Vwestlife I just wanted to tell you after a decade of watching your videos, I finally met someone in my city who is also a huge fan of yours. We hit it off instantly and are great friends now. Thanks for all the content you've provided for so many years
While watching this video. I went digging in my cupboards to find an AM stereo radio I built as a project from the Australian electronics magazine Silicon Chip in 1989. Listening to wide band AM does sound good, but no radio station in Sydney still broadcasts in stereo. It was a good gimmick to sell new radios in the 90s, but the FCCs decision to not choose CQAM first made the radios too expensive for the public to want to buy. From memory it was as good as a 70s cassette recording pre Dolby.
You should hear 10Mhz in Kahn mode sometimes. Oh snap. You're going to need a shortwave receiver to convert to 450KHZ. There are time coders upper and lower sideband. Mostly chirping and pips. But it's awesome to hear them all sound off simultaneously on the minute. Whenever I get to it, I'll be back to send links on various topics on this one radio.
Thanks for the tip regarding turning the stereo distortion pot counter-clockwise. I just acquired an SRF-A1 in the wild after searching for an AM stereo radio for years and its pot was in the middle as well. I’m on the lookout for ways to improve this radio’s performance since there’s lots of interference in my area and the nearest AM stereo station is over 60 miles away. Even at night I can’t seem to catch it at all, so maybe I’ll take a road trip.
I am a fan of devices, but I live in a backward country and all my youth I lived through wars and economic blockades, and I did not enjoy practicing my hobbies by acquiring stereo devices from Sony, Kenwood and Technics brands. It's the first time that I know that there is a stereo AM radio, thank you very much for what you publish
Both of mine were stolen…still miss them. I still have my Srf A1 packed away somewhere in my move box. The SRF 100 was a DX machine, but didn’t have the extended band. Before it was stolen my radio easily picked up 780 KHZ WBBM Chicago at my QTH in Tucson, Arizona. My trip to Washington DC saw it stolen, liked my previous one in Jacksonville FL. Take good care of yours and watch for thieves. The Chip is Sony proprietary so good luck finding one, the used it in the Sony ICF-2010. Have a great day!
Today I learned that AM Stereo was a thing. Thirty plus years and always thought stereo was FM exclusive. Your knowledge is appreciated, really neat stuff.
Warranty is 1 year. Says to bring that card to the shop to fix it. Becomes void with all the normal things like damaging it, trying to repair it, modify it. Number 5 talks about earthquakes, flood, lighting, other natural disasters, and pollution.. lol. My favorite part is number 1, where they say if its broken to bring it in and they will do their best. Very Japanese Andor Corporation out of Tokyo is the company. It seems they are still around, but not at the address listed. They are listed as a software company on google
Interestingly your point about the lightning sounding cool on AM is actually how lightning detectors work. They have RF receivers that listen to AM-like frequencies and feed that back to a central platform, which then triangulates the lightning strikes to give you a location on the map.
Wow, thanks for sharing this video and also the recording from CFRB. I live in Toronto and that was good piece of nostalgia. The announcer mentioned Kromer Radio, that was a well know store to purchase audio equipment for your home and car. I purchsed a stero system from there. The business closed in 2012 after 55 years in business when the owner decided to retire.
I have to confess I found your channel by accident, and I watched two clips before it dawned on me that it wasn’t Ray Romano I was listening to. I subscribed because “this guy is really good, and his voice is a bonus feature.”
Actually, for am stereo my first one got changed into the perfect analog am stereo. My sideband wide was +/- 13Khz within 1 DB either side. That was a painstakingly arduous task to align wideband to perfect. I had to disassemble that radio at least 100 times to get it right. You're all gonna be mad when I show you the potentiometer that controls the stereo lock range. I need to take you all on a tour of the SRF-A100 for real. I didn't burn my radios up from my real experiments. First one got stolen, 2nd one is maybe on storage and degraded. Got radio 3. Never opened. Look on my channel for my informal introduction to it.
I would be suspicious of the power supply to that daughterboard and the decoder IC, and any passive parts being out of tolerance. For quite some time I had wanted to get another of Chris Cuff's AM stereo transmitters, this time with case and antenna tuner. He also sent me a board for a portable AM Stereo/FM Stereo radio he'd designed, and told me that at some point in the future that he'd give me all the info I needed to put it together. It's too bad he's gone.
Wow. I'm really impressed with the fidelity of AM Stereo, especially at Wide bandwidth. Granted you're very close to the transmitter as well, but it really does sound great. Not at all what I hear from the talk radio stations with bits of music these days.
It depends on your radio. Many talk stations transmit with the same 10 kHz audio bandwidth as I demonstrated here, but you'd never hear it if your radio is limited to the typical 4 to 5 kHz audio bandwidth on AM.
Australia use to have many incredible examples of c-quam wideband am stereo for example 3MP in Melbourne. Listen hear to a tape I had sent about 20 years ago ua-cam.com/video/IPPOEIfU0bo/v-deo.html
@@vwestlife actually the talk stations around here have trimmed down to about 7Khz fidelity and use some kind of reverb delay echo scheme these days. There are still a small handful of stations that still do music. And they sound good. Gentrification and digital have helped kill am radio as well. Not to mention the noise floor has gone through the roof, quality control is deregulated, led lights with screaming computers in them, electrical mains loaded with noise from cracked something or arcing somewhere on the high voltage line creating more rfi than a spark gap transmitter ever could. Am dx is best done away from major metropolitan cities.
@@vwestlife many also run at 4khz to eek out 5 more miles of range for the same 50kW. And it pisses me off. Also. I hate variable carrier. It makes fringe reception sound like ssb on an am radio. Damn you iheart for ruining am radio.
