Kenwood R-1000

[Freddo]

Hi - just acquired a Kenwood R-1000, which I'll use with a long wire
antenna. Any suggestions for getting the best from it, mods, antenna tuners?
I'm in eastern Australia, mainly listening to broadcast stations but hoping
to catch some off the rare stuff I keep reading about! Thanks.

Chris

[Peter Maus]

Congratulations. Your R-1000 may be a little wide. Premium
filters may help, but for the most part the radio is serviceable as
it was designed.

The most economical thing you can do that produces the greatest
dividends, is to ensure that you've isolated your antenna from noise
sources within your house/listening area. If you're using a random
wire, a 9:1 transformer working against a solid earth ground and a
coaxial transmission line with a 95% or better sheild will do
wonders at keeping your local noise sources out of your radio, and
offer you the best match across the entire HF spectrum.

Antenna tuners are interesting toys, but unless you have a lot of
local RF, you may not find them to make a huge difference to your
listening.

Experiment. It's the best way to determine what produces the best
results for your exact listening conditions.

p

[Stan Barr]

If it hasn't already been done, you can change the AM bandwidths to use
the narrow AM and the SSB filters - there is an alternative connector on the
board for this. This is useful for AM DXing at the expense of good audio
quality on MW. An ant tuner and, if possible, a pre-selector are useful,
these radios are not the best at strong signal handling and anything that
keeps some of the crud out is an advantage. You shouldn't have too much
problem in Eastern Australia though, not like here in Europe! I bought
my R-1000 new in 1981 and I'm still using it but I find it better with
short-ish antennas otherwise the attenuator is essential - which negates
the extra signal strength of longer wires - the radio (like many others)
has much more RF gain than it really needs.
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr st...@dial.pipex.com

The future was never like this!

[Ross Strachan]

In addition to the other replies you can get a copy of the
service/workshop manual for the R1000 from Ray Sarrio at
http://www.sarrio.com if you don't already have them.

There is some info on mods on http://www.mods.dk/.

Interested in others if anyone has any.

In particular, my R1000 has a homebrew version of the FM
demodulator mod which I really want to remove.

RS

"Freddo" <c...@cyberone.com.au> wrote in message
news:9789468...@viv.canberra.net.au...

[Freddo]

Many thanks for the suggestions

Chris

Freddo wrote in message <9789468...@viv.canberra.net.au>...

[amph...@gmail.com]

Hi I have a Kenwood R 1000 , love it . . it developed power problems . i have since stripped the power board . .unfortunately I cant get most of the important parts . do you know of any second hand or new boards available I really want this radio to work again. Regards Peter ZS5 PX

[karab...@yahoo.com]

On Friday, April 15, 2016 at 3:06:45 AM UTC-4, amph...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi I have a Kenwood R 1000 , love it . . it developed power problems . i have since stripped the power board . .unfortunately I cant get most of the important parts . do you know of any second hand or new boards available I really want this radio to work again. Regards Peter ZS5 PX

What parts do you need ? Nearly anything inside a radio of this vintage should not be a problem .

[sctvguy1]

Too bad it does not have tubes that can just be replaced.



--
"What do you mean there's no movie?"

[Michael Black]

But then you'd have all those paper capacitors that need replacing, and
maybe it's old enough that the resistors have changed value and may need
replacing too.

Like he said, there's a period when most parts in solid state radios are
still readily available. Maybe that's after silicon transistors took over,
I gather those with HRO-500s have had some problem replacing germanium
transistors (and probably the germanium transistors need replacing because
they've gone bad over time). But it's also a period before large scale
integration came along, so the ICs are plentiful but common analog or TTL.

I can't imagine anything from that vintage in the power supply being
really hard to get, a regulator IC might be hardest, but I suspect it
wouldn't be something hard to get now. The rest would be common
electrolytics, power diodes, maybe some transistors. They can be found,
and if not, suitable substitutes can be found.

It's later that seems to be a problem.

Michael

[DhiaDuit]

Ask bigclivedotcom ...at Youtube. Looka here, do you use a Mac computery? Don't plug in one of those hub thangys, just ask bigclivedotcom

[analogdial]

Tubes last alot longer than paper and electrolytic capacitors.

