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GE Super Radio II

M

MarioMania

I'm a happy camper, I got it for $8 at the Goodwill

I love AM on it, But the 1 Major Flaw, The AM band is shifted to the right, Someone screwed with it, Prob trying to expended to 1700 kHz

Now it's stopping at 1550 kHz :(

It won't stop me from enjoying it, The FM side is find, But a Broken Antenna
 
Go to the tuning capacitor where you will find four screw-type adjustments.
One will move the top of the AM band and another will peak its sensitivity.
One will move the entire FM band and another will peak the full FM band.
Given enough time, you can figure out all the "can" adjustments on the board(s).
Most will move or peak the bottom, top, or full AM or FM band segments.
The FM discriminator and limiter, which require nulling the FM hiss, will set the "shape" of how FM stations are tuned in as well as the FM static rejection and capture ratio.
Some adjustments affect each other and require you to go back and forth, such as those two aforementioned FM cans that must be alternately peaked and nulled.
"If" there is an adjustment for how wide the FM-AFC is, you will want to shoot for a square but not-to-wide tuning shape.
I created a chart of what all the cans do, but that was for the original SupeRadio, was thirty some-odd years ago, and is long-lost. I believe the only difference between it and the "II" is the tweeter at upper right.
For eight dollars, you cannot have gotten a better educational tool.
 
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A year or so back, a thrift shop in town had a nice, clean GE SR II playing behind their counter. My eyes almost popped out of my face. Since it was playing 102.7 Kiss FM, I figured that I could swap my newer GE SR III for it, along with a few bucks and some jive about the '3' having a better FM than the '2'.
The gal running the place waved off all my spiel about the '2' being marginally better than the '3' on AM ..... and me just wanting a backup because of the '2's on-off switch problem ..... and the '3's sturdier antenna being better for horizon-blockage FM reception : She just wanted a radio that played WKSZ 102.7; the '3' was the newer model, and well, she agreed.
Now, I don't know if the '3' actually HAS a better FM section. Other people here will know that. All I know is that the AM side of the '3' I bought was a sprawling tragedy -- especially on either side of 900 or 910. So I unloaded the '3' and for $10 got a better radio.

Oddly, I've since done more DXing, lunchtime portable companion listening/ball game stuff, on my OLD GE SR II than from the new '2' -- matchbook cover in the on-off switch notwithstanding. That old one works great, despite it having fallen off numerous shelves and once having bounced a few times out of a moving car. The two radios are like the crippled flying robot and the new robot in the movie The Black Hole.

As for X-Band reception: I use the similar-sized Grundig S450. I don't wanna mess with shifting the dials of either GE SR II. Both of them go up to about 1630 anyway.

But Mario is right in his concern for readjusting his new '2' after the previous owner fiddled with it. Those were a grand line of radios GE had going for a while. It's hard to believe that they went for something like $45-50 new.
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
\ Those were a grand line of radios GE had going for a while. It's hard to believe that they went for something like $45-50 new.
Click to expand...

I picked up my SuperadioII for exactly $1 at a church rummage sale. Mrs. Cyberdad dragged me along to the sale kicking and screaming. Needless to say, I'm glad she did! Like you, Steve, my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw it sitting there. And once again, when I saw that it was going for only a buck! Since I got it home, it's been a flawless performer.

I mostly use it as a speaker for my computer music via FM Modulator on 92.1. But it's still a superb AM DX machine. I had heard that the performance on FM can be weak, but mine works pretty well for that, too. I'm hoping to bring it with me to St. Pete in January. (This past January I didn't have room for it). Honeymoon Island, here I come! (gar knows what I'm talking about!)
 
Last Night I was still doing stess test on the SR2

When I got it, It had trouble moving the dail down the Band, I got it moving..But I got down tonight down the band to see if I could get 1570 at lease

I broke the Tuning Dail inside, It's stuck down the Band, I can't even use my FM Transmitter at 108.5 ..it's about at 109 :(

I took all 7 screws out to just ajust the FM IF to 108.5, At lease I could use it til I get it fixed, I can't even get the Front Buttons off, There real tight in there, I don't want to break it off
 
MarioMania said:
Last Night I was still doing stess test on the SR2

When I got it, It had trouble moving the dail down the Band, I got it moving..But I got down tonight down the band to see if I could get 1570 at lease

I broke the Tuning Dail inside, It's stuck down the Band, I can't even use my FM Transmitter at 108.5 ..it's about at 109 :(

I took all 7 screws out to just ajust the FM IF to 108.5, At lease I could use it til I get it fixed, I can't even get the Front Buttons off, There real tight in there, I don't want to break it off
Click to expand...