I remember when 590 VOCM flipped into AM Stereo in 86. Even those of us who only had mono heard an improved sound. I am guessing that improved sound was a result of attention bring given to the overall sound. In 1990 when my hometown 570 CFCB went to AM Stereo, I got to hear it in stereo and I loved it. I’m still using that stereo copy of Jailhouse rock. Hundreds of times at weddings and other public events. I absolutely love the sound.
Chris Cuff - he will forever be missed. Among other things over the years, he gifted me a NOS Magnavox 45 changer spindle for my Maggie consolette I have in my office at work. I kept the box he shipped it in and the OEM box the stacker spindle was in which, after he passed a while back, became displayed together beside my Maggie. Rest In Peace my dude.
I have one of Chris Cuff's AM Stereo Transmitters. I did not know he has past away. I have not yet mounted the board in a proper designed case. I will do this soon in his memory. Thankyou for this sad information. He was a wonderful guy and a friend of my husband's brother in Prince Edward Island.
To fix the dents in the frontplate (if you can take it off) you can use the backside of a smooth bold handle of a screwdriver to push it (gently) back in original position (on the backside of the frontplate of course). You need to do this on a very flat smooth surface such as a bathing tile and take your time and important, do not use a hammer to tick away the dent it doesn't work. Only use controlled human force. Keep the frontpanel flat on the tile while doing this. I have used this method a couple of times (on speaker grills) and the result is amazing if you don't rush the whole process.
This video brings back some memories for me. I purchased the SRF-A100 new in 1984. I also had the Realistic AM stereo tuner you briefly showed in this video. I was really hooked on AM Stereo back then. I even did a conversion of a Pioneer SX-850 to AM stereo by adding a CQUAM decoder board. All the units had issues with locking up on a stereo signal, especially at night time as the propagation kept unlocking the decoders. Kind of frustrating at times. Still it was worth the effort when things worked out okay.
As other comments mention, we never had AM stereo in the UK, I'm sure we all remember 247 Radio 1 in glorious muffled AM mono until the introduction of country wide FM stereo, what I did find interesting is, as per usual, with new tech.introduction, different broadcasting decoding formats before eventual standardisation. Also look at the quality of those Sony pot's!
Indeed, it makes me wonder how many listeners the BBC lost until they deployed their FM transmitters in 1988 (as a kid I enjoyed the funny DJs on Radio 1 but the sound quality was so bad that I switched to local FM stations in the early 80s)...
C-Quam AM Stereo was tested in the UK in the mid to late 1980s but Ofcom decided not to approve it. But listeners in southern England were able to hear AM Stereo from France Bleu on 864 kHz from Paris, until it got shut down a few years ago.
Not sure where they are, But I had an order for a large quantity of 10 watt c-quam transmitters from a guy in Enfield a few years ago. I can only assume they are being used as low power AM in the UK. Might be worth checking out. There could be some stereo stations around.
I don't think the UK ever really bothered with AM stereo, always just seemed to be the low-end mono odd-sounding stuff that we got, probably because we ended up with FM across the country, and given we're a small island nation compared to the US, we didn't need the long-range of AM, so nobody bothered adding the stereo option...
I would think all broadcasters rushed to FM. The country is relatively small compared to the USA, so you can get FM almost everywhere, and the quality is so much better than AM, and in stereo.
If people switched to AM it was too listen to stations like Radio Luxembourg which was difficult enough to receive on mono. A 9KHz channel spacing and stations all around Europe filling almost every channel at night didn't help. Radio 1 did have to share and FM channel with Radio 2 for a long time though. However, you are right that any money being invested into new transmitters etc in the U.K. was going into FM. Surprisingly, today Smooth Radio is only available on DAB and AM here. I think that is due to some legacy thing about licences and a lack of FM frequencies.
C-Quam AM Stereo was tested in the UK in the mid to late 1980s but Ofcom decided not to approve it. But listeners in southern England were able to hear AM Stereo from France Bleu on 864 kHz from Paris, until it got shut down a few years ago.
AM stereo is one of those things I was interested in as a teenager when it started in the mid-80s, but if there were stations using it there were few radios to buy, or they weren't affordable for a kid. Years later an occasional radio can be found at a time where I can afford them but few stations still broadcast in stereo. It was an interesting standard that failed to really take off, even though it clearly sounded great.
I recently picked up a mint Grundig that I coveted many years ago. Its just gorgeous and I love it. Its over 20 years old but I think the design has aged very nicely.
Right before your video I gave up over a week of work on a 1979 Pioneer deck after snapping a wire in the end. I guess nobody is alone in this situation haha.
Also want to say: I don't understand 90% of the nuts and bolts of this stuff. But I watch and enjoy your videos regardless, and I think that says a ton about the content you put out and the way you produce it. I don't have to fully know the technicals to enjoy and that is much appreciated. That's all for the Sunday morning gratitude - thanks again.
I had emailed with Cuff long ago about having him add AM stereo to my Satellit 800, but I never did it. The only AM stereos I ever had were in cars. The one in the Cadillac was remarkably good, best AM radio I ever had and happened to be stereo, too.
@@vwestlife Seriously no joke on that one, and I live in a rural area, where Walmart, Aldi, etc.. are a 30+ minute drive away, so in my family we plan our trips way more carefully now with the gas cost, and say can we get this, or that at the Dollar General, or Famaily Dollar/Dollar Tree combo stores right down the street from us instead. 😅
Still amazed at how good AM stereo sounds. Ugh JCP&L gets honorable mention here, everyone's "favorite" electric company. Not only did their transmission line failure take out their own customers but also Sussex REC. In addition there was also a blackout in Toms River on the east side of town. You were lucky to have power since you also have JCP&L. Generator is a good investment! I was surprised at how little coverage it got on TV. Seems like a pretty big deal to have a transmission line fall on an interstate!
