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Sangean PR-D5

Started by errnum, 10/31/2009 04:58AM
Posted 10/31/2009 04:58AM | Edited 10/31/2009 05:11AM Opening Post
The Sangean PR-D5 is not shortwave. Only an AM/FM smallish tabletop set. But it is a very good AM/FM tabletop receiver, and not really expensive.

http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/spcialty/0068.html

I don't work for universal radio.

Our vicinity has many appalachian weathered mountains, hills, and ridges. Big and small, fractal-style. Which causes many dead reception zones and radio reflections/phase cancellations.

To make things worse, our favorite stations are only a few thousand watts, hardly able to defend themselves against multiple 100,000 watt flame-thrower stations splattering out 100 percent modulated top 40 rock, country, and rap from mountain-top antennas.

It is a tough environment and most inexpensive receivers just are not up to the job. Over the years we've had several $50+ radios or clock-radios where each flame-thrower obnoxious pop station comes in clear from multiple places on the dial, but our favorite stations are not even on the dial. Even worse in rainy weather. Modern electronics is great, but the PLL front ends on most modern consumer sets just do not seem very selective.

Got wife a Sangean PR-D5 and it works just perfect. Pulls in the low-power stations and rejects the obnoxious flame throwers. The tone is very good for such a small set. It is non-techie easy for the wife to operate. Has tuning presets. Runs a long time on C cells and comes with a wall-wart for normal location on her reading table. Has an aux input for her little MP3 player I loaded all her classical CD's on.

Wife was so happy with it, got her another one for work. She works in a brick and steel building that for most generic radios might as well be a big Faraday cage. The Sangean picks up her favorite low-power stations just great at her work.

She ended up donating one to her Mom, who lives on a rural plateau in middle TN. Her mom couldn't adequately receive the favorite stations up there, but the Sangean solved the problem. So I'm ordering a third tonight, to replace the one wife gave to her Mom.

Ain't saying its incredible or anything, but its pretty dern good compared to most small tabletop radios.
Posted 10/31/2009 12:58PM #1
James: It seems like you found a winner. Sangean builds a lot of shortwave receivers so they probably did the RF section of the AM right... Universal seems to think it is a great medium wave DX-ing radio so that is saying something.

Of course one can use most shortwave receivers for medium wave and with the right antenna, performance can be excellent and many do FM. The Grundig Satelitt 800 has excellent FM performance but the darn things weigh about 15 pounds and cost about $300 if you can find one used so the PR-D5 seems like a great choice.

JOn
Posted 10/31/2009 01:46PM #2
I've been told those are very good receivers. Last time I wanted an am/fm, what I could find in town (at Bestbuy) was a little Boston Acoustic receiver. I continue to be amazed at the quantity and quality of sound that little thing puts out.

Uncle Rod

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Posted 11/02/2009 12:47AM #3
I bought my wife the Sangean PR-D7, which is pretty much a mono version of the PR-D5. Great little portable AM/FM radio and she loves it. I then bought my daughter a Sangean DT-400W as she likes the pocket size AM/FM radio with NOAA weather channels. Until I bought these radios, I'd never heard of Sangean. They make surprisingly good products.

Also, regarding the Boston Acoustics table radios, I've used their "Recepter" radio (mono version) for several years as my garage radio. It produces a surprisingly big sound from a small package and it does have station presets. They're just not obvious because there are no rows of buttons. Instead, you turn a knob with detents, which works just as well. The Recepter is apparently no longer in production, replaced by the BA "Solo" table radio. It appears to be a newer version and it also has station presets. The stereo version of this radio is called the "Duo".