[Patrick Turner]

I said....
Should you wish to fuel up the flame thrower, be my guest, gas should be at rock bottom prices because the Ay Rabs can afford to sell oil at much lower prices......

Peter Wieck replied.....
Far from it - AM radio once upon a time was a world standard and pretty good. I have a Zenith console from the 1930s that is capable of producing excellent sound - if fed a decent signal.

Sadly, AM today is a hodge-podge of compressed, limited bandwidth garbage shilling religion and the likes of Rush Limbaugh with little redeeming social value in very much most cases. I solve that problem for myself by using a small, full-range (20-20K uncompressed) transmitter from a CD changer. Most older AM receivers are much better than the signal fed to them.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

There is much BS on AM stations here which have talk-back with crazies with nobody to talk to, with mix of endless adds and pop music.
Some have HF emphasis to compensate for poor receivers so a tone control is essential.
Govt owned ABC Radio National and a couple of local ABC have high quality content without adds. Print Handicapped has good AF signal. The same hourly news program goes to Govt ABC Classic FM stations and to AM stations, fed from same source and AM from tubed tuner sounds better than FM from bunch of generic 1980 ICs.

Many old radios I re-engineered has loudspeakers with stuffed voice coils and cones after previous 70 to 40 years. Sound was dreadful, and when I changed speakers to something modern and with decent AF amp with triode and GNFB, and treatment of box to lessen colorations, THEN there was always better sound than when someone bought the radio. A trioded 6L6 is better than 6F6/6V6 tetrode, EL34 triode better than EL84 pentode.

But nearly all the old radios made by so called leading brand-names only gave 100Hz to 3.5kHz AF bandwidth with usual THD 5% at all low levels and much higher when AF level was increased. Trio and later Kenwood made AM sections of AM-FM receivers with switch for tertiary of IFT1 to extend IF BW, thus extend AF BW.
But the old tubed Quad AM Tuner WAS GOOD, IMHO, nicely made and MUCH better performance than local stuff made in Oz.

I know the majority of old radios were crap, easily seen when you do have a good signal source with ability for 95% mod with envelope shape THD 1%. HP606A could manage a fairly good AM wave, but the one I just built for 380kHz to 1,750khz is much better.

Better still might just be an IC for AM production; I don't know which chip.. But Topward Instruments made a function gene with FM and AM and I recall it had a pretty decent AM signal. Only trouble was the horrid potentiometer for Vdc to control the Fo. The output amp had no protection, and even when I fitted some diodes to limit accidental contact of Vo to +/- rails of gear I was testing, I still managed to fry the output bjts. One day, I accidentally let output RCA lead touch 240Vac Mains. I got crackling sound and smoke as every single chip which could fry - did. :-) Into the bin it went.
Patrick Turner.