No, no particular reason for excluding synthesized radios. I'm basically trying to zero in on the best rigs before SDR's and the fall of shortwave radio.
So my first question is going to be "why no SDR"?
If your answer is something like "because I don't want one" or "because I don't want to be tied to a computer", well that works. Only you can decide what you want. But by excluding SDR you are ignoring some very good, some even excellent, currently made receivers.
Once you get away from the lower cost RTL-SDR type stuff you find that a good, HF focused, SDR competes VERY favorably with the best SW radios ever made. An SDR like the venerable Perseus, the Elad FDM-S2, the WinRadio G31 or G33, all of these are very good to excellent radios in their own rights. I would put the G33 up against the very, very, best of the desktops I have ever owned or used, and the G31 and Perseus are only slightly behind that. The Elad FDM-S2 is not quite as good as the others I mentioned, but still decent. The RFSpace NetSDR (no longer made), the WinRadio G31DDCe, WinRadio G33DDCe, and the WinRadio G35DDCi are my primary HF receivers today.
And there are some very nice lower cost SDRs also. Again, I am talking above the price point of the RTL-SDR dongles, say $100 - $350 range.
Many of the current crop of radios for sale seem okay to poor, nothing like when shortwave was in its heyday. <<
HERE >> is a list of what they call the 'best', but I'm sorry the Retekess V115 does NOT (IMHO) belong on this list for shortwave. Sure, it's cheap, sounds good on FM and even has an SD card slot and can record off the air, but it's shortwave reception leaves much to be desired, I know, I have one. I even have an Eton Elite Executive, but again, while it receives and can even do SSB, it's not what I call a stellar radio...
and all the new ones appear to portable models. It would sure be nice to find a great receiving
DESKTOP radio without breaking the bank.
I think this is just economics.
The market for a good desktop, upper end hobby level, receiver has always been small, and today it is much smaller than in the past. There was traditionally a lot of overlap with ham radio.
Up until about 1970 or so a good desktop SW receiver was well fitted to also be used as a ham radio receiver. Remember, up until about that time separate receivers and transmitters were the norm. Up until digital readouts almost all good SW receivers included bandspread dials that specifically targeted ham bands. After digital readouts such things were no longer needed.
And the last of the decent hobby level desktops were introduced in the 1990's, and by the late 90's was fading to oblivion. Yes, you could still buy some dekstops up until the 2010's, but they were mostly holdovers from the 90's or lower cost units that companies used to dip their toes into the market.
Today that overlap with ham radio use is all but gone. Very, very, few people today would consider, for day to day ham use, a separate receiver and transmitter on HF.
It is simply a matter of, you will never find a very good to great receiving desktop radio that is not at least somewhat expensive.
And, in the past, you never did either. In fact, it can be argued that such a radio has never been less expensive than it is today.
Look at what a radio like the NRD-535 cost when it was new. Working from memory here, so excuse small errors. It was introduced in about 1991 and you could could still find one until 1997 or 98. The MSRP on that thing was around $1600, but you could find them for ~$1300. $1300 in 1995 dollars is roughly $2700 in purchasing power today.
A similar "good" receiver of the day, the Drake R8, cost about $1100 to buy in 1991, or more than $2500 in purchasing power today.
My old Drake R7A was produced in 1982, and cost about $1300 at that time. More than $4200 in purchasing power today.
In 1953 the list price for a Hammarlund SP-600 was $395, real street price was around $350. That is more than $4100 in buying power today.
And we have not even gotten into the "professional" receivers, meant for purchasers like Uncle Sam, with deep pockets.
So today, the overlap market between SW and ham is realistically gone. The vast majority of entry level hobbyist in SW are satisfied with portables. Once you get to the level of someone willing to install a decent external antenna (more than a short random wire flopped out the window) for shortwave use (who is not already a ham) this market gets exceedingly small.
Today if you want a good
new desktop dedicated receiver you have very few options, unless you are willing to buy a ham transceiver and just forget the transmitter exists. There is not much of a market for such things. I did not say no market, I said not much of one, and it is apparently not worth the radio makers time to fill that market.
What do we have today?
You have the Icom R8600 at ~$2600 or a tad less. This is a superlative HF stand alone desktop receiver, really very, very, good. In addition to HF you also have VHF and UHF. You can argue if that price point is hobby level or not, but, as you can see, it is on par with the cost of past good receivers, like the NRD-535, the Drake R8, etc when those were new. But, if all you want is HF, you don't have anything decent in stand alone desktops.
I have 2 R8600's at the desk here, but I still use the NetSDR, G31, and G33 most of the time for HF listening.
And then you have things like the R9500, but now you are in the pro realm of cost. Once you get to that price point (the cost of a good used car) you can find a few others.
However, a decent entry level ham transceiver, like the IC-7300, brings excellent HF receiver performance at a cost point below the traditional price of such performance. The IC-7300 is ~$1100 today. In converted purchasing power that is far less than someone paid for my 1957 Hallicrafters SX-99 back in 1957 ($160 list price, $125 real street price). And the SX-99 is complete, utter, junk compared to the IC-7300.
And any of the "high end" past receivers will likely cost, used, close to or more than the IC-7300 does new today.
I am not stuck on the -7300 in any way (and I don't own one), it just makes a nice example to use.
T!