Here is my tech page on the SR-2: http://earmark.net/gesr/sr2.htm I still work on these things, if you want to send me a private message. I could get it up and running for you with no problem.
 
My SRII took a dive off the refrigerator and the only thing that 'broke' was a bent tine on the power plug. They're built like tanks. I still use it a lot.

My III is just as good. There is a little overload in two places, but it's still an excellent DX machine. Some III's were very good from the factory.

$8 for an SRII is a good deal, either way. I hope you can get yours fixed, Mario. They're very good radios.
 
Years ago, I took my II to Victoria B.C. and every single Vancouver and Seattle FM just popped right in, rock solid with no noise.
 
I used Bruce's instructions months ago to shift the tuning on a II up to 1700,
and printed out a new dial face. Working great, still.

Coincidentally, picked up a perfectly good III for $10 at one of my two
favorite thrift stores today, hidden among the piles of routers, ink-jet
printers and VCRs.
 
I haven't done anything to my SRII except boost the antenna circuit a hair (changed the value of R13 slightly) and pasted silicone glue underneath the bandswitch (on the non-printed circuit side) to absorb stress, and keep it from breaking (as they can do on SR1's and SRII's).
 
dxho said:
Coincidentally, picked up a perfectly good III for $10 at one of my two
favorite thrift stores today, hidden among the piles of routers, ink-jet
printers and VCRs.
Click to expand...

I'm going to have to spend a little more time at these places. I've got two Goodwill stores each about 10-15 minutes from me. Last time I was at one of them, I was looking for a computer keyboard, for a 13-year old laptop that I basically just use as a jukebox. I found one of those right away for $2 and it works great. But the only radios they had were 1980s-vintage schlock. Maybe I just happened to show up on the wrong day.
 
Goodwill Yakima never has any of those radios. I have picked up my backup VCR from there, but that's off topic.
I don't know what's better - SR II with the loop, or Grundig G5 with the loop. They are probably about the same, except the SR II requires bigger batteries.

-crainbebo
 
For a while about two years ago I got great deals on Sony Walkman radios -- about $3 each. Also got a good Panasonic clock radio for about $5 or so. Has an LA1205 in it (or 1705? the chips are similar but they're both hot IF chips). Even though it has a small loopstick it pulls in a lot of stations.

Lately the thrift stores around here have been a bust.

Haven't seen a standalone radio like a GE or a Realistic in years. A few clock radios now and then, usually an off brand anymore.
 
Also can't go wrong with a Zenith table/barbershop radio that's actually playing anywhere; those six-tube things from the 50's and 60's; the dark brown cabinet. I bought one 41 years ago for $10 or $15 at some apple-orchard yard sale across the river from Springfield Mass -- and the darned thing still WORKS, although it has a balky short or two at times.
The guest bedroom here sports another 6-tube Zenith (a newer one). That was a purchase I heard playing at this garage/back alley sale maybe 20 years ago.
$10?
Gimme, gimme.
Here's a spiral-type of karma. That recent Zenith made for a swell radio in the guest bedroom at the former house. One bright sunrise morning while waking up to 'KYW' 1060 I wound up waking up to that thing in Natick Massachusetts instead. I thought it was KYW! Sounded kind of the same.
And just a few days ago while cutting carpet padding for sound-deadening in the newer house, I tried for WINS as an idle background rhapsody on that same radio.
No WINS, although they did surface once. Instead, broad daylight again, in was coming CFRB, atop for a healthy while, with a show about blackberries, plus a loud fade-up or two from country WCNL in New Hampshire ('1010 and 94.7').
So the 'newer' Zenith table-job still keeps on ticking, even after having been smoke-damaged from a neighbor's fire.
The kicker here is that in our new house, cattycorner in town from the old one,
the window of the guest bedroom overlooks this garage just three doors' south. It's the same garage where I bought this wandering Zenith 18 or so years ago. I was tempted to open the window and blast WCNL 1010 down the alley to the guy's place who sold it! :)

* * * * * * *

Anyway: A question here.....
It was said that approximately three out of a thousand GE Superadio III's passed AM DX Inspector #34's tests. The better performance was linked to some crucial prefix or suffix number on the unit. And that those who got the issues with the 'good' digits wound up perfectly satisfied.
The reported 997 other people (like me) got turkey'd.
Does anyone here have the whole story?
 
Never heard that story myself. But I got a good one made in '95. I think the very first ones had an issue where the speaker leads needed to be reversed because it somehow interfered with the antenna. And apparently some later runs had cheap varactor tuning potentiometers in them. Mine gets some overload on 1340 from a couple strong locals, and less often some near 750. But otherwise it matches my SRII for the most part.