I find that stereo sounds different even if the speakers are close together or you are not even in front of them.. The way sound bounces around even the small separation gives you some extra dimension.
I am so sad that there is no AM in Germany anymore. In my car I sometimes get faint reception of French or some Eastern European channels and the French one is sometimes even somewhat audible and listenable to, even though I am like 1,000km from the French border. I wish we still had the Long, Medium and Short Wave AM here im Germany 😢
My second hand A100 just has a few light scratches no dents at all but alas am stereo was never legalized here in the UK not even low power am stereo transmitters
I had the SRFA1 model you displayed. When I took it apart to clean the switches, the five AM antenna wires broke away spontaneously from the circuit board. I hadn't forced or tugged -- they just flicked away. I couldn't trace where to solder-back the wires, so I gave up and recycled the circuit board. That was the first sony product to ever give me trouble. Though you can still buy AM stereo tuners and converters online, both stereo stations in my region took out their stereo exciters. Though I enjoyed the sound quality when I could get it, the era is finished for me.
Yes, AM stereo has so many advantages over what we get today in way of digital, it has that full rich stereo sound and as for 1010 Toronto it is transmitting in mono these days. There is some hope I have been working on a improve AM stereo format for 2020's, that has encoded noise reduction and it can send out timing information, called the C-QuAMv2 system.
My dad had a Sparc-o-matic stereo in his truck in the late 80’s. I remember sitting in the driveway listening to stations in AM stereo. I think that at the time there were at least a couple of stations in Chicago that broadcast in AM stereo. (Now I’m gonna have to look up Sparco-o-matic car stereos to see which model it was.)
@@mattyfrommacc1554 Ben runs another UA-cam channel (I know, I'm one of his patrons). He drove all the way from South Dakota to Minnesota last month to try and get AM Stereo. I saw VWs fluourescent licence plate video where Kevin showed the same model radio Ben used a fortnight ago. Never thought a crossover was in the works.😅
1010am from Toronto is what I play everyday, which is were I'm from, it used to be CFBR 680AM all music and news back in the 80s. Now it's 680 NEWS ALL DAY AND WITH THE WEATHER.
The late Chris Cuff? I didn't realise he'd died, I used to watch his videos and I can't remember his UA-cam handle, I think his videos are still on UA-cam. I liked his content.
To me it looks like all the dial drive wheels and pulleys are mounted on a single plastic part. Maybe it's possible to remove that part without having to unstring the cord?
That coil part of the wideband sidebands pass. The lock range is set by a potentiometer. That coil and it's counterpart adjust symmetry of your sidebands. The distortion adjustment is probably the lock range. When I go into mine, I'll post the video soon.
I had a similar Sony AM stereo over 30 years ago, and when I visited a friend back then, near Boston, MA, and I heard WQXR, 1560, from NYC, at night, then in AM stereo. I also remember, WNBC, 660, NYC, before it changed to WFAN in October 1988, had AM stereo in the 1980's.
Wait a minute...AM radio isn't around anymore in some places? Here in Newfoundland you can get CBC Radio One, VOCM, and other smaller channels on it. I often turn to AM radio when I can't get any signal from FM stations while driving across the province.
The late Chris Cuff explains why I haven't seen a video from him in a long time. I was thinking about his channel the other day and figured it was lost to the times when UA-cam was more fun. Sad to hear he passed but glad he can live on in some way with the radio you have.
What does AM stereo do when the signal is low but clear and slightly obstructed? Does it get nice and split stereo sibilant in the highest high end like good "bad" FM signal does?
Some AM Stereo radios have automatically variable bandwidth depending on signal strength, so that would make it less sibilant when the signal gets weak.
Loving AM at the moment with a Tecsun R9700DX, Tecsun R920C and a Grundig G2000A. I use them all with a passive loop antenna from Tecsun and can listen to stations from across Europe and further afield.
Great to see the bigger UA-camrs in this scene are acknowledging Ben's existence. It was already surprising to see Mat from Techmoan watch Oddity Archive, and I'm glad to know that you watch the silly fool behind the cardboard box as well Kevin. If you happen to read this, what do you think of his (past) music? I think it's not that bad.
Benny Boy's music is ok. Not really to my taste, but no better or worse than the "professional" music of it's genre. His vocals aren't great, though I'm sure he knows that. Ironically, Ben would make a decent voice actor if he so desired.
I was very bullish on AM Stereo when it came out. I still have two Sony SRFA-100 Radios and one Sony SRF-A1. The A1 has a poor jack connector, and both of my SRF-A100s have problems as well. I'd love to get at least one of them fixed. A unique experience was listening to WQXR in Hazeltine stereo sounding great on the stage, with another station carrying Larry King sitting in 7th row, center😀
Can you please do a video about AM transmitters? I know you did one on a toy one but it would be interesting to do one on more consumer/professional ones
Oh man... I must have been living under a rock... I didn't realize Chis Cuff passed away. I was friends with him on Facebook through the Antique Radio Forum, though I am not very active on the forum, and left Facebook several years ago. 😢
I was admiring your range of Radio Shack stuff. I worked at Tandy in Toronto right when CFRB started transmissions in stereo. So, the TM125, the 1000 & monitor and all the other stuff. I had a 2000. And a Coco3. Man, heady days.
