I just picked up a GE P-865B. The chrome and case are in excellent condition. Reception-wise, I am very impressed!

I compare it favorably to my GE SuperRadio I and II. I am not much of a transistor radio collector, but this one certainly will stay in my collection.

BR,

Terry

Congratulations Terry ! That's a great, desirable radio ! Glad it found a good home...

Here is pic of an ad from Ebay a long while ago:

Nice indeed. Enjoy that amazing little puppy.

Bruce Webster

Thanks~

I've saved a copy of the AD...

BR,

Terry

You're welcome---thought you'd like it...

John

Great find! That's the rarer AM/FM version of the P780, and they can go for up to several hundred on The Bay.

I compared my P780 to my SR2 one evening, and they are very close in performance...I couldn't discern any advantage of one over the other, overall.

remove

It's funny how prices can go in cycles on eBay. If he put that radio up now, he would get a one or two in front of that 40.

It seems like whenever we talk favorably about certain radio models here, ebay prices tend to go on the rise.

Here is what's inside the P-865B. Sadly, both the AM and FM sections of mine get lots of overload interference from the many high-powered FM stations in my area. Looks like they might have had the same problem at the factory which was located in downtown Utica near an FM station's transmitter on a hotel about 1/2 mile away. Look at the copper strap over the FM coils. Looks like a user mod but I'm certain it left the factory that way. It's not the only GE FM radio I have that has this treatment. Terry - I'm curious if yours has the same strap soldered in place.



Dave

I have two P-780s. I carefully swept the IF on one and didn't touch the other. Prior to sweeping the IF passband response was relatively accurate but also rather wide. Now, the swept one far outperforms the stock unit in both sensitivity and, especially, in selectivity.

BTW: the straps on the FM IF strip are a clever solution. A shield (box) might be better, but, there's a lot of stuff wedged into that box and it was probably already in production.

I carefully swept the IF on one and didn't touch the other. Prior to sweeping the IF passband response was relatively accurate but also rather wide. Now, the swept one far outperforms the stock unit in both sensitivity and, especially, in selectivity.

What .... Sweeping the dust off helps ? I usually do a turnbound saturation on all resistors and a lockout tandoff of all transformers to get the straps de-modulated for greater offset ratio responce on all of the emitter ground plains .

Don't be ridiculous, he doesn't sweep the dust...



he cleans those pesky excess electrons off the collector elements...

OK, my bad. I actually talk Radio for once, instead of my typical thread-derailing tangential and weak attempts at humor, and you gotta call me on it. I used to play in "my own" screen room at Tandy, testing new designs. Sometimes I get carried away.

Sorry, I should know better than to talk shop on the playground.

I guess my point was that these radios can be fairly mediocre if not aligned right on a factory Friday (or, worse yet, on a Monday morning). However, the hardware's capable of fantastic performance.

Edit - the following is a blatant falsehood:

I chose to slightly stagger-tune the IF to narrow it up a bit. In other words, I may have centered the first IF filter at ~454 KHz, the second at ~456 KHz, and the third at 455 KHz. This still gave essentially identical sensitivity but a slightly narrower IF bandwidth. As received, it was simply set for max signal. Years ago that gave great sensitivity and good audio response. However, in Dallas' busy airwaves of today; that gives an IF that is just too wide. Especially with the stinky digital hash hanging off of the fringes (read: "outside of bandwidth limits") of several local stations. There I go talking shop again..

Hmmm...I thought the reason for stagger-tuning IF's was to widen the bandwidth, not narrow it. To get the narrowest IF bandwidth and best selectivity, shouldn't the transformers all be tuned to the same frequency?

Dave

You are quite correct. See figure 5.b -vs- 5.e here:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/echeeve1/Ref/DataSheet/IntroToFilters.pdf

I lied.
I sweep to verify the shape and try to get AM broadcast IFs as narrow as possible for use here in Dallas.
Cue Elmore James!


Edited to remove extraneous tangential disinformation.