- AM, FM, Aircraft Band (118v-137 MHz) and Shortwave (1711-30000 KHz)
- Set 9/10 KHz AM tuning; set FM tuning range
- Single Side Band (SSB)
- 360-degree rotate AM antenna
- Auto/Manual/Direct frequency key-in and station memory tuning
I finally took the plunge and had to find out for myself about this nice looking radio. People complained about SSB reception and the Filters. I was glad I made the decision to purchase this radio as my radio has none of these issues with a serial number in the 1400's! A QSO was going on this morning on 3872.00. I turned on my Yaesu HF rig to verify the this was exactly 3872.00 LSB. To start the comparison against several other radios, I placed the ETON E-1 on 3872.00 and hit LSB and bingo, audio was fine as you would expect it to be. Time for the Sony ICF-2010. Same results, first I hit the USB and audio was weak but audible, hit the correct LSB setting and audio was loud and clear.
OK, now onto the Satellit 750. Placed the radio on 3872, hit USB, BFO set at 1 o'clock position, Normal, and audio was weak but audible, hit LSB and audio was strong and clear. The 750 acted exactly the same as the Sony did .....
This tells me that the 750 has absolutely no issues with SSB reception...
Naturally the operating instructions are not clear on the 1 o'clock position for SSB control. It came from the factory set at 1 o'clock. My Collins 75A-4 has a 1 o'clock position for LSB and a 11 o'clock position for USB, the 750 acts the same way... Since the 750 tunes in 1 KHz steps, you will need to tune the SSB knob at times, but the USB and LSB bandpass circuitry is fine. Yes they should have made the radio tune in 100Hz steps when SSB is on, but that is not the case. The E-1 does tune in 10 Hz steps so it does not need this. The Sony tunes in 100 Hz steps so you can get SSB Close but not exact.. For that reason the 750 is better than the ICF-2010... I used the narrow filter for these test.
OK, now to the issue of the wide filter... After playing with this for about 10 minutes on local AM stations and I mean STARING closely at the S-meter, I would say that the filter has a very slight kick up on the very edges, I mean out at 4 KHz offset. + or 3 KHz the signal just rolls off, normal operation, as you hit 4 KHz on each end the S-meter might move up a tad, but at 4 KHz you are already loosing signal and reaching the end of the filter. But +2 khz the S-meter is flat.. If something is obvious, I do not see it. Tune in a station, S-meter is peaked , tune away either side and the s-meter will fall off as you hit 5 KHz in wide mode. I used the attenuator to keep the s-meter in its mid range.
I am not saying something is not present, but after close examination I see nothing that indicates a problem. I have the Scott and BR sports show on now, 1090, XX1090 San Diego, and have it in wide position for full audio... Sounds great!
OK, all this positive talk, must be something that concerns me, right?? I do have a concern about the battery cover. It does look very delicate, as does the entire radio. This is not a radio to drag off to the beach,,, This is not to say that the battery cover is not strong and one just needs to be careful. The E-1 battery cover has the same concern but so far after many battery changes, the Eton E-1 cover is still fine.
This radio is a fun to use. Keyboard entry is fast and flawless, can't say that about the E-1. E-1 needs to have the decimal pushed, 750 does not... I have not got into the memory or scan functions or timer mode yet.. That should be straightforward...
The Monitoring Times review is way out of line... He made non qualified assumptions with many parts of the evaluation. He was concerned it was only a dual conversion and not a triple conversion and might have issues with strong local signals. Here in San Diego, NOT THE CASE.... Plus with an RF gain and 3 position attenuator, you would never have an issue. With Zero attenuation and full RF gain and tuning around a 75K watt AM station, 690, no issues, and I was able to NULL out with the top antenna 90% of this powerhouse station.. Larry Van Horn has done a great injustice to this radio in Monitoring Times. I was skeptical, but had to just prove to myself, I am glad I took the plunge, this radio is not being packed up for return to Amazon... Now I have to figure out where it is going to go in the house. I honestly think it may replace the Sony ICF-6800W now sitting next to my Sangean WFR-1 WiFi radio.. You just have to love radios that have a real S-meter to use...
Buy Grundig Satellit 750 AM/FM Stereo/Shortwave/Aircraft Band Radio, Black - (NGSAT750B) Now
I've been playing with my new Grundig Satellit 750 for several weeks and believe that I am now ready to give it an honest review after making performance comparisons with my other receivers, namely, the Panason RF-2200, the Sony ICF-6500W, the Sony ICF-2001D, and the GE Superadio III.