Hi I have just bought an 8-watt AM broadcast TX I cannot get any range on it though the aerial to the end of the garden signal fades out before the end of the road what's wrong thanks? its not a bad TX as this is the second one I try to.
The FCC had adopted C-Quam as the standard, when Leonard Kahn sued the FCC instead of biting down the FCC said "let the market decide" this is why he SRF-A100 has switches, it was the swiss army knife of AM Stereo receivers, was a great radio if you can find one without paying an arm and leg, I had one as a kid, it accidentally got left outside and that was the end of it. most modern AM broadcast transmitters will pass C-Quam, Nautel I believe its built in and Broadcast Electronics (BE) with a add on card. by the time I became broadcast engineer in January 2022 at a cluster of stations in North Carolina we had sold our AM signals by that point, one of them was running AM Stereo, I believe its been switched off.
I remember when AM stereo was coming on-stream. It was a flash in the pan fad thing that lasted a few weeks. AM talk shows didn't seem to improve much in stereo. Wow. I had been living in Toronto about 6 weeks when CFRB went stereo. Was that Fred Napoli?
(3:08) I don't really like the way were the stereo speakers are setup like that, When they're too close. Because when you listen to this type of stereo speakers setup from like far away. It's gonna be like. Ah man, that's mono! Well, It couldn't make any difference between AM stereo and AM mono. (But it do make a difference, Unless if you have a Zoom H1N audio recorder being very close to it.) That's why I like a wide stereo speakers setup, Because it gives me a very *W I D E* stereo audio separation.
@VWestlife *I wonder why the folks pushing AM Stereo didn't promote the amazingly wide separation compared to fm stereo. It is very obvious that the AM Stereo channel separation is far superior to that of a typical fm signal. You probably remember when KYW 1060 went to AM stereo, in 1986, they made a huge deal of it, but it really wasn't worthwhile for news broadcasts, the only thing that made you realize it was in stereo is when they would play the ID bumpers, and jingles*
AM Stereo's channel separation actually isn't as good as FM's -- only about 30 dB maximum versus 50+ dB -- but it's processed differently, which helps to make it more apparent.
@@vwestlife Interesting because the AM stereo sounds much better to my ears. Thanks for the reply. Since you live in the Greater Delaware Valley when did KYW 1060 do away with AM Stereo? I thought they were using that until about 2005, but the internet says they turned it off in 1998, I'm sure I remember the station ID jingle saying KYW AM STEREO 1060 until the early 2000s...
What is your transmitter? I'd sure like to get a stereo AM transmitter. Too many FM stations in this area makes it hard to use an in-car FM transmitter.
I live on the other side of the time zone so it's dinner time from where I am. How do you feel finding another AM radio with stereo capability? Are you like a kid who found a gift under your Christmas tree 🌲?
I am no technician but when a friend from NJ sent me a Silvertone 4099 table tube radio with stereo phono input last April, I am the first kid on the block to have such a unit.
Vwestlife I just wanted to tell you after a decade of watching your videos, I finally met someone in my city who is also a huge fan of yours. We hit it off instantly and are great friends now. Thanks for all the content you've provided for so many years
how cool, I wish I could find the same.
While watching this video. I went digging in my cupboards to find an AM stereo radio I built as a project from the Australian electronics magazine Silicon Chip in 1989.
Listening to wide band AM does sound good, but no radio station in Sydney still broadcasts in stereo.
It was a good gimmick to sell new radios in the 90s, but the FCCs decision to not choose CQAM first made the radios too expensive for the public to want to buy.
From memory it was as good as a 70s cassette recording pre Dolby.
Yay! We get a Vwestlife/OA crossover!
It is sad that Chris Cuff has died. I love his videos. Nice to have that radio to remember him by.
You should hear 10Mhz in Kahn mode sometimes. Oh snap. You're going to need a shortwave receiver to convert to 450KHZ. There are time coders upper and lower sideband. Mostly chirping and pips. But it's awesome to hear them all sound off simultaneously on the minute. Whenever I get to it, I'll be back to send links on various topics on this one radio.
Thanks for the tip regarding turning the stereo distortion pot counter-clockwise. I just acquired an SRF-A1 in the wild after searching for an AM stereo radio for years and its pot was in the middle as well. I’m on the lookout for ways to improve this radio’s performance since there’s lots of interference in my area and the nearest AM stereo station is over 60 miles away. Even at night I can’t seem to catch it at all, so maybe I’ll take a road trip.
Really nice that you have that radio to remember Cuff by. A shame he passed. He inspired me to do all the turntable modding I do.
I am a fan of devices, but I live in a backward country and all my youth I lived through wars and economic blockades, and I did not enjoy practicing my hobbies by acquiring stereo devices from Sony, Kenwood and Technics brands. It's the first time that I know that there is a stereo AM radio, thank you very much for what you publish
Both of mine were stolen…still miss them. I still have my Srf A1 packed away somewhere in my move box.
The SRF 100 was a DX machine, but didn’t have the extended band. Before it was stolen my radio easily picked up 780 KHZ WBBM Chicago at my QTH in Tucson, Arizona. My trip to Washington DC saw it stolen, liked my previous one in Jacksonville FL.
Take good care of yours and watch for thieves. The Chip is Sony proprietary so good luck finding one, the used it in the Sony ICF-2010.
Have a great day!
Today I learned that AM Stereo was a thing. Thirty plus years and always thought stereo was FM exclusive. Your knowledge is appreciated, really neat stuff.
