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Grundig YB-400

I had one of these for about 10-12 years. Got moved during some housecleaning, so I hope it's still packed away somewhere.

Good radio on all bands...including FM. You'll like it. My only problem....which was easy enough to work around...is that the headphone jack connection wasn't very good.
 
ddsparxx said:
You may want to check the reviews--http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/816. Used to be about $200 when new.
Click to expand...

I think I paid $169 or $189 for mine...new. I don't know about it having a special chip for FM, but whatever, it performed well. I always took it with me when we'd spend a week at Perdido Key/Gulf Shores on the Florida-Alabama state line. Park it in the 8th floor of the condo building where we stay, and regularly tune into a half-dozen or so New Orleans FMs 160 miles away. Of course, tropo helped out with that.

I replaced it with an Eton E-10, which has some of the same features, similar in size and appearance. It's an okay radio, but not as good as the YB400PE.
 
cyberdad said:
I think I paid $169 or $189 for mine...
Click to expand...

That was about the same amount I paid for back in the 90s. Regarding a special chip for FM, I've never heard of one being in this radio. I didn't remember what semiconductors were used in the RF section or front end, but I don't think there were DSP chips at that time, if that was what the special chip was being called.
 
According to one web source I found, the Grundig YB-400 has an FM front end chip (FM RF amp chip -- these are fairly common in digital portable radios, and were even common in boomboxes dating from the 1980's and 1990's). The FM front end chip is an LA1185.
 
MarioMania said:
Is the chip good?
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It's a standard Sanyo FM front end chip used in boomboxes, Sanyo walkmen radios of the 1980's (I have a Sanyo walkman with this FM front end chip in it), and other radios needing FM amplification without the addition of unnecessary discrete components.

They all have pretty much the same function: they amplify the FM signal ahead of the mixer stage with a built in RF amp, and include an FM IF mixer / converter.

The signal leaves the FM front end chip and then goes out to the AM-FM IF amp chip, which mixes and amplifies the AM section, and further amplifies the FM signal -- as well as other things, depending on the chip.

Every one of these 'FM front end' chips I've seen so far has an RF amp as well as an IF mixer section. I'm sure they all pretty much work the same.

Sanyo made good chips. But then, I think all of the Japanese makers made good chips.

Someone else here who's more of a radio tech or engineering type will probably be able to tell you a lot more than I can.
 
I had a Grundig YB-400 in high school. It was good at the time. The selectivity wasn't so good, and it overloaded easily. However, it was pretty sensitive, and was my main DX radio. Then I got the Eton e100, which was the same kind of radio as the Grundig, but in a smaller package. In the middle of 2009 I got the Insignia portable HD radio, but barely used it because it didn't tune to 87.75, which was a big deal since my favorite station was Pulse 87. But since 2010, I've mostly been using the Insignia portable HD radio, as I feel it performs better than the Grundig YB-400 and it's small.
 
I haven't seen any SW portables (or even Superadios) at thrift stores lately, but have gotten some good deals on walkmen and headset radios: a month and a half ago I got a Sony Sports armband-style walkman, digitally tuned, decent performer on AM. Three bucks.
 
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