Grundig S450DLX Defective Designed Radio

Okay, here's the all new, extremely sad and annoying Grundig S450DLX Radio. Check out this short demonstration of why NOT TO BUY, noting here it's abysmal AM Band (Medium Wave) performance - due to its non-stop spurious tones - injected between each turn of the dial when manually scanning across the AM band. The design flaw (caused by IC circuit noise), renders the radio so insanely irritating to use, its just about useless for any casual scanning of the medium wave dial. If this was Grundig's (Eton's) attempt to kill off am/shortwave radios (and the hobbies of AM Dxing and SWLing...) in favor of the new WiFi Internet Radios - they have succeeded admirably. A more pathetic example of poor engineering design and blind quality control testing could not be better demonstrated. Grundig, WTF???.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Grundig S450DLX
• AM Dxing
• AM Radio
• Shortwave Radio
• Eton
• Grundig

[Aviator14]

Are you sure its not an internal buzzer to tell you whenever a button is pressed

[CmdrMic]

@Aviator14 Nope, it was not an internal buzzer, thanks. This was a defect in the early series. I have reason to believe it is now fixed (probably in no small part due to this video). Even with this issue fixed, I would not purchase the radio again - the radio is the bit "big" IMHO, for what it is... circa 1980s "plastic box" feel...

[RogueA007]

I just bought a S450DLX- no beeping on any bands while DXing. However, I did read how tons of these radios were returned en masse over QC problems, so, perhaps I just got lucky, and now I at least know that this radio may kick the bucket sooner or later over various issues. Good thing I decided to buy Radio Shack's replacement plan while I was at it...

[CmdrMic]

@RogueA007 Cool, maybe they fixed it. Its been a while since I purchased mine, so the problem has probably been finally addressed. I thought the design has potential, another few years... and they will probably be pretty good! ;-)

[Ramsoondar]

That noise is terrible especially for a new radio.

I'm still holding on to my Grundig S350DL Radio but even so I find they don't make quality SW Radios like the used to the plastic knobs make the radios feel cheap

[CmdrMic]

@Ramsoondar Thank you kindly for your reply. Yes, I agree with you that the "feel" of the S350 primary tuning dial is all wrong. It's sloppy, with backlash when tuning. It was one of the reasons why I went with the S450DLX. The dial on that unit was an improvement over the S350, but otherwise - it is an abysmal failure. At half the cost, I replaced the S450DLX with a Kaito KA1107. This unit is a bit "old school", but still performs very well, and has nice manual dial tuning for band scanning.

[ab6xs]

I've got one for you. My wife bought me one of these radios for our 30th anniversary. I put batteries in it and turn on the radio. All frequencies on the AM broadcast band are off 10 khz. For example, 740 KCBS in San Francisco tunes in at 730 AM. 1590 KLIV in San Jose tunes in at 1580 AM. Needless to say, I'm taking the radio back tomorrow for a refund. Completely unacceptable.

[capt777737]

I don't get those sounds, but I get the ones where it shuts off and on. Instructions do not say how to cut it off, but I found out how.

Turn radio off, unplug the adapter from the radio and plug it back in. sound gone, till yu press sleep or snooze.

Otherwise I got a good working radio.

It has no SSB tho but my Sattelit 750 and G6 Buzz Aldrin Radio, which I got for free with it, are good radios. I still got my DX-394 from 1998 when Sea Shepherd gave me cash money to buy one for the ship.

[NowLifeStarts]

I this radio. I did that until I pooped on it. Good as new!

[ForTheRepubl1c]

I have this radio too.

just bought it this week.

They must have fixed it or something, cause mine doesn't do that..

[33Qman]

I have the same radio, but it does not make that terrible noise. Maybe your is defective?

[MrSteveb1]

I've got a S40DLX, mine doesn't seem to suffer from this issue and I am quite happy with it. Like the comment above, I'd heard that some of these radios suffered from QC issues, but your right, should never have been released with that issue. I own several Grundig radios however and am happy with all of them. I also own the Kaito KA1102 and KA1103, very good radios with robust construction. You might consider one of those. Thanks for posting.