Warranty is 1 year. Says to bring that card to the shop to fix it. Becomes void with all the normal things like damaging it, trying to repair it, modify it. Number 5 talks about earthquakes, flood, lighting, other natural disasters, and pollution.. lol. My favorite part is number 1, where they say if its broken to bring it in and they will do their best. Very Japanese
Andor Corporation out of Tokyo is the company. It seems they are still around, but not at the address listed. They are listed as a software company on google
Interestingly your point about the lightning sounding cool on AM is actually how lightning detectors work. They have RF receivers that listen to AM-like frequencies and feed that back to a central platform, which then triangulates the lightning strikes to give you a location on the map.
WRNJ! Hackettstown NJ! Born and raised.
Wow, thanks for sharing this video and also the recording from CFRB. I live in Toronto and that was good piece of nostalgia. The announcer mentioned Kromer Radio, that was a well know store to purchase audio equipment for your home and car. I purchsed a stero system from there. The business closed in 2012 after 55 years in business when the owner decided to retire.
Even the AM Mono is seriously wideband and sounds flippin' phenomenal. I wanted one of Cuff's radios but never got around to it. That, I regret.
I have to confess I found your channel by accident, and I watched two clips before it dawned on me that it wasn’t Ray Romano I was listening to. I subscribed because “this guy is really good, and his voice is a bonus feature.”
That was such a great radio! I squealed the Christmas I got one of those. I must have gotten it Christmas '84. I wore that thing completely out.
I had no idea AM could even do stereo. Impressive! :)
I used to wonder why fm was stereo but am was not. I've experiments in 11 meters just a bit under cb radio band. I didn't have a pilot tone at
All
The perfect crossover doesn't exi-
Actually, for am stereo my first one got changed into the perfect analog am stereo. My sideband wide was +/- 13Khz within 1 DB either side. That was a painstakingly arduous task to align wideband to perfect. I had to disassemble that radio at least 100 times to get it right. You're all gonna be mad when I show you the potentiometer that controls the stereo lock range. I need to take you all on a tour of the SRF-A100 for real. I didn't burn my radios up from my real experiments. First one got stolen, 2nd one is maybe on storage and degraded. Got radio 3. Never opened. Look on my channel for my informal introduction to it.
I would be suspicious of the power supply to that daughterboard and the decoder IC, and any passive parts being out of tolerance.
For quite some time I had wanted to get another of Chris Cuff's AM stereo transmitters, this time with case and antenna tuner. He also sent me a board for a portable AM Stereo/FM Stereo radio he'd designed, and told me that at some point in the future that he'd give me all the info I needed to put it together. It's too bad he's gone.
I would be willing to sell you mine. It is complete.
Wow. I'm really impressed with the fidelity of AM Stereo, especially at Wide bandwidth. Granted you're very close to the transmitter as well, but it really does sound great. Not at all what I hear from the talk radio stations with bits of music these days.
It depends on your radio. Many talk stations transmit with the same 10 kHz audio bandwidth as I demonstrated here, but you'd never hear it if your radio is limited to the typical 4 to 5 kHz audio bandwidth on AM.
Australia use to have many incredible examples of c-quam wideband am stereo for example 3MP in Melbourne. Listen hear to a tape I had sent about 20 years ago ua-cam.com/video/IPPOEIfU0bo/v-deo.html
@@vwestlife actually the talk stations around here have trimmed down to about 7Khz fidelity and use some kind of reverb delay echo scheme these days. There are still a small handful of stations that still do music. And they sound good. Gentrification and digital have helped kill am radio as well. Not to mention the noise floor has gone through the roof, quality control is deregulated, led lights with screaming computers in them, electrical mains loaded with noise from cracked something or arcing somewhere on the high voltage line creating more rfi than a spark gap transmitter ever could. Am dx is best done away from major metropolitan cities.
@@vwestlife many also run at 4khz to eek out 5 more miles of range for the same 50kW. And it pisses me off. Also. I hate variable carrier. It makes fringe reception sound like ssb on an am radio. Damn you iheart for ruining am radio.
I remember when 590 VOCM flipped into AM Stereo in 86. Even those of us who only had mono heard an improved sound. I am guessing that improved sound was a result of attention bring given to the overall sound. In 1990 when my hometown 570 CFCB went to AM Stereo, I got to hear it in stereo and I loved it. I’m still using that stereo copy of Jailhouse rock. Hundreds of times at weddings and other public events. I absolutely love the sound.
Chris Cuff - he will forever be missed. Among other things over the years, he gifted me a NOS Magnavox 45 changer spindle for my Maggie consolette I have in my office at work. I kept the box he shipped it in and the OEM box the stacker spindle was in which, after he passed a while back, became displayed together beside my Maggie. Rest In Peace my dude.
I have one of Chris Cuff's AM Stereo Transmitters. I did not know he has past away. I have not yet mounted the board in a proper designed case. I will do this soon in his memory. Thankyou for this sad information. He was a wonderful guy and a friend of my husband's brother in Prince Edward Island.
To fix the dents in the frontplate (if you can take it off) you can use the backside of a smooth bold handle of a screwdriver to push it (gently) back in original position (on the backside of the frontplate of course). You need to do this on a very flat smooth surface such as a bathing tile and take your time and important, do not use a hammer to tick away the dent it doesn't work. Only use controlled human force. Keep the frontpanel flat on the tile while doing this. I have used this method a couple of times (on speaker grills) and the result is amazing if you don't rush the whole process.
11:00
VW sounding like the god of radio repair.