[Mike S]

On 4/15/2016 12:06 AM, amph...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi I have a Kenwood R 1000 , love it . . it developed power problems . i have since stripped the power board . .unfortunately I cant get most of the important parts . do you know of any second hand or new boards available I really want this radio to work again. Regards Peter ZS5 PX

Have you seen this

Kenwood R1000 Performance Upgrades
....
Power Supply Upgrade

This upgrade replaces all the electrolytic capacitors on the power
supply board. Kiwa offers this upgrade both as a kit and a Kiwa
installed upgrade. If you find that the frequency display is
intermittent or holds on a particular frequency, it is time to replace
the power supply capacitors and resolder the connections on the voltage
regulators.

Power Supply Upgrade Kit $15.00
Kiwa installation of the Power Supply Upgrade - includes parts $35.00

Other R1000 upgrades: 1. Kiwa can also improve the sensitivity of the
R1000 receiver below 200 kHz (the stock receiver has very poor
sensitivity below 200 kHz) 2. Incandescent lamp replacement. The lamps
for the front panel display eventually fail. Kiwa can replace the lamps.

Address and tn of Kiwa Electronics is on pg

http://www.kiwa.com/R1000.html

[G Cornelius]

On 04/16/2016 04:00 AM, analogdial wrote:
> Tubes last alot longer than paper and electrolytic capacitors.

Now there's a blanket statement if I ever heard one.

My experience with the tube era was that a power supply
would commonly have problems with either the rectifier
tube or the electrolytics.

Back then - as a teen, that is - I was a lot better at replacing
tubes and swapping out electrolytics than I was at anything
else, so take this with a grain of salt, but there did seem to
be a lot of tube failures. The tubes that ran hot in the
miniature tube versions of the All American Five radio - the
50C5 output tube and the 35W4 (?) rectifier - were the usual
suspects.

Nowadays tube radios, etc., seem to be showpieces and not
actually used, with those ancient capacitors continuing to
age while the tube filaments remain intact; so, today at
least, the old tubes last way longer than those ancient
capacitors!

George

P.S. The All American Five in my garage is still plugged in
and still works fine at almost 50 years of age. Likely had
a tube or two replaced over the years and little else.

[DhiaDuit]

Do you remember that many stores had tube testers and some of those stores sold tubes too? I reckymember them.

[Mike S]

I'm old enough to remember those well. I had a beast Hallicrafters short
wave tube radio that I'd stay up much to late listening to. Good memories.

[Mike S]

On 4/17/2016 4:33 PM, DhiaDuit wrote:

I'm old enough to remember those well. I had a beast Hallicrafters short

wave tube radio that I'd stay up much too late listening to. Good memories.

[DhiaDuit]

Vacuum Tube Testers Youtube

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Michael Black wrote:
> I gather those with HRO-500s have had some problem replacing germanium
> transistors (and probably the germanium transistors need replacing because
> they've gone bad over time).

Germanium transistors are cheap and plentiful on eBay. You need to figure
out which ones made in the Soviet Union replace the ones made in the west.

Germanium transistors were mostly PNP, so NPN ones are harder to find.

Replacements for CK722, 2n404, 2n107 and 2n109 are less than a $.25 each
including postage. I am sure there are others, but those were the ones
I needed.


I found 100 assorted Tesla (eastern Europe, not actually Soviet) ones
for less than $.50 each including postage.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM/KBUH7245/KBUW5379

[Michael Black]

On Wed, 20 Apr 2016, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

> Michael Black wrote:
>> I gather those with HRO-500s have had some problem replacing germanium
>> transistors (and probably the germanium transistors need replacing because
>> they've gone bad over time).
>
>
> Germanium transistors are cheap and plentiful on eBay. You need to figure
> out which ones made in the Soviet Union replace the ones made in the west.
>
> Germanium transistors were mostly PNP, so NPN ones are harder to find.
>
> Replacements for CK722, 2n404, 2n107 and 2n109 are less than a $.25 each
> including postage. I am sure there are others, but those were the ones
> I needed.
>

At least some of those are audio bandwidth transistors, the HRO-500 of
course needs transistors good in the shortwave and low VHF segment.

I just know I've seen people writing about restoring their HRO-500s and
other things with germanium diodes, and getting replacements has been some
sort of an issue.

