I was able to get a great deal on a Dx-394 on eBay. Lowbander will do his magical modifications for me to make it a better radio.
Next question any recommendations on an antenna?
Start short and work your way up. And/or get ahold of, or build, an antenna tuner or preselector if you use a longer antenna.
I do OK with a 25-30 ft indoor, second story wire with mine. Not much overload. Only get that, or crosstalk, if some ham is running high power on a good prop day, and it's 20-30 kHz away. Otherwise, I do well with my DX-394. But I'm in a hole, a narrow valley, so 25-30 ft doesn't overload the front end, most days and evenings. I get more overload on a couple MW channels than I do on SW. On SW it's rare here.
If you're in a higher signals area than where I live, you may do well if you have a preselector or antenna tuner to reduce overload.
The attenuator on the back of the radio can help. I've never used it, though. RF Gain has a lot of range to it. You still have a lot of gain with it set at 9 or 10 o'clock, but it does tame stronger signals.
The radio is actually pretty good for hamband monitoring. I hadn't used mine in maybe 8-10 years and after getting it out of the closet, firing it up, I was surprised. Even the CW1/CW2 'modes' (they are narrow audio filters, actually) can cut down some static, depending on type.
Use headphones. The audio will be better than the speaker.
If you're monitoring a section of a hamband, like the CW section, hanging out on a couple adjacent frequencies trying to ID faint, polar path signals from the EU or whatever, use the LOCK button. One slight jarring of the tuner knob will jump it up or down 15-30 kHz easily. It's fairly easy to do and it's frustrating. I never thought a LOCK button would be needed on a SW tabletop. Now I know.
The VLF trick works, too. You have to have the radio in Longwave before you do the button press. It's LONGWAVE > LIMIT > PGM > 1 > FREQ > ENTER.
Depending on the extent of the mods, USB is add 1 kHz to what you see the frequency readout, LSB is within 10-20 Hz. The fine tuner tunes in 50 Hz steps, the lowest regular tuner steps are 100 Hz. Works well enough for most ham band monitoring.
Have fun.