This video brings back some memories for me. I purchased the SRF-A100 new in 1984. I also had the Realistic AM stereo tuner you briefly showed in this video. I was really hooked on AM Stereo back then. I even did a conversion of a Pioneer SX-850 to AM stereo by adding a CQUAM decoder board. All the units had issues with locking up on a stereo signal, especially at night time as the propagation kept unlocking the decoders. Kind of frustrating at times. Still it was worth the effort when things worked out okay.
As other comments mention, we never had AM stereo in the UK, I'm sure we all remember 247 Radio 1 in glorious muffled AM mono until the introduction of country wide FM stereo, what I did find interesting is, as per usual, with new tech.introduction, different broadcasting decoding formats before eventual standardisation. Also look at the quality of those Sony pot's!
Indeed, it makes me wonder how many listeners the BBC lost until they deployed their FM transmitters in 1988 (as a kid I enjoyed the funny DJs on Radio 1 but the sound quality was so bad that I switched to local FM stations in the early 80s)...
C-Quam AM Stereo was tested in the UK in the mid to late 1980s but Ofcom decided not to approve it. But listeners in southern England were able to hear AM Stereo from France Bleu on 864 kHz from Paris, until it got shut down a few years ago.
@@vwestlife Darn it, another thing offed by Ofcom, cheers for the info!
Not sure where they are, But I had an order for a large quantity of 10 watt c-quam transmitters from a guy in Enfield a few years ago. I can only assume they are being used as low power AM in the UK. Might be worth checking out. There could be some stereo stations around.
I don't think the UK ever really bothered with AM stereo, always just seemed to be the low-end mono odd-sounding stuff that we got, probably because we ended up with FM across the country, and given we're a small island nation compared to the US, we didn't need the long-range of AM, so nobody bothered adding the stereo option...
I had no idea there was AM Stereo or that it was even possible. But you’re right, it makes sense here in the UK when you think about it.
I would think all broadcasters rushed to FM. The country is relatively small compared to the USA, so you can get FM almost everywhere, and the quality is so much better than AM, and in stereo.
If people switched to AM it was too listen to stations like Radio Luxembourg which was difficult enough to receive on mono. A 9KHz channel spacing and stations all around Europe filling almost every channel at night didn't help. Radio 1 did have to share and FM channel with Radio 2 for a long time though. However, you are right that any money being invested into new transmitters etc in the U.K. was going into FM.
Surprisingly, today Smooth Radio is only available on DAB and AM here. I think that is due to some legacy thing about licences and a lack of FM frequencies.
C-Quam AM Stereo was tested in the UK in the mid to late 1980s but Ofcom decided not to approve it. But listeners in southern England were able to hear AM Stereo from France Bleu on 864 kHz from Paris, until it got shut down a few years ago.
@@vwestlife Thanks for the info.
AM stereo is one of those things I was interested in as a teenager when it started in the mid-80s, but if there were stations using it there were few radios to buy, or they weren't affordable for a kid. Years later an occasional radio can be found at a time where I can afford them but few stations still broadcast in stereo. It was an interesting standard that failed to really take off, even though it clearly sounded great.
I recently picked up a mint Grundig that I coveted many years ago. Its just gorgeous and I love it. Its over 20 years old but I think the design has aged very nicely.
Right before your video I gave up over a week of work on a 1979 Pioneer deck after snapping a wire in the end. I guess nobody is alone in this situation haha.
Liked the old Chrysler car head unit
Also want to say: I don't understand 90% of the nuts and bolts of this stuff. But I watch and enjoy your videos regardless, and I think that says a ton about the content you put out and the way you produce it. I don't have to fully know the technicals to enjoy and that is much appreciated. That's all for the Sunday morning gratitude - thanks again.
I had emailed with Cuff long ago about having him add AM stereo to my Satellit 800, but I never did it. The only AM stereos I ever had were in cars. The one in the Cadillac was remarkably good, best AM radio I ever had and happened to be stereo, too.
Nice, now Ben can go on vacation again next summer, and look for more Stereo AM stations lol.
Maybe with a GoFundMe. Road trip aren't cheap these days.
@@vwestlife Seriously no joke on that one, and I live in a rural area, where Walmart, Aldi, etc.. are a 30+ minute drive away, so in my family we plan our trips way more carefully now with the gas cost, and say can we get this, or that at the Dollar General, or Famaily Dollar/Dollar Tree combo stores right down the street from us instead. 😅
My mother's '87 Pontiac 6000 S/E had a factory auto-reverse deck with C-QUAM and a 5-band EQ. The tape mech was made by Blaupunkt.
Still amazed at how good AM stereo sounds. Ugh JCP&L gets honorable mention here, everyone's "favorite" electric company. Not only did their transmission line failure take out their own customers but also Sussex REC. In addition there was also a blackout in Toms River on the east side of town. You were lucky to have power since you also have JCP&L. Generator is a good investment! I was surprised at how little coverage it got on TV. Seems like a pretty big deal to have a transmission line fall on an interstate!
Love this crossover of two of my favorite channels. This video is proof that UA-cam is indeed a community!
I find that stereo sounds different even if the speakers are close together or you are not even in front of them.. The way sound bounces around even the small separation gives you some extra dimension.
Was hoping this was Ben from Oddity Archive. Very underrated channel for those into retro electronics and technology.
3:32 - "Yes, we have no bananas"! :) Let's PARTY!
Consistently entertaining channel from the get go!
Adding in a "two of them" joke is how you can tell it's Ben's :P
Cool old vintage stuff you've got!!!!!!!
I am so sad that there is no AM in Germany anymore. In my car I sometimes get faint reception of French or some Eastern European channels and the French one is sometimes even somewhat audible and listenable to, even though I am like 1,000km from the French border.
