Could anyone speculate the value of an SX-62A?

[Opcom]

Could anyone speculate the value of an SX-62A? (this is not a "for sale" ad)

I don't want to, but I may have to try to sell this, so I am asking an opinion of the value. I have alot of medical bills, and if I can't find enough other stuff to sell, I might have to let it go. I just got it, but not plugged it in because it has not been used in 20 years. needs dial cord, probably all caps.. ! dusty, a little corrosion in the back corner and the lid, nothing major but the lid would need some paint to be perfect. The rubber feet are even still nice. with clean speaker. I know who its one owner was and it has never been tampered with. I don't want to just give it away to a hamfest cheapnik, can anyone suggest what something like this is worth?  With some opinions, I could make a decision to keep or sell. It sure is nice, for 0.54 to 108MHz continuous coverage.

[N3DRB The Derb]

thats he "swl" version of a SX42. I've seen them common at festers for 100 to 150 bucks with the speaker in good working order.

[WA1GFZ]

zero

[The Slab Bacon]

the SX-62 is a pretty neat receiver. If you like the old style sliderule dials with the little dots for the foreign cities it is way kool. If working properly they make extremely good audio, but................

With no bandspread the tuning ratio is ok for 160, and 80. It starts to  get a little fast on 40 and forget it for 10 and 15. the BFO is kinda wimpy at best and the tuning is too fast for ssb on the higher bands. The sensitivity is pretty good as is the selectivity. But like Derb said they were designed to be more of a "high end" SWL receiver. But like I said before a pair of shove yank 6V6s make some fine audio.

I had one and I'm sorry I got rid of it. Prolly worth somewhere between $100-150 in reasonable original condx, somewhere in the $250 range if recapped and working.

                                                       The Slab Bacon

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

the SX-62 is a pretty neat receiver. If you like the old style sliderule dials with the little dots for the foreign cities it is way kool.

Yes, the dial also utilizes the 'band-in-use' approach, which adds to the coolness factor. Switching it up to the 40m section in a dark room is interesting, all those cities and countries listed above the frequency suddenly come to life, shedding more light due to the copious amount of lettering. IIRC, some early examples had red and green colored lettering for cities/countries.

Estimates are right on. The only thing I'd add is that the later models of the A (higher MK numbers) as well as the B model do bring steeper prices in the $300-$400 range for collectors. These models use the later 'fat flute' knobs like the SR-150, SX-115 and so on. Same radio, just gussied up a bit.

But they do sound great, and look nice - just not the best choice for amateur work. HLR uses one regularly, though. Makes a nice office/den radio for casual BC listening.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

The speaker is worth more than the radio.

[WQ9E]

For the first week of my novice experience my receiver was an SX-62A and the entire 40 meter novice band occupied about 1/8 inch of dial space and around 10 degrees of knob rotation.  I did make several contacts but I was fortunate to move up to an SX-101 after the first week and my second contact using the SX-101 was with VQ9MI on 15 meters; I am not sure if any contact I have made since equals the excitement of that one.

Actually two SX-62's (I don't remember if they were plain, A or B) sold quickly at Peoria last year for $175 each and neither was pristine nor included a speaker.  The SX-62 is a cool looking band cruiser but not much of a ham band receiver.   The crystal filter would work well except it is almost useless because what the SX-62 lacks in bandspread it makes up with a great quantity of backlash.  It does sound nice on AM and FM broadcast.  Although the value of the SX-62 to ham ops is minimal it is still well liked by shortwave listeners and that gives it value, particularly with its system speaker.  For nostalgia sake I have an SX-62A in my home office and an SX-62 near my basement workbench and another in my university office.  Several of my students have been fascinated by the SX-62 but most are shocked that it isn't stereo.

In one of my old ARRL handbooks I have the Hallicrafters ad where both the SX-42 and SX-62 were advertised for sale and the SX-42 was listed at $299 while the SX-62 was $294; for the extra 5 bucks I think most hams would have gladly given up the calibrator in the SX-62 for the tuning mechanism of the SX-42.  Otherwise most of the circuitry is very similar between the two.

Rodger WQ9E

[w3jn]

A couple of factors:  that radio (along with the SX-42) is exceedingly difficult to re-cap due to its construction.  Second, DO NOT turn it on until all of the capacitors associated with the tone control switch are replaced.  A shorted capacitor there (which appears to be pretty common) will wipe out 1/2 of the audio output transformer primary.

The last SX-42 I had required disassembly of all of the IF transformers and replacement of the mica capacitors contained within.  Not a fun job at all.

