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| Reviews Summary for Collins designed R-390A |
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Reviews: 26
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Average rating: 4.8/5
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MSRP: $300-600 used
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Description: Military type receiver with .540 to 30 mHz receive. More a AM/CW based receiver which performs well on SSB while reducing RF gain control. Extremely heavy, electron tube based design. Collins designed with different manufacturers.
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write your own review of the Collins designed R-390A.
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VK3DWZ
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Rating: 5/5
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Apr 26, 2009 23:44
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A Classic
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Got mine 21 years ago, and it's still going strong!
Smooth, excellent audio (after you perform Mr. Rippell's audio mod.); superb sensitivity when you use the 4kc/s (Mechanical) Filter and excellent sensitivity.
Every night, I tune mine to 9975kHz, Voice of Korea in Pyongyang broadcasting to East Asia, and enjoy their 'excellent' programs. Reception is ofter of 'local' quality -- not bad for a transmission from D.P.R.K.
The word 'classic' is overused these days, but in this case it is a title richly deserved.
I have owned many other receivers in the past, but the 'Collins' R-390A easily surpassed them all.
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EA4BB
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 27, 2008 10:36
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Still the Very Best
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I have owned 3 other R390A receivers before, which I got in various conditions (from absolutely deplorable to just fair). I cured them all of their ailments and used them for many years of very, very enjoyable radio, and sold them always in order to get a “better” one.
One day I decided I liked this receiver so very much I would try getting a “perfect” one; mechanics, electronics and cosmetics, and would keep it. That is how I ended up with my current all-EAC “Rick Mish” R390A. I paid very dearly for this one, especially for bringing it here with the killing current post rates US-EU. But, my goodness, what a reward for my trouble! In my view this is the one of the best imaginable SWL DX machines ever made, if not the best.
I must say beforehand I am quite sure modern professional receivers will outperform in many ways the R390A. Well, those start here at 15,000 euros, I can’t even think of getting one and I am not sure I am really interested after all. This is partly because I also regard the R390A as a very charming radio, with its amazing Swiss watch-mechanics, its old gas dispenser – style frequency meter and its many, many tubes. I don’t find modern receivers half as charming.
I tried my R390A against many modern amateur-grade receivers and some professional ones along the years, and the R390A always beat them all, hands down.
The R390A won where it is good at (AM and CW, that is). I am getting at some point an external product detector for this radio and feeding it with the 455 IF output of the receiver, and see what it does, but I have already some radios designed for SSB which work very well in that mode, and somehow I am not inclined to modify at all this particular receiver (had the Capt. Lee’s or Dallas Langford’s modifications in my previous R390As and they worked very well indeed).
Going back to my point, I am pretty sure there are better things nowadays, and they cost a lot of money too. One of the (many) good things of an R390A is you can get one for a more or less affordable sum, and you still get a professional receiver which will outperform BY FAR all of what you can get for a similar amount of money.
There were very many of them made, so there are zillions of spare parts in case you will ever need one, and tubes are still widely available (grab a spare set or two while you can!)
The R390A can and will hear anything that is there to be heard. It has a superb set of mechanical filters which are a just a pleasure to use and will dig you out a signal from where you believed there was none. Connect a good line transformer to the 600 ohm audio output and a decent speaker and get ready to enjoy the most pleasant audio experience you can think of.
And finally, buying a R390A is also entering a very special club. There is an incredibly enthusiastic crowd of aficionados out there, and you can get quite a lot of fun joining. Any superficial searching of the web will bring about many excellent sites full of wisdom, and hints and tips. From the old Hollow State Newsletters to the sites with all imaginable manuals ever published, or the commercial sites put up by people who love and understand these babies as much as you will when you get one. I can’t think of any other 50 year-old radio which still raises so much passion!
73
EA4BB
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WL7AWC
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 26, 2008 22:13
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All Time Heavyweight Champ!
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I maintained and repaired thousands of these as a Ground Radio Repairman (AFSC 304x4) in the USAF Electronic Security Command. They can still outperform just about any receiver you care to name -- If they're properly maintained. I never considered the maintenance routine exceptionally difficult - with the possible exception of replacing the 10-step RF switch (which is unscheduled maintenance)... and, the spring loaded two piece gears can give you a fit. But both are doable once you've done it a few times. As far as alignment, follow the 84 and 168-day PMI workcards and you can't go wrong.