I wish we still had the Long, Medium and Short Wave AM here im Germany 😢
Never thought I would see an Oddity Archive/vwestlife crossover, great stuff as always.
Need a VWestlife/OA/Techmoan/LGR super crossover.
@@veganguy74 Where they all hide behind a printer paper box.
I remember when you posted that am stereo technics toyota radio. I was so happy to get that same model when i bought my 86 cressida years later
My second hand A100 just has a few light scratches no dents at all but alas am stereo was never legalized here in the UK not even low power am stereo transmitters
But that hasn't some people from using low-power AM transmitters in the UK anyway. Also there is an AM Stereo station in Waterford, Ireland.
@@vwestlife I use to get a good signal from there night time on 1593 but unfortunately that station is long gone...
I had the SRFA1 model you displayed. When I took it apart to clean the switches, the five AM antenna wires broke away spontaneously from the circuit board. I hadn't forced or tugged -- they just flicked away. I couldn't trace where to solder-back the wires, so I gave up and recycled the circuit board. That was the first sony product to ever give me trouble.
Though you can still buy AM stereo tuners and converters online, both stereo stations in my region took out their stereo exciters. Though I enjoyed the sound quality when I could get it, the era is finished for me.
Yes, AM stereo has so many advantages over what we get today in way of digital, it has that full rich stereo sound and as for 1010 Toronto it is transmitting in mono these days. There is some hope I have been working on a improve AM stereo format for 2020's, that has encoded noise reduction and it can send out timing information, called the C-QuAMv2 system.
My dad had a Sparc-o-matic stereo in his truck in the late 80’s. I remember sitting in the driveway listening to stations in AM stereo. I think that at the time there were at least a couple of stations in Chicago that broadcast in AM stereo. (Now I’m gonna have to look up Sparco-o-matic car stereos to see which model it was.)
It's spelled Sparkomatic, and I have one of those too, the SR940.
Thanks for sharing with us
the crossover of the decade!!!
I wonder if KLAK will ever convert to AM Stereo? It'd make Sergei sound considerably more rich and timbrous.
In old country it is mandatory for all broadcasters that the left channel is reserved for spoken numbers
It's nearly 3am here in the UK. And I'm watching VWestlife fixing Ben's Junk. Yes, I knew my life would end up like this.
same here, lol, I did not even know AM Stereo existed?
4:04 am here -(time not found lol)- I never clicked on a notification that fast. Oh and learned that AM stereo was a thing too...
@@mattyfrommacc1554 Ben runs another UA-cam channel (I know, I'm one of his patrons). He drove all the way from South Dakota to Minnesota last month to try and get AM Stereo. I saw VWs fluourescent licence plate video where Kevin showed the same model radio Ben used a fortnight ago. Never thought a crossover was in the works.😅
1010am from Toronto is what I play everyday, which is were I'm from, it used to be CFBR 680AM all music and news back in the 80s. Now it's 680 NEWS ALL DAY AND WITH THE WEATHER.
try a guitar pick to remove the knobs . also works great when opening walkmans.
The screwdriver worked fine.
I think this is the clearest I think I’ve even heard AM.
Oh nice a video a bit late but I'm happy and it's radio related. Have a nice Friday tomorrow.
The late Chris Cuff? I didn't realise he'd died, I used to watch his videos and I can't remember his UA-cam handle, I think his videos are still on UA-cam. I liked his content.
gonna be 2 years since he passed away in a few months.
I have a link to his channel in the video description.
To me it looks like all the dial drive wheels and pulleys are mounted on a single plastic part. Maybe it's possible to remove that part without having to unstring the cord?
That coil part of the wideband sidebands pass. The lock range is set by a potentiometer. That coil and it's counterpart adjust symmetry of your sidebands. The distortion adjustment is probably the lock range. When I go into mine, I'll post the video soon.
Great video, never realised am stereo was a thing tbh , only ever thought it was fm
Got to miss those old Sony service manuals. I really hope this type of stuff makes a comeback with the right to repair movement taking off.
I had a similar Sony AM stereo over 30 years
ago, and when I visited a friend back then,
near Boston, MA, and I heard WQXR, 1560,
from NYC, at night, then in AM stereo.
I also remember, WNBC, 660, NYC, before
it changed to WFAN in October 1988, had
AM stereo in the 1980's.
Didn't know Stereo AM existed and can also sound that good. I only remembered AM as whistling lofi sound.
AM was always terrible in the UK the day stereo FM BBC Radio 1 started was heaven
Thanks for the video, Kevin.
Wait a minute...AM radio isn't around anymore in some places? Here in Newfoundland you can get CBC Radio One, VOCM, and other smaller channels on it. I often turn to AM radio when I can't get any signal from FM stations while driving across the province.
2 of my most watched channels 💯
Well, that's an audio first for me. I have never heard AM stereo before and I have been around a while. Interesting. Thank you.
The late Chris Cuff explains why I haven't seen a video from him in a long time. I was thinking about his channel the other day and figured it was lost to the times when UA-cam was more fun. Sad to hear he passed but glad he can live on in some way with the radio you have.
I learned from radiotvphononut in a recent video.
What does AM stereo do when the signal is low but clear and slightly obstructed? Does it get nice and split stereo sibilant in the highest high end like good "bad" FM signal does?
Some AM Stereo radios have automatically variable bandwidth depending on signal strength, so that would make it less sibilant when the signal gets weak.
Loving AM at the moment with a Tecsun R9700DX, Tecsun R920C and a Grundig G2000A. I use them all with a passive loop antenna from Tecsun and can listen to stations from across Europe and further afield.
🤗 "Mine has a glow in the dark sticker on top" 🤗 😭😂🤣
Great video as usual. I still love radio.