[WQ9E]

JN,

Although I have only had to replace mica caps in a few of my SX-42 and 62 transformers EVERY Hallicrafters set with FM I own needed new mica caps in the discriminator can (even including my S-36A).  My HQ-170 is another story, those damned uncoated micas in the IF transformers all needed replacing and I also had to replace some resistors taken out as collateral damage.

[Opcom]

It is a model A, Mark 2 according to the chassis stamp.

So, is it harder to re-cap than an SX-28?

I understand it's a SWL rig and that does not bother me at all. I grew up with big slide rule dials like this.

[The Slab Bacon]

So, is it harder to re-cap than an SX-28?

Actually not. I have recapped 28s, 42s and 62s. All 3 are time consuming, but the 42 and 62 were considerably easier, I thought. All 3 will swallow up 40some capacitors to change out all of the waxed papers. (and also a small handfull of resistors as well) But you dont have to remove the coil catacombs in a 42 or 62 to change the caps in the front end if you know what you are doing.

It is a tough call which one I like better, the 28 has a little better front end performance, but..............the 42 has a little better audio but................... the 28 has probably the best signal to noise ratio of any vintage receiver I have used.........But.....................

Its a tough call!! Pick yer poison!!

                                                                The Slab Bacon

[WQ9E]

I think that the 42/62 series radios are quite a bit easier to recap than an SX-28.  Several of the more difficult caps in the front end can be accessed through the removable side panel cover.

If any of the IF transformers don't show a well defined peak when performing alignment suspect the associated mica cap inside.  For some reason, the mica caps used in the discriminator tend to develop leakage and I have had to replace them in my SX-42, my 3 SX-62 series, and my S-36A; it could be just bad luck on my part but I doubt it.  The symptom is simply that the FM detector does not work well.  Fortunately, the caps are pretty easy to replace.  There is definitely some heat related drifting and shifting going on even with good silver mica caps so let it warm up at least 10 minutes before completing the FM alignment but a properly performing SX-42/62 sounds very good on FM.  If you haven't used one before, the limiter/discriminator setup used in these receivers provides "triple-spot" tuning on FM where you will hear each station come through clearly at 3 very closely tuned spots; the center spot is the correct tuning and this is where the receiver is operating as a true FM detector.   The later ratio detectors were simpler to use and pretty quickly replaced the limiter/discriminator setup in consumer radios.

I would suspect you will also find some out of spec resistors in your receiver and pay particular attention to the larger wattage (1 to 3 watt units) as this is where I have found most of the gross deviations from spec in the 42/62 series I have repaired.

If the dial glass is still in good shape you will end up with a decent performing and excellent looking band cruiser.  I don't know if Radio Daze has the replacement glass available for these yet, I got replacements for my radios when Lynn Brock was still making them.  The paint tends to fall off of the dial glass and I think it is greatly accelerated by heat over the life of the radio; one of mine was fine except for the AM BCB and the other was good except for the FM BCB which leads me to believe this was the major use, respectively, of the two radio and the dial lights for the band in use cooked the paint.  The paint was also fine near the center of the range.

If you run into problems, it sounds like several people on here have been through these so you should find plenty of help on the forum.

Rodger

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

You guys are making me nervous.    I've not been inside my 62 for years, but IIRC, it looked pretty open and easy to get to compared to either the '28 or '42. No bandspread section, or geared tuning/band switching mechanism. It just didn't seem like there was as much inside. OTOH, the SX-28 and '42 are pure torment just to look at underneath. Layer upon layer of piecesparts, some barely visible. The little access panel on the side of the '42 should be a big clue.

Biggest and only issue with my 62 is the tuning dial snapping back a bit after setting it to a station, due to dial cord shrinkage. Never thought I'd see the day.

[The Slab Bacon]

Todd,
        the 42 and 62 are both basically the same receiver other than a few different bells and whistles.

the 62 has a crapstal calibrator but doesnt have an S meter or bandspread.

The 42 has bandspread and an S meter but doesnt have the calibrator (go figger!)

Circuit wise and chassis layouts are so similar that it scphinkz!

The factory also made quite a few changes to these radios as they went along and never published the circuit revisions. My 42 electrically looks like the dircuit from a 62.

                                                           The Slab Bacon

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

Yep, I'd always heard it referred to as the 'entertainment' or consumer version of the '42, sans bandspread and such. Come to think of it, they do use the same size cabinet and chassis. For some reason, the '62 just looks a lot emptier inside, and since mine is a late production B model it uses smaller caps and so on, adding to that perception.

Of course, they do make up for some of it with the spiderweb of wiring for the Band In Use dial. What a thing of beauty in a dark room, though.

[Tom W2ILA]

"the 42 and 62 are both basically the same receiver other than a few different bells and whistles."

