Harris ends support for the SX series today. No longer will be supported by a call to field service. Limited email support will still be around. I got a SX-1 in November of 82' and it worked fine until retirement to a back-up roll three years ago. Never replaced a transistor anywhere in the thing, but I made up for it with those damn LEDS in the keypad on the front! 8)
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Harris SX RIP
- Thread starter greenie
- Start date
Great going Big H. Nothing like that great Big H support and parts dept.
Harris is no longer in the big 3. Nautel, BE, Continental make the best transmitters, and they support any transmitter they ever made. Continental even supports transmitters they did not design, Power rock, etc. I was once a loyal Harris guy, but no longer. They began to manufacture junk when the digit exciter was released. I like the HT rigs, but the solid state FM and AM's are junk. I can't believe the even put their name on the new "DAX" AM rigs, but I guess it's fitting.
I will say something nice about Harris, I needed some coils and capacitors in order to rebuild an MW5A transmitter and change its operating frequency from a lower AM freq to a higher one. Even though they don't officially support the MW5A, they did supply me the needed caps and even custom wound the 5 coils for the IPA stage that I needed.
George Kowal
George Kowal
Harris wants out of radio, it's obvious. There has been no significant upgrade to their awful Vistamax systems, they have sold off their resale to SCMS and their transmitters seriously lag behind Nautel and BE. How anyone could put a new Harris transmitter on today is beyond me.
The SX were some of the best transmitters made for their time. Too bad Harris fell behind with their DX and Gates series.
The SX were some of the best transmitters made for their time. Too bad Harris fell behind with their DX and Gates series.
I hope they get around to going out of the radio business SOON. Tomarrow couldn't be quick enough. In response to why some end up with their equipment still, for some there is the 15 percent discount for educational. Needless to say many of us at universities are stuck with Big H. I'm going to do everything I can to try to not buy any more stuff from them, but I may not have a choice.
wgliradio said:
Playing devil's advocate with you here, wgli - if the DX series represented a step back, why was the DX50 the standard transmitter for almost every major 50kw AM in the country almost from the moment it was introduced? Even with the recent rise of Nautel and BE in the 50kw AM market, I still see more Harris out there, both the DX and 3DX, than anything else in the field. The picture is different at lower power levels.
K
kyscott
Guest
Scott Fybush said:
Because Harris undercut everyone else just to get the transmitters out there. Just like they do everything else. I had a devil of a time convincing an owner that spending $5000 more for a Nautel over a Harris was a better buy in the long run. I have 5 SX transmitters that are still on the air at various clients. I'm about to start steering them in the direction of Nautel and move the SX rigs to standby service.
I too wish they supported everything made like Continental, but in all fairness...the support team they have have been great with any call for help I have made.
Lane
Lane
Scott Fybush said:
Now I am not a defender of H products; but the reality is all of these manufacturers have had their own problems from time to time, all well heralded. But I can tell you from documented first-hand experience, the reliability and spectral quality of the DX-50 and 3DX50 products has been better than the average. Yes, there have been issues from time-to-time, but they were resolved as they have developed. SX problems came from the complex controller and status and monitoring systems. The RF and PDM systems were very reliable but when HD requirements mandated spectral regrowth minimums, it couldn’t meet the mask. This was because of the way the power MOSFETS were gated on and off, and how the MOSFET’s reacted to these transistions. I feel obsolescence cycles in these brands today are 15 to 20 years vs. 25 to 30 as we have known in the past. The trade off is the power savings and lower maintenance cost over the life span of the products. Lead issues with devices also play a part of this. SX was a good platform, but time moves on and even at a faster pace. The cost of these machines has actually gone down over the years. These products have the lion share of the market in the 50kW power class. Below 10kW, the story is a different one in performance and marketshare.
w/
I heard from a pretty good source...a friend from Mobile who was deep in an SX-5 mess last week that Harris got so much bad press about stopping support for older products....they had a change of heart and reverrsed their decision.
How far back I don't know but they are supporting the SX series again..
Will try to get more info....
How far back I don't know but they are supporting the SX series again..
Will try to get more info....
It's a bit unfair to bash Harris' support for transmitter parts that have become unavailable due to the original vendors' discontinuance of them (I'm referring mainly to the integrated circuits that you, me and Harris can't get anymore.) Any new transmitter you get today and want to keep going for more than 10 years, you'd better be stocking up on all those ICs now and not be depending on the manufacturer to mothball them for you.
What's real unfair is when you call big H and their tech support tells you he thinks one part is to blame. You put it in and it doesn't fix the problem. Keep in mind the station is paying a 400 dollar air frieght charge of course. Then the nice Big H parts folks charge a 15 or 20 percent restock fee. For more expensive parts (at Big H's inflated prices to begin with) it is almost like the national debt with nothing to show for it. I did get things going after getting the second part and everything back up OK, but the restock fee was a killer. I'll be more inclined to bubblegum something on the air until I find another source. All I can say is if a person has a Big H transmitter, a backup is a must so other sources can be found for parts.
Scott Fybush said:
Easy... Harris gives deep discounts to groups and at the time the DX-50 was introduced, Harris was becoming a standard for transmitters. AT THE TIME the DX-50 was probably the lesser of all evils, since Continental was still on the 317 design IIRC (the best 50kw transmitter ever made, but cost a lot more to run than the DX).
Flash forward
When the 3DX was introudced, Nautel was catching up, BE had their first 50kw model. But Nautel has now surpassed Harris.
I see more installs using Nautel today (WQEW, WBBR, WEPN, WWDJ, WMCA in New York to name a few, with WQEW and 'DJ installing their rigs recently or as we speak).
wgliradio said:
No argument there - and don't forget Nautel has been the standard for the ABC (now Citadel) AMs for many years now - I think even going back to the AMPFET era. WABC, WLS, KGO, KABC - all Nautel, if I'm remembering right.
And that new Nautel high-powered FM rig appears to be a game-changer, too. I expect to be seeing a lot of those in my travels in the years to come, if it lives up to the promises...
s
That new 40k FM rig is neat. Big H and others have to be shaking their heads over how behind the times that new box puts them. 
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