Great to see the bigger UA-camrs in this scene are acknowledging Ben's existence. It was already surprising to see Mat from Techmoan watch Oddity Archive, and I'm glad to know that you watch the silly fool behind the cardboard box as well Kevin.
If you happen to read this, what do you think of his (past) music? I think it's not that bad.
Benny Boy's music is ok. Not really to my taste, but no better or worse than the "professional" music of it's genre. His vocals aren't great, though I'm sure he knows that. Ironically, Ben would make a decent voice actor if he so desired.
I was very bullish on AM Stereo when it came out.
I still have two Sony SRFA-100 Radios and one Sony SRF-A1.
The A1 has a poor jack connector, and both of my SRF-A100s have problems as well. I'd love to get at least one of them fixed.
A unique experience was listening to WQXR in Hazeltine stereo sounding great on the stage, with another station carrying Larry King sitting in 7th row, center😀
Can you please do a video about AM transmitters?
I know you did one on a toy one but it would be interesting to do one on more consumer/professional ones
The single best crossover just happened. And I was wondering if the AM Stereo uploads on You Can't Download Vinyl was related to this...
Yes.
i had one and thought it was great at the time, very happy with it.
AM Stereo?! I never knew that existed. Mind blown!
Oh man... I must have been living under a rock... I didn't realize Chis Cuff passed away. I was friends with him on Facebook through the Antique Radio Forum, though I am not very active on the forum, and left Facebook several years ago. 😢
Even though AM stereo seems redundant these days. I remember when Radio Disney was on AM stereo!
I was admiring your range of Radio Shack stuff. I worked at Tandy in Toronto right when CFRB started transmissions in stereo. So, the TM125, the 1000 & monitor and all the other stuff. I had a 2000. And a Coco3. Man, heady days.
19:51 Curious, my hearing also goes from stereo to mono when someone slaps me on the ear...
Hi I have just bought an 8-watt AM broadcast TX I cannot get any range on it though the aerial to the end of the garden signal fades out before the end of the road what's wrong thanks? its not a bad TX as this is the second one I try to.
The FCC had adopted C-Quam as the standard, when Leonard Kahn sued the FCC instead of biting down the FCC said "let the market decide" this is why he SRF-A100 has switches, it was the swiss army knife of AM Stereo receivers, was a great radio if you can find one without paying an arm and leg, I had one as a kid, it accidentally got left outside and that was the end of it. most modern AM broadcast transmitters will pass C-Quam, Nautel I believe its built in and Broadcast Electronics (BE) with a add on card. by the time I became broadcast engineer in January 2022 at a cluster of stations in North Carolina we had sold our AM signals by that point, one of them was running AM Stereo, I believe its been switched off.
I was in the UK, and don't think AM Stereo was ever a thing there. And these days I think AM stations in the UK are mostly talk, rather than music.
AM stereo? Was that ever a thing in Europe? I had never heard of it.
I remember when AM stereo was coming on-stream. It was a flash in the pan fad thing that lasted a few weeks. AM talk shows didn't seem to improve much in stereo. Wow. I had been living in Toronto about 6 weeks when CFRB went stereo. Was that Fred Napoli?
"Yes, we have no bananas
We have no bananas today."
(3:08)
I don't really like the way were the stereo speakers are setup like that, When they're too close.
Because when you listen to this type of stereo speakers setup from like far away.
It's gonna be like. Ah man, that's mono!
Well, It couldn't make any difference between AM stereo and AM mono. (But it do make a difference, Unless if you have a Zoom H1N audio recorder being very close to it.)
That's why I like a wide stereo speakers setup, Because it gives me a very *W I D E* stereo audio separation.
I'm sorry you didn't fix your favorite radio model man. R.I.P to another AM Stereo receiver.
@VWestlife
*I wonder why the folks pushing AM Stereo didn't promote the amazingly wide separation compared to fm stereo. It is very obvious that the AM Stereo channel separation is far superior to that of a typical fm signal. You probably remember when KYW 1060 went to AM stereo, in 1986, they made a huge deal of it, but it really wasn't worthwhile for news broadcasts, the only thing that made you realize it was in stereo is when they would play the ID bumpers, and jingles*
AM Stereo's channel separation actually isn't as good as FM's -- only about 30 dB maximum versus 50+ dB -- but it's processed differently, which helps to make it more apparent.
@@vwestlife Interesting because the AM stereo sounds much better to my ears.
Thanks for the reply. Since you live in the Greater Delaware Valley when did KYW 1060 do away with AM Stereo? I thought they were using that until about 2005, but the internet says they turned it off in 1998, I'm sure I remember the station ID jingle saying KYW AM STEREO 1060 until the early 2000s...
My Polk Audio home HD radio decodes AM stereo. I bought it new in 2006. What transmitter are you using? I’m looking to get one.
The joy I felt at saying "capacitors" lol
What is your transmitter? I'd sure like to get a stereo AM transmitter. Too many FM stations in this area makes it hard to use an in-car FM transmitter.
So far, just a long piece of wire strung up inside.
very necessary crossover
AM Stereo?
Wow I had no idea that even existed!
I live on the other side of the time zone so it's dinner time from where I am.
How do you feel finding another AM radio with stereo capability?
Are you like a kid who found a gift under your Christmas tree 🌲?
I am no technician but when a friend from NJ sent me a Silvertone 4099 table tube radio with stereo phono input last April, I am the first kid on the block to have such a unit.
All mine needs is a recap. I'm wondering how much damage has occurred from those crappy caps. Sadly, I'll never have time to fix it.