NO WAY !

The SX42 industrial design was done by Raymond Lowey.  You can see the lines of the GG-1 Locomotive and Studebaker Avanti are well within the concentric circle design of the SX42.  The industrial design alone will expand your transmitters hi-fidelity bandwidth, lower distortion and increase your outpoot by at least 10dB.  I have mine paired up with the deco 300G and it really helps that transmitter get good reports.  Save your money that you were planning to spend on oxygen free mic cord and buy an SX42.

But, you will get more girls if you have an SX62A.  Have them look at the dial and you'll get to answer worldly questions like "where is Arabia".
My SX62 resides in the parlor for BC entertainment.

Both require wax cap replacement.  Two evenings and 47 or so caps.  Plate resistors on the PP 6V6 audio tubes seem to go foul too.  As mentioned the recapping is easy and necessary.  Bad caps have destroyed the bandswitch on many of these since they allow HV to get to the wrong places on the little weenie contacts.
 
The pricing above seems spot on.  At Nearfest there was a super clean SX62A for $300.  Lately, anything that needs work seems to go much less expensively. 

Tom

 

 

[WQ9E]

Todd,

The only difficult to access parts are in the front end, just like the SX-42 and the access panel is your friend!  The three caps I would change first (next time you have it open) are C109, and C112 as these are between the phase inverter and the 6V6 grids and if they become leaky your 6V6 current is going up and C111 which will reduce or kill the cathode bias on the output stage if it goes leaky/shorts and with any of the above your power transformer will be most unhappy.  These two .02 caps are very easy to replace as is the cathode bypass electrolytic.  I did put one of the little inrush current limiters in each of my SX-62's to get rid of the "bong" sound when the power is turned on, it probably doesn't hurt anything but Halli transformers of this era don't seem overly stout to begin with.

The SX-62 is a cool looking radio and if I ever come across one that has already been heavily "hammed"  I may add a little tuning eye in place of the h symbol on the dial cover.

Rodger WQ9E

[Opcom]

I found the SX-28 to be easy to re-cap and work on. So the 62A therefore ought to be just fine. If it's worth only $100 as-is, then the hammys will only want to pay $50. It would cost that much to buy the tubes. I'll keep it and fix it up later.
Hamcom is this weekend (FRI-SAT). I have a 2x2x4 chest "full" of resistors, and several more 2x2x4 chests to fill with stuff to truck down there and sell off. If the chests are either full or >100LBs, then I am doing my best to pay off the bills. Fair enough.

chests... "16 hammys on a AM fiend's chests, yo ho ho and a gallon of PCB's!"

[W7SOE]

 I have a beautiful SX-42, it is one of my favorite rigs (Because it is good-looking and receives FM).  It is the only one allowed in the house with it's R-42 speaker.

It has issues but I have been hesitant to tear into it again.  Working on the HB 813 transmitter, the r-390A, the r-388, the JVII, they are all joys compared to the SX-42.

I hate to say it. but I think I have an issue in the bandswitch, gasp!

Wish me luck.  I want to hear my FM jazz again so maybe it is time....


Good luck with yours.

Rich

[The Slab Bacon]

I found the SX-28 to be easy to re-cap and work on. a gallon of PCB's!"

Patrick,
          You're one of the first that I have heard say this. (I have done several of them) Inquiring minds want to know........ Did you change the caps in the front end, under the coil catacombs??

                                                          The Slab Bacon

                                                           

[Opcom]

I changed the more difficult caps, except the local oscillator screen cap? (rear most section buried up against the chassis) which I could not get to at the time, by using a variety of long and short needlenose pliers, pry sticks, and hemostats.
Since it is almost impossible to get wire cutters in some of those places, I put the long skinny needlenose pliers in and grabbed the wire at the capacitor body and wiggled till it broke. Then pull the caps out. If it was looking impossible to remove the cap wire from the solder lug, I would re-use the original lead in-place, and on the new cap I would make a wire-wrap-like form out of the lead, making it around a section of thin needle nose plier jaw, and then slip this on the original capacitor lead, crimp and solder. I know some people insist on completely cleaning the solder lugs but it is not really necessary except for appearance on this low frequency stuff. It was tedious but I woud rather work on that than replace surface mount components.

[WQ9E]

My method is pretty much like Opcom's, for a lot of the components I do not try to remove all of the original lead from the terminal due to possible associated damage.  For terminal strips and some tube sockets I will go through the lead removal process but for bandswitches, IF transformers, RF coils, and similar difficult to find/replace components I replace capacitors and resistors with the least possible trauma to the connected unit.  I learned my lesson the hard way many years ago when I damaged an IF transformer in an HQ-170 trying to "properly" remove a resistor that was mechanically well connected.