Build Quality:
I removed the back of the Grundig 750 and was amazed to find a very well layed out design. Looking from the rear, the speaker, with its huge magnet, was sitting there all alone with plenty of room for reverb. For a portable radio of this size, an impressive looking audio amp was the only component sharing this compartment. To the left of the speaker was a large printed wire board (PWB) that was mounted to what appeared to be a box in a box (with the radio chassis being the main box and the inside box framing everything on the front panel except the speaker). The PWB had its wire side facing to the rear of the radio and was essentially the cover of the box I mentioned, so I was not able to observe the number of components inside the radio or on the PWB. This main PWB had two large metal shields soldered to the wire side of the PWB, obviously to eliminate spurs. I removed about 8 screws from this main PWB in an attempt to remove it to view the rest of this beauty but decided not to go any further because there were numerous hard mounted plugs around the edges of the board and I did not want to risk breaking anything. So I stopped the disassembly process. I'll just say this. It was obvious from the design that this is a modern, clean, computer generated design.
The only build quality cons worth mentioning are: 1) this radio direly needs a foot to prop up the front (I used a 15 inch triangular architectural-ruler which worked perfectly); 2) the bottom section of the whip antenna was too tight ( I expect that many Grundig 750's, like the Panasonic RF-2200, will end up with a broken whip antenna.); 3) the ferrite MW antenna must use spring contacts that seem to lose contact at times MW reception goes blank at times and a slight movement of the rotatable antenna corrects it not a big issue, it only happened once during the week of testing.
Performance in a nutshell: For Shortwave, I would say that with the exception of the lack of SYNC mode, this Grundig 750's selectivity, sensitivity, and SSB usefulness are as good or better than the Sony ICF-2001D (2010). Tuning the SSB Ham bands was easy, and once tuned, it remained rock steady, absolutely no drift was observed. MW performance was the same as the Sony ICF-2001 except at frequencies above 900MHZ the Grundig far outperformed the Sony. FM performance was superior to the Sony plus the Grundig provides FM Stereo when using an external amplifier or a stereo headset.
Cons:
1) I find the memory usage of this radio to be too complex with the exception of using it in conjunction with the ATS mode which works very well. This is one area where the Sony ICF-2010 beats the Grundig. Sony's simple direct memory buttons are very handy and useful when compared to the memory sequence required by this Grundig (again, except ATS). By the time you finish sequencing this memory system you may as well just punch in the frequency directly. Speaking of memory usage, the radio provides a push-button switch labeled VM/VF. Via the manual I know that this switch is used to change the PAGE mode, but what does VM/VF mean?
2)The manual is severely lacking. It does not give proper information of the workings of the up/down switch and its relationship to the FAST/SLOW switch. Also, the manual fails to point out many of the features of this radio including its SCAN capabilities versus bands. (For those who may not know, this radio is capable of scanning the bands identified as Broadcast Bands by holding either the up or down switch for more than a couple of seconds. While Scanning, it will stop on strong stations for 5 seconds and can be stopped by hitting the up/down button again. Also while scanning, it will automatically skip the non-broadcast bands I like that.).
Pros:
1)Very pleasing audio. After listening to this radio for hours while working at my desktop computer, I can say without hesitation that it has the most pleasing audio of any of my portable radios. I would call the audio quality extremely pleasing for personal listening. I agree that the GE Superadio and the Panasonic RF-2200 have great audio, but they are both a little boomy compared to this Grundig.
2)Except for the lack of a front foot to prop up the front, the design layout and ease of use could not be better. The feel and usability of the main frequency dial is superb.
3)The rotatable MW ferrite antenna works great except for the scratchy contacts that I hope Grundig corrects, but I would not put off buying the 750 for this reason.
4)Like most Grundig's before it, the 750 has the looks of a serious, great looking, communications receiver.
Conclusion:
To me, the discontinued Sony ICF-2010 has met its match, or should I say its replacement. And unlike the poor audio quality of the Sony, this Grundig has very pleasing audio. The only advantage of the Sony over this Grundig is smaller size and the fact that the Sony has a SYNC mode. So if you are looking for a great entry level digital portable radio, and the discontinued Grundig 800 is too large, this may be it.
Read Best Reviews of Grundig Satellit 750 AM/FM Stereo/Shortwave/Aircraft Band Radio, Black - (NGSAT750B) Here
Grundig definitely has a winner with with the Satellit 750 radio! I am extremely impressed right out of the box with how well it performs on its own attached whip telescopic antenna and its rotatble ferrite rod antenna even for quite weak signals with both very good sensitivity as well as selectivity on ALL bands. The current price of about $ 220 on Amazon (including FREE shipping) is a fantastic value and should be a great bargain for many avid radio listeners.
PROS:
1) A double conversion, PLL (Phase-locked loop), fully digital portable radio that that comes with a AC/DC power adaptor and a readable, but too brief manual.