It's entirely possible to get ridiculous sensitivity numbers - like MDSs of -143 dBm or so; and I've seen noise figures in the immediate vicinity of 4 dB. The replacement for the R-390A, the R-2174 (Racal 6790GM) has a typical NF of 13 dB and there's not a lot you can do to improve it, so the R-390A comes out on top here too. The VFO was primarily made by a Chicago company called Cosmo Electronics so most R-390s, regardless of contractor (Collins, Stewart-Warner, Capehart, Motorola, Teledyne, and several others) had the same VFO. Since it was built to spec's, there were no major differences in the radios produced by the various manufacturers, although most of us thought the Collins manufactured units were superior - but that could've been snob appeal.
So, what do I think of the R-390A? I'd love to have one! It's one of the best radio designs ever and it wasn't in service intercepting signals for over 30 years for no reason, so that's testament enough as to it's capability. Long Live The King!
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KB1OKL
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Rating: 5/5
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Nov 25, 2007 16:15
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The best.
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I bought my first one several years ago, was advertised as being a "no issues" radio, well it had plenty when I got it including overloading, dead bands, no AGC etc. I had never worked on one before and wasn't going to start with this one. I sent it out to Chuck Rippel who did an excellent job with it, his work is well worth having him do it. The PTO is within 200 cycles from end to end, you can turn the kilocycle change knob with your little finger (no 390A wrist with this one), it's quiet, sensitive, selective and sounds good and I'm a musician (had his audio mods done also) I run it into a big SX-28 speaker. I'm also a BCB DXer and with the mechanical filters you can tune a bit past the split frequency stations and the hets disappear and the station is still intelligible, for example you want to hear 1521 Saudi Arabia which is next to powerhouse WWKB NY and is common here on the East coast, you put the 2 Kc filter on and tune it a bit beyond 1522 and WWKB drops right out of the bandpass and the het is gone. It's also very stable on SSB although I'm an AMer and is a great SWL radio too. it's my main receiver for both hamming and DXing and I own many receivers. They actually have a very logical layout and are probably easier to fix than many other anchors. Mine is a Capeheart who made all those lousy SS console stereos back in the 60's, they did a good job with these though. I now have a Motorola R-390A which I plan on getting to soon along with two Collins 390's which I'm now tangling with.
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K9CTB
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 22, 2006 03:11
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Always been great
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Ah, I remember these things. I worked on them when I was in the navy. I thought they were great receivers even before the "Yups" got ahold of them. Yes, kids, they were "cool" even before you sent the prices through the roof! Same thing happened to Harleys and VW bugs......"Oh these are SO cool!" Dude, they've always BEEN cool....you just GOT here. I have owned two others in the late 1980s and let them go.....I have been sorry every since.....but recently acquired another one with the Motorola plate on it and it will stay right here in the shack.
R-390s are very high-maintenence rigs to be sure, but well worth it. As I remember, fooling with the incredibly complicated gearset was a no-no unless you were a certified "gear-head". We had one such person on the ship, and he was quite a wizard when it came to slipping the gears in order to get the slugs to track properly. Once set however, there really was no need to adjust them ever unless they somehow became jammed. Dropping an R-390 would do it.....as would dropping a piece of hardware into the gearset and then expecting an RM to tune it. Guaranteed disaster. Other reviewers mention it, but it really is important to keep the R-390 tubes fresh. If you have no other tube-type gear and are thinking of buying a '390, I highly recommend purchasing a mutual conductance tube tester as well. The cheap, boil-test "tube testers" that you can find in the $100 range will NOT DO. Find something that Hicock made for the military....even a TV-7 is better than the drug-store tester. Really a must. If you're a tube fan already, you know what I mean.