John T. Frye (W9EGV) many years ago wrote a monthly feature for Radio and Television news with the title "Mac's Electronic Service Shop" and in one column he addressed this particular practice.  I am going from memory as I don't have the column at hand but what follows is very close to the original:  Practice in the 20's and 30's was to make connections mechanically secure before soldering and a major reason for this was the questionable quality control of solder.  The defense department (or might have been the Air Force) commissioned an in-depth study of soldering practices in the early 50's and determined that it was much better to place the lead through the terminal (and perhaps do a single 90 degree bend) rather than wrap the lead as was common in the past.  Reasons given included the solder was of sufficient quality that the lead would break before the solder joint gave up, mechanically secure connections tended to disguise "cold" solder joints, and most pertinent to our discussion was that the collateral damage from removing mechanically secured leads led to much more repair difficulties.  The exceptions noted included components which were very heavy such as those found in the tank circuit of a transmitter.

When I replace components now I make sure that the result is electronically "proper" and neat looking.  I don't recall damaging any associated components in my last several years of repair and restoration.  I really hate having to replace something that was broken due to my actions, particularly when it has been working properly for the past 60 years.  I still cringe at the 15 year old memory of a friend who pulled two almost new 4-400's out of his Johnson T-Bolt amplifier and laid them on the desk while doing some other work.  He walked across the room and one tube started rolling and hit the other tube and both smashed on the floor before he was able to catch them; that is the sort of mistake I really want to avoid.

The Hallicrafters receiver I am currently working on has most of the passives connected where the lead makes a tight double loop through the terminal and the chances of removing these completely without heat or stress damage is not good.  They are the result of original factory work as most of the connections still have the reddish orange paint drops added during inspection (and this is the first Hallicrafters receiver where I have seen this and the paint drops are not nearly so neatly done as in Collins gear!) 

Rodger WQ9E

[KA1ZGC]

I've never had any trouble removing a lead from a lug, no matter how securely wrapped. If I've got room to get the desoldering iron onto the lug, I just let the solder liquify, release the bulb, and give the lead a slight wiggle to make sure the tension is broken between the lead and the lug. Comes right off every time.

I've seen some piggyback joints that were really poorly done. My Hallicrafters FPM-300 had an electrolytic underneath that had appearently been going bad for some time: some douchebag chocked the cap out but then decided to put it back in. He took some REALLY flimsy stranded copper and slobbered it across the chock points. That electrolytic did eventually croak, and boy wasn't I pissed when I found that little bit o' meatball surgery! The cap was literally swinging like a trapeze under the rig.

Back to the SX-62, they're good daytime receivers for ham or anytime receivers for shortwave broadcast. They're extremely broad, like 18+ kHz at the widest and 8+ kHz at the narrowest. That's what makes them great for daytime reception of a hi-fi AM signal, but very poor in combat conditions.

Timtron modded one of his (the one in the trailer, IIRC) such that one of the crystal selectivity selections is something like 6 kHz wide. That's a lot more reasonable than the bandwidth out of the box. Of course, they weren't made with hams in mind, they're just general world-band radios. With a bit of work, they can sound really nice, and can do a lot of justice to some of the audio chains on amateur AM.

My $0.02.

--Thom
Kilovolts Attack One Zorched Gate Crasher

[The Slab Bacon]

I changed the more difficult caps, except the local oscillator screen cap? (rear most section buried up against the chassis) which I could not get to at the time, by using a variety of long and short needlenose pliers, pry sticks, and hemostats.
Since it is almost impossible to get wire cutters in some of those places, I put the long skinny needlenose pliers in and grabbed the wire at the capacitor body and wiggled till it broke. Then pull the caps out. If it was looking impossible to remove the cap wire from the solder lug, I would re-use the original lead in-place, and on the new cap I would make a wire-wrap-like form out of the lead, making it around a section of thin needle nose plier jaw, and then slip this on the original capacitor lead, crimp and solder. I know some people insist on completely cleaning the solder lugs but it is not really necessary except for appearance on this low frequency stuff. It was tedious but I woud rather work on that than replace surface mount components.

Some are just a glotton for punishment!! If ur recapping a 28 it is a lot less work and a lot less aggrevation to bite the bullet and remove the first 2 coil banks. It doesnt take all that long and it makes the whole job a breeze!! (also replace the screen dropping restors while your in there just for good luck)

                                                                    the Slab Bacon.

[KB2WIG]

Where do that little brass washer go??? somewhere on da baned switch but I just don't know.....  klc