2) Excellent weak signal reception on ALL bands (AM/FM/SW/LW/Airband) using four separate band selector switches. It really performs very well! The LW band is simply selected by double clicking on the AM band control switch.
3) It has very useful bass and treble tone dials with fm stereo through earphones (NOT supplied) as well as a continuously variable RF gain knob as well as a continuously variable Squelch control (for the airband).
4) A separate backlight control that nicely illuminates the display as well as two alarms for wake-up/snooze,etc.
5) A dedicated wide/narrow bandwidth control switch and a SSB (single-sideband) switch whose functions are controlled for the USB (upper side-band) and LSB (Lower side-band) choices by as separate BFO (Beat frequency oscillator) control dial. On my unit this system is very stable and works extremely well. If you change bands and come back to SW however you will have to reset up the USB/LSB and SSB choice to get back to your previous SSB selection however. The two bandwidth choices (Narrow/wide) on the Satellit 750 are usually adequate, but not as good as those currently available on the Kaito series of KA1101/KA1102/KA1103 or of the Tecsun PL-450/PL-600 radios in my opinion.
6) Numerous tuning methods are available including a fine or a coarse tuning setting button for ALL bands and including an ATS storage system for 1000 presets (automatic tuning system), direct keyboard frequency entry without hitting an "ENTER" key, up/down scanning keys, a fine and smooth, manual tuning knob with a dimple for your finger, etc.
7) Very high quality and very readable backlight controlled display with many many icons for indicating battery life, wide/narrow bandwidth filter setting choice, RF gain attenuation, external/internal antenna choice, fm stereo setting, etc. Clock time and station frequency are displayed simultaneously, with the meter band setting also briefly replacing the clock display during tuning of the system.
8) Good battery life is available using only 4 D cell batteries and the unit can be separately powered by the included AC/DC adaptor as well.
9) Easy channel memory presetting and automatic preset recall of the 1000 preset memory locations (100 for each band, plus 500 presets which can be arbitrarily chosen by the user).
10) It has an easy to use reset control button (but it is located too close to the manual tuning knob).
11) There are ports for two types of external antennas (with both high and low impedance type jacks available). In addition the internal ferrite rod antenna can be fully rotated manually on the top of the unit for optimizing the detection of AM signals and thefully extendable telescopic whip antenna (for FM/SW/Airband) is very adequate for many weak signals as well.
12) It has a very nice foldable top carrying handle and can also be easily moved by the two side rack mount handles as well.
13) A nice (but recessed) and sensitive analog signal strength meter right next to the LCD display as well as a line-in and an fm stereo earphone output jack. This unit also has nice rubber feet on its bottom to keep it from slipping on a table.
CONS:
1) Smallish speaker, but the sound quality is very good for its size.
2) This unit cannot recharge the batteries internally.
3) Some of the knobs are a bit small for efficient control.
4) The BFO knob control is fairly coarse (compared with other similar portable radios) for full control of SSB fine tuning for such a high quality radio. One other reviewer who also liked this radio quite a lot overall also noted this lack of BFO frequency control as well (with 1 KHz BFO tuning available, but where using 10 Hz BFO tuning would have been much much better).
5) No synchronous detection circuit (for controling of fading due to interference) is available on the Grundig Satellit 750 which is present on the SONY ICF-7600GR or on the forthcoming Grundig G3 (soon to be available in April 2009). Both of these latter units are about $140-150 so $ 220-240 for the Satellite 750 seems to be a reasonable price given all its other fine features.
6) It is a faily large and fairly heavy, but still a readily portable unit (except perhaps on airplane flights!). It was built for Grundig in China specifically as a scaled-down version of its famously popular Satellite 800 radio which has a fine design with very fine reception capabilities. With the Satellit 750, they did accomplish a significant reduction in both size and weight and also a much smaller price tag (especially right now) and still retained many of the features of the Satellit 800 however.
Want Grundig Satellit 750 AM/FM Stereo/Shortwave/Aircraft Band Radio, Black - (NGSAT750B) Discount?
Despite the other 1 and 2 star reviews, I bought one. I'm pretty happy with it and recommend it to someone who wants a little more than the standard portable sw radio and doesn't want to spend a lot more money for an expensive table top. I get stations from all over the world with just the provided telescopic antenna. When I hook up a homemade (piece of copper wire!)antenna, it performs closer to an expensive tt than a portable sw. It's got some great tuning features that portables don't have. If you have one and have trouble, get a better antenna. If that doesn't work, return it, you may have a bad unit. Grundig's pretty cool about that. Also, get the 2009 "Passport To Worldband Radio" book to help find more stations and get some good tips. I'd give it 4 1/2 stars if possible.