It may be that the QC process changed from the SRII to the three. Some earlier SRII's apparently had minor issues with the audio. It got fixed in later runs.

RBruceCarter probably can tell a lot more about all of this than I can. He's an expert on GE SR's.
 
boombox4 said:
Never heard that story myself. But I got a good one made in '95. I think the very first ones had an issue where the speaker leads needed to be reversed because it somehow interfered with the antenna. And apparently some later runs had cheap varactor tuning potentiometers in them. Mine gets some overload on 1340 from a couple strong locals, and less often some near 750. But otherwise it matches my SRII for the most part.

It may be that the QC process changed from the SRII to the three. Some earlier SRII's apparently had minor issues with the audio. It got fixed in later runs.

RBruceCarter probably can tell a lot more about all of this than I can. He's an expert on GE SR's.
Click to expand...

I will chime in here - all of the GE SR's are based on a "radio on chip" IC. The original and the 2 are tuning capacitor based and the designs very similar. The "3" is varactor tuned and therefore a radical departure from the first 2. Basically, the RF chains had to be modified to allow a DC tuning voltage for the varactors to be blocked. The IF is similar, though. They also were built on a single PC board, rather than on two boards.

The biggest problem came when a tuning potentiometer was changed. The original tuning potentiometer was very stable, and had a silvered ball making contact with the carbon element at a single point. The bearing was also very good. There were a massive number of defective tuning pots purchased, and virtually all later GE and RCA "3's" have a tuning pot that is hard to settle on a frequency. GE / RCA's only response to the problem was to add a pressure pad on top of the pot, trying to mechanically stabilize it buy putting pressure from the case of the radio to the case of the pot. This "fix" was totally ineffective. The only solution to the problem is to replace the tuning pot. Unfortunately, the value of the pot is kind of strange - 300k. Guitar musicians have pointed out this is a standard value for guitars, but every time I have looked at a guitar store for a replacement, it is in a 24 mm package, which is almost impossible to put on the PC board of the GE SR3, which uses a smaller 16 mm case. I found some 500k pots at Fry's, but the difference in value has its own problems - it makes a very non-linear tuning dial. I am not talking about a logarithmic taper vs. linear taper - it is the wrong value and if you use it without trimming down - it stretches out the lower part of the band and compresses the top end. I found if you put a 470k from each leg of the pot to the center pin, the radio can be tuned - but the dial calibration can be 100 kHz off (ten frequencies) in part of the dial. A whole lot of people have sent their radios to me to have the pot changed out - putting up with the dial calibration being off - just to get stable tuning. GE / RCA added to the confusion - there are two types of dial scales out there, and the one with bigger lettering is a lot more linear with the replacement pot.

This is one case where cost reduction really sank a good product, because the 3's with the bad tuning pot are very unstable to tune, and they have been through several cycles of resale and being sold off. I expect more new / old stock to show up somewhere - or the remaining surplus scrapped to precious metal recyclers.

It seems unlikely the design can be produced today - or reproduced. There is a peculiar DC to DC converter that boosts 9V from the battery to 15V for the tuning voltage. It is a switching regulator that operates at about 3.5MHz, and there must be a linear regulator as well because the tuning voltage has to be really stable. That IC appears to be out of production, with not even an NTE replacement. I have never seen one go bad, but it would kill the radio if it did. It is definitely not a replaceable item. If it ever does go bad, about the only thing a user could do is find one of those 15V batteries and use it for the tuning voltage. There is an additional pole you could use on the power switch - if you re-wire it. I would also add a low dropout regulator and drop it to a regulated voltage, so the tuning won't change as the 15V battery goes weak. But that is a tangent - the tuning pot problem is the primary reason the radio goes bad. To make matters worse - the tuning radius of the original tuning pot is slightly more than that of the replacements I found, so making it tune the entire AM and FM bands is tricky.
 
The most fun I ever had with a small, cheap radio happened in the middle 1980's with my $99 Sony SRF-1. Placing the headphones on people's heads and letting them tune into a local AM station, and then switching from mono to stereo and watching their reactions was, as AmEx would say, "priceless".
 
I had a lot of fun with a $3 Walkman and a loop. Logged a few new stations with it about 3 years ago. A Sony WM-FX101. A standard black Walkman from the early 1990's. Thrift store special. Needed a loop to DX with it, though. Definitely not as hot as some of the other Sony Walkman radios (SRF-42, SRF-59, etc.), or the Radio Shack Pocket Radio, for that matter, which is a hot little radio.
 
On my GE Model 7-28800, How can I tell how big is my AM Antenna is

Like an Expample, Both Super Radios has a 200 mm AM Loop Antenna
 
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