Most of the really good reviews here seem to be from CW ops. Makes sense. Just as CW takes a good dose of self-discipline to master, so too, does the R-390. It's a very stable rig for SWLing, CW work or just general monitoring. Even without the SSB converter, you can copy SSB comfortably using only the BFO and a bit of filtering. That alone ought to tell you volumes about the stability of the R-390. One would never be able to stay sane while trying to copy a SSB signal with a BFO that drifts all about the place. I have actually copied MUSIC using the BFO as a SSB detector.....not too bad, really!
All of this, plus the fact that the radio design, if not the radio you actually have, is over 50 years old......makes this POSITIVELY a "5"!
73 all.
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WB3HUH
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Rating: 5/5
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Sep 17, 2006 21:33
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The best I have ever used
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Started life as a SWL and am still at it. I have owned and or operated about 30 receivers in and out of government. There is none better than the R390A. Some have come close but none better.
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K5MSY
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Rating: 5/5
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Sep 2, 2006 02:22
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The Mother of all Radios
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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It is a doubly unique radio because it is cherished as one of the very greatest receivers of the vacuum tube era, yet, it's fundamental performance specs have remained unsurpassed. I use mine nearly every day. Sometimes I use it with my Ten-Tec Omni-V as a secondary receiver on CW. In the fall I listen to LSU football on MW. For serious DXing it can hear EVERYTHING my Racal 6790GM and Rockwell HF-2050 can hear, and with less noise. With my KIWA MAP synchronous detector, AM performance is phenomenal. There is also an enthusiastic support group and a wealth of technical information available to the R-390a owner on the internet. If you find a nice one, buy it, collect two or three sets of spare tubes, and USE IT!!!
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W8ZNX
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 20, 2006 13:07
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one of the greatests receivers ever made
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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in 50 years as a swl and ham
this is one of the greatest
receivers ive ever owned
use it 90% on cw, 10% am swl
some may not like filter slection
i very much like the filter slection
wonderfull radio
mine will be in the shack
till the estate sale
Mac
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TUBESAREKING
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 30, 2005 19:04
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update
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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Well, after eating a large slice of yummy crow pie... I must report that my R-390A is now working really, really well. It needed an alignment in the worst way, and a refurbed URM-25D from Ashley Hall made aligning this rig a very pleasant experience.
The story started with me gently lifting the slug racks slightly while tuned to a weak signal and finding the signal shoot up 20+ db. Once the URM-25D arrived, I did a quick and dirty alignment, big improvement, then after enjoying my Collins for a few days, went back over it for a fairly painstaking alignment with some more improvement.
My 55 Collins R-390A now works superbly. A modest but noticeable sensitivity edge over my Drake R8 and Hammarlund HQ-180 on MW. My guess is about 1.0 uv/m sensitivity on MW, perhaps even 0.5, at any rate, extremely sensitive. excellant selectivity too, and awesome sound [I did Chuck Rippell's audio cap mod, using 0.047 uf caps] and I'm feeding the stock 1/2 watt output into a Hammond 600 to 4/8 ohm transformer, then on into a pair of KLH tower speakers I just picked up dirt cheap at The Source by Circuit City [the store formerly known as Radio Shack].
A superb sounding, superb performing rig.
But its on the higher frequencies that it really shines - pulling in WWV on 15 and 20 at times when other rigs are totally silent.
A lot of work, but for those who enjoy a challenge, well worth it. I'm so glad I stubbornly stuck to it!
Phil
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WB6MYL
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 11, 2005 09:51
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Wonderful HF Bliss
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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This is an update from my previous review on this great receiver; of all of my rigs (including a Harris 590, Icom R9000 and 7800) the 390 will be one of the last (if not the last) receivers to leave the shack; yes it is big and not for "touring" SWL, but the senstivity and selectivity is just great; more than that, no mosfet hiss and wide passband audio reminds me of listening to Miles Davis on my PV5 feeding a pair of Altec 1530 monoblocks driving my 801 matrix speakers. Parenthetically, not to be critical or "review another reviewer" but how can one objectively review a piece of equipment knowing that it needs work and alignment? How can one review a Bentley Continental knowing that it needs a fuel pump?!? It is not objective analysis and unfairly schews the average score. Not a criticism, just an observation. Thank you. Phillip W. Harris, PhD.J.D.P.C.
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