P.S., Amazon, it's called the "Satellit", not a satellite.
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Having played around with a variety of other Shortwave radios, I was really on the fence about what to buy. I didn't want to spend a lot of money, but I wanted the features of a high-end radio. Shopping around, I realized that this wasn't a reasonable expectation. However, the Grundig 750 seemed to be the best bang for the buck so I ordered it having never touched this particular model.
First and foremost, I was able to get up and running with little fuss. Of course, it took some time to explore the radio and use it to its full potential. Nevertheless, the fantastic design of this radio offered ease of use out of the box, with the more advanced features being utilized by trial and error. Easy to learn, hard to master. A good middle ground.
The options on the radio are the shining points. AM/FM/LW/SW/Air + SSB; I was not able to find another radio that had all of these bands together for the price of $299. LW is mostly useless to have in the US however, as voice communications are limited to ITU region 1 which does not include the United States. So you get either beacons and morse code, or bits of spurious emissions from licensed AM stations. Air band is nice to have for me, especially since I'm only 2 miles from Denver International Airport (Air band is similar to FM just at higher frequencies). In any case, all of the commercial or transmission for public consumption signals are reachable with this radio, and then some.
I appreciate the radio having connections for both Hi-Z and coax antennas. The AM antenna is a rotatable loop, and of course the built in telescoping antenna works very well for what it is, picking up Cuba, Europe, and Asia here in Colorado. Not bad for a built in antenna! Of course, I didn't stay with that and now have a 300 foot longwire for some serious DXing.
Other great features include line in, line out, earphone jack, bass/treble, and rf gain, squelch, and SSB BFO controls.
I have come to realize however that this radio is not perfect, and there really is no perfect shortwave radio.
The first issue I noticed is that the radio is very light for its size. The case seems to be made of cheap plastic and I'm sure there is a minimal of components on the inside, but that's partially due to miniturization as well. However, this radio could have all of these features and controls in a smaller package. The size of the housing is obviously an attempt to convey complexity, when in fact the internal components are quite simple and put into a larger case to give this radio a facade that says, "I'm big and expensive" when it really isn't. I didn't care for this.
I do have to fault the SSB tuning as well. SSB works, no doubt and is fully usable. Many of these other reviewers remark that the SSB is horrible or worthless. I disagree. But the real problem is that SSB is too sensitive. Going to a sideband and then tuning the BFO reveals that it is way too sensitive, resulting in an unnecessary amount of time to tune in to a signal. There should be a reduction drive or anything that could allow for more coarse tuning. The difference between getting a clear voice from a ham operator or getting out of tune gibberish can be a FRACTION of a millimeter on the tuning knob. Sometimes an out of tune SSB signal can be corrected by just touching the knob without intention to turn it. This is unreasonable.
Another fault is the complexity of using the storage function. I have played with it a bit and come to find that it's cumbersome enough to not even use it whether storing or recalling stations. I'd rather go by memory or use good old fashioned pen and paper to keep track of interesting stations.
The higher frequencies (on the SW band only) seem to lose quite a bit of gain regardless of which antenna I use. So, I tuned to 27.185mhz and experimented with my CB radio on channel 19. Despite the apparent loss in gain, the CB transmissions were picked up very loud and clear. It appeared to me however that the lower frequencies are going to have much better propagation regardless of time of day; and I was right. It's much easier for me to get the WWV at 5000khz than it was at 10000khz... even in the middle of the day? Hmm. WWV at 15000khz doesn't even come in at all, ever. But, all of the action on SW is mostly between 5-7mhz so no big deal. There could also be other factors in play that have nothing to do with the radio. I don't know yet and am still experimenting.
I hate to say as well, that there are some quality control issues. The tuning knob works great but seems off-centered and light. Turning the tuning knob reveals that it doesn't twist in a perfect circle, rather has the wobble of an improperly balanced tire. This doesn't affect the function of the radio, but it does make it feel and look cheap.
Furthermore, on my model there is a piece of debris inside the plastic cover of the LCD display. Again, while this doesn't affect the performance, it's noticeable and ugly. Everytime I look at my radio display I see a piece of junk behind the glass. It may seem small to many, but it really irritates me.
Last but not least, I couldn't get the line in to work. I plugged in a device and could get nothing over the speaker at all. For me, this isn't a big deal because I'll not be using the radio to play my mp3s or voice recordings, but hey if it has it as an option, it should be working. All of these flaws (the knob, the debris, the line in jack) point towards chronic quality control issues. Despite this, the radio is still a joy to have.
In summary, if you are serious about SW listening and want variety with multiple antenna options, then look no further. This is the best consumer SW radio I've dealt with. Just don't expect the quality of a $10,000 Yaesu.
