. I haven't seen anyone say anything good about Harris as of late. I remember in the not too distant past how Harris and Continental were THE transmitters to have. Now they are on a slow but sure decline. Does Continental even make transmitters anymore?

 

[littlejohn]

Continental builds an excellent line of FM product - 11KW to 70KW analog, fairly low to 60KW analog + HD. There's even a water cooled one for the folks with limited air conditioning.
I've one in standby for an HT + HD, which runs when the HT won't. Flawlessly.

 

[RFGuy]

I was a HARRIS guy for years, Loved the product, Installed several TX's. Attended several schools. I do not know what happened to them, but it seems the Quality Control is no longer. I have been Installing BE transmitters with a lot of luck. Nautel and Continental are very good choices as well. Armstrong seems to work well if you are budget sensitive. I do hope that the anti HARRIS talk on this board will wake up some folks there and try to re-commit to building a quality product. There are still hundreds "H" series transmitters still on the air even after 40 years of faithful service (hope they have replaced the TE3 with a more modern Exciter). I have a "K" as a backup and it is one of the most reliable transmitters I have ever worked on, But don't call HARRIS when you have a problem. I will not buy HARRIS products unless they can show me that they have taken care of the problems they have.