I probably have some germanium transistors around, unless I tossed them.
There was a period in the seventies when the local electronic store, which
also sold surplus (Etco Electronics, they later moved their base to the US
to do mailorder) was offering great deals on germanium transistors, but
their selling point wasn't that they were germanium. It was that they had
good frequency response. I did buy a lot of those back then.

In some ways it is a surprise the HRO-500 could come out in 1964. It's
not that long before that transistors were for audio and at best the AM
broadcast band, yet here is a receiver that from reports is fairly good,
it wasn't a consumer radio, but which could be transistorized. The big
wave of transistor shortwave receivers came towards the end of the
sixties, and some, like my Hallicrafters S-120A, were awful, in part
because they were transistorized. Lots of overload, on top of the usual
issues related to low end receivers.

Michael

[analogdial]

G Cornelius wrote:

> On 04/16/2016 04:00 AM, analogdial wrote:
>> Tubes last alot longer than paper and electrolytic capacitors.
>
> Now there's a blanket statement if I ever heard one.
>
> My experience with the tube era was that a power supply
> would commonly have problems with either the rectifier
> tube or the electrolytics.
>

Series string sets are harder on tubes than transformer sets. Open
heaters and HK shorts are the usual failures. A thermistor used as an
inrush current limiter helps.

The failure rate for paper caps must be close to 100% by now. That
doesn't mean that the circuit no longer works but that the leakage is
now out of spec and they will only get worse in the future. I doubt
there's been a decent paper wrapped elecrolytic seen for at least 20
years.

I seem to recall reading that some small signal tubes are rated for a
life of 20,000 hours. Or was it 50,000 hours? Anyway, 20,000 hours at
4 hours a day is about 14 years. Maybe twice that long before the radio
actually goes deaf. I like to fix up old radios and I very rarely find
tubes with low gain. As I mentioned, the occasional common failure
modes are open heaters and HK shorts.

I have a strong suspicion that most of the tubes replaced in the past
were still useable. A gently aging tube might work quite well at normal
voltages but be an underperformer in a circuit in which a leaky screen
bypass cap is pulling down the voltage. A new tube might perk up the
circuit but the real problem is the leaky cap.

And it was common repair shop practice to knowingly replace good parts
such as tubes.

Shocking, I know! And I understand why. I was a new tech at a shop,
and a customer called in about her microphone preamp all of the sudden
having distorted sound. I asked the obvious question "Did you put new
batteries in?" "Yesssss! Of course I put new batteries in!!!!!!!! Do
"you think I am an idiot??!!!"

Needless to say, her "new" batteries were just as dead as the first set.

Stupid me, I thought she'd be pleased that new batteries that actually
worked brought the preamp back to perfect operation.

"YOU CHARGED ME THAT MUCH (our minimum charge, actually pretty cheap)
JUST TO REPLACE THE BATTERIES!! YOU'RE A DAMN CROOK!!!!"

No, if I was a crook, I could have charged her five times as much for
replacing good parts and we both would have been so much happier that
day.

Long story short, tubes get an largely undeserved bad rap for
unreliability.

[Michael Black]

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, analogdial wrote:

> G Cornelius wrote:
>
>> On 04/16/2016 04:00 AM, analogdial wrote:
>>> Tubes last alot longer than paper and electrolytic capacitors.
>>
>> Now there's a blanket statement if I ever heard one.
>>
>> My experience with the tube era was that a power supply
>> would commonly have problems with either the rectifier
>> tube or the electrolytics.
>>
>
> Series string sets are harder on tubes than transformer sets. Open
> heaters and HK shorts are the usual failures. A thermistor used as an
> inrush current limiter helps.
>
> The failure rate for paper caps must be close to 100% by now. That
> doesn't mean that the circuit no longer works but that the leakage is
> now out of spec and they will only get worse in the future. I doubt
> there's been a decent paper wrapped elecrolytic seen for at least 20
> years.
>

And the stuff wasn't intended for perpetual use. It was "average stuff"
intended to be used, and then eventually fade away. Indeed, it was
tossed. SSB came along, making a lot of stuff "obsolete", transistors
came along and people wanted that. So in the late sixtes and early
seventies, the old AM and tube equipment was relatively cheap. There was
a period when I was getting stuff, playing with it a bit, then trading it
for something else. Not many were thinking of "collecting", and nostalgia
hadn't set in. So that generally caused the stuff to be relegated to the
garbage, or the top shelf.

