New owner FirstCity Crestone is a private equity firm which agrees to inject new capital into the manufacturer of equipment such as transmitters and the AudioVault automation system. GE Capital was the lead lender under the previous ownership group, and it conducted a sale that attracted interest from as many as 20 parties. No price or terms announced on the deal, which leaves BE with a much lower debtload.
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Broadcast Electronics is sold
- Thread starter Bengalsfan
- Start date
Hope it's as it appears...be it a bank or a broadcaster, often when new buyers come in, their first order of business is to figure out how to cut expenses to make the payments on their new 'investment'. I have too many BE transmitters in service for these folks to fail...I wish them the very best!
I have one of their little 500A AM transmitters. I hate it. It's so difficult to troubleshoot since there is NO metering....well, it does have line voltage and forward/reflected power metered. None of the PDM amps are metered nor is the power supply metered. By comparison I have three J1000 from Nautel along with a couple of ND1s and ND5s. The J1000 has better onboard diagnostics than the NDs and the NDs are WAY better than BE's.
I have two sites with the AM500 and AM1A...in ten years, I have had two problems. One was a control power supply (a switching supply, of course 
)...I couldn't visit the site, but I diagnosed it over the phone with the PD, and the PD swapped it the next day! The other problems were opto's in the remote control circuits acting up...after several failures I shotgunned all of them with a chip from a different manuafacturer. Otherwise, clean the filter and load it with 50 ohms/j0...it runs!
)...I couldn't visit the site, but I diagnosed it over the phone with the PD, and the PD swapped it the next day! The other problems were opto's in the remote control circuits acting up...after several failures I shotgunned all of them with a chip from a different manuafacturer. Otherwise, clean the filter and load it with 50 ohms/j0...it runs!I have two 1KW's & three 500's. Over the years, I've lost 2 of the little switching supplies (have a spare now), 2 of the main supplies & 1 or 2 RF modules. Not bad considering that some of them are flirting with 15 years of age. If I had it to do over today, I'd probably lean toward Nautel--mainly because no one ever has anything bad to say about them, but my stable of BE's (along with 4 BE FM boxes) haven't cost me much sleep. The BE tech guys call back quickly when I'm in trouble & one even gave me his personal cell number. Good group of guys...hopefully the new owners won't gut the place.grich said:I have two sites with the AM500 and AM1A...in ten years, I have had two problems. One was a control power supply (a switching supply, of course
BobOnTheJob said:
I have 5 Nautel AM's ranging from 1k to 5k. I have had NO problems with them. I'll take a Nautel over a BE or Harris anyday.
I have two Nautels...an ancient 1KW AM blue thing called an Ampfet1 (troublesome & won't modulate fully...it's a backup to the BE) and a beautiful V10 10KW FM. The V10 had one problem (there was a loose power supply connection from the factory that eventually melted) which tech support quickly guided me to (worth noting that even with the one power supply out of the picture, the box was still on the air at 55% power). If Nautel's current AM boxes are built like the V10, you can't go wrong with them. In the distant past, calls to Nautel's tech support yielded next day call backs. The experience I've had with Nautel today is light years ahead of the what I saw 10+ years ago. That will positively influence my future decisions.Bengalsfan said:
I put in a Nautel V5 last year that has been great. We did have a module or two fail but tech support returned my call within 5 minutes on a Friday night at 10pm and the parts were on the way Monday morning and we could still make 3.5kw even down an amplifier. On the other hand, a few weeks ago I contacted BE after hours for assistance with an AM500 on two separate occasions. While I was connected to the tech support rep immediately both times, they were less helpful then the rep from Nautel. They did make every effort and were very nice though, one of them staying on the phone for over an hour while we attempted to troubleshoot a VSWR problem that was shutting the unit down. But in the end they weren't able to steer me to the problem and we ended up sending the transmitter in for repair (thank God for the old Gates BC250YC since turn around time was more than 3 weeks).
BobOnTheJob said:
I have 2 of the J1000 rigs from Nautel. Very reliable boxes. I have had to call Nautel at 2am their time and the tech called back within 10 minutes. Lightning damaged one of the J1000 boxes (owner didn't get a surge suppressor), he had me a new module on the way delivered the next afternoon.
I'm about to install a new NV10 (delivery is this Thursday). Should be fun.
Today's Nautel is a tech support driven company IMHO. The only other two broadcast companies I know of that have a similar level of support is Telos/Omnia and Prophet. If all others had even half as good of support life as a broadcast engineer would be easy street. BE gets at least a B+ though. Their equipment has some infant mortality issues but for the most part will run forever after the first month of service. They just seem to mainly have shipping issues where things get damaged etc in shipment. Their Vault support is good...
My experience has been, Continental supports their stuff better than anyone else.
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