It's only in more recent times that the stuff was seen as valuable. So
those capacitors that weren't so great to begin with are now decades
older. The tubes sitting around didn't age (though I finally stripped
some old RCA Carfones, mobile equipment for the trunk of the car, and when
I pulled the tubes, a fair number had been broken, even though I don't
remember them being in a situation for that, they just sat there for
decades), while the capacitors probably kept on aging even when not in
use.

As I said, it's the way they made capacitors up to a certain point,
equipment made after that point didn't use paper capacitors but did use
ceramic, so their life is likely in good shape now.

Michael

[analogdial]

Michael Black wrote:


> And the stuff wasn't intended for perpetual use. It was "average stuff"
> intended to be used, and then eventually fade away. Indeed, it was
> tossed. SSB came along, making a lot of stuff "obsolete", transistors
> came along and people wanted that. So in the late sixtes and early
> seventies, the old AM and tube equipment was relatively cheap. There was
> a period when I was getting stuff, playing with it a bit, then trading it
> for something else. Not many were thinking of "collecting", and nostalgia
> hadn't set in. So that generally caused the stuff to be relegated to the
> garbage, or the top shelf.
>
> It's only in more recent times that the stuff was seen as valuable. So
> those capacitors that weren't so great to begin with are now decades
> older. The tubes sitting around didn't age (though I finally stripped
> some old RCA Carfones, mobile equipment for the trunk of the car, and when
> I pulled the tubes, a fair number had been broken, even though I don't
> remember them being in a situation for that, they just sat there for
> decades), while the capacitors probably kept on aging even when not in
> use.
>
> As I said, it's the way they made capacitors up to a certain point,
> equipment made after that point didn't use paper capacitors but did use
> ceramic, so their life is likely in good shape now.
>
> Michael

The caps probably did age even when not in use. I had some old NOS wax
dipped paper caps and they all were leaky. Somewhere in Terman's Radio
Engineer's handbook, he says paper caps can be expected to work as new
for only a few years or so. He had an example for leakage sensitive
circuits in which the usual coupling cap is replaced by two much
larger caps in series with a grounded bleeder in between which,
presumably, would forestall the capacitor aging problem.

Back in the 50s, the higher quality, less disposable electronics, used
those newfangled Sprague Black Beauty capacitors in place of the run
of the mill wax dipped paper caps. I suppose that toxic, short circuit
mess hadn't fully devloped by the mid 60s, when Sprague retained the
name "Black Beauty" for their axial lead mylar film caps. The "Orange
Drop" name for radial lead caps is still around, of course.

Mylar caps replaced paper caps at about time electronics started going
solid state so it's understandable why people associate the unrelibility
problems with tubes.

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Michael Black wrote:
> At least some of those are audio bandwidth transistors, the HRO-500 of
> course needs transistors good in the shortwave and low VHF segment.

I expect they are there too. The ones I am interested are for yellow
boxes made around 1963 which use audio transistors. Most of them are
either oscillators to boost DC voltage, some are dc amplifiers.

>
> I just know I've seen people writing about restoring their HRO-500s and
> other things with germanium diodes, and getting replacements has been some
> sort of an issue.
>

The Soviet D9b diodes make great detectors and are about a penny each,
including postage. They were half that because the lower case b in the
Cyrilic (Russian) alphabet looks like a number 5, and they were listed
as D95 diodes, which no one could find any specs on.

I think I had something to do with the price rise, when I commented on
the price on several groups, the listings were fixed and the price went up.

There even are 1n34a diodes still made with germanium in them. Most of the
so called germanium diodes are actualy silicon. They make finding the
real ones difficult as eBay vendors don't differentiate.

I have a few UK germanium diodes, that have real gold in them, and are
much better detectors. I found them on eBay for 1 UKP each. I am saving
them for a special project, when I think of it.

> I probably have some germanium transistors around, unless I tossed them.
> There was a period in the seventies when the local electronic store, which
> also sold surplus (Etco Electronics, they later moved their base to the US
> to do mailorder) was offering great deals on germanium transistors, but
> their selling point wasn't that they were germanium. It was that they had
> good frequency response. I did buy a lot of those back then.
>

If you can look up what they were, I would be interested in finding out.