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write your own review of the Eico 753 Triband.
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K7FD
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Rating: 1/5
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Oct 10, 2007 20:46
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Eico 753 Pro II
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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iT's nOt a BaD rIg OnCe yOu gEt uSeD tO iT!
73 jOhN k7fD
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K7ZSK
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Rating: 2/5
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May 28, 2007 05:28
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Radio by which all others are measured
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I had an ncx 3 for a year and a friend had bought and built a 753 from kit. Spent much time chasing him around on 75 and 40 ssb. Both of us hated our respective rigs because we had had several years of CW/AM behind us and CW was a joke on both rigs. I acquired TWO 753 w/TWO AC supply and one DC supply(manuals included) for $35.00 and they sit in my downstairs radio museum as a reminder of how bad a radio can be. I got rid of the NCX3 and went back to CW with Viking II and Mohawk RX.
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N4KH
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Rating: 0/5
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Feb 15, 2007 20:23
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A Real Zero
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Time owned: months
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Someone loaned me a 753 to play with for a week or two back in the 70s.
Has to be the worst rig ever made.
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W4CAS
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Rating: 1/5
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Nov 28, 2006 08:20
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Learned a Lot From This ol' Junker!!
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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Just couldn't resist adding my two cents worth of comments about this really awful rig! I acquired one back in the early 70's from a ham who told me that I could have the d--n thing if I just hauled it off and got it out of his sight! He had already performed a frontal lobotomy on the rig by removing the horrible VFO, but it was otherwise intact. After a little thought about what in the world I was gonna do with this newly acquired pile of junk and what I would do for a VFO, I decided to build a crystal controlled oscillator and put some of those ol' surplus FT-243 crystals I had laying around to work! Guess what?? It worked pretty well - so I followed up with a VXO circuit that gave me the ability to tune a few kHz to either side of the xtal frequency - and actually turned that junk heap into something useable! I used it fairly successfully on MARS and a few regular ham net frequencies for over a year then gave it to a new ham who used it for a couple of more years - and yes, he's still speaking to me! Once the VFO problem was eliminated, it was actually a passable rig - and I learned a hell of a lot in the process - like never buy another EICO ham rig!!
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VE1BLL
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Rating: 1/5
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Nov 11, 2006 08:04
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Not good.
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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The Eico 753 was my first HF rig (bought used in the late 70s). I spent months building a power supply for it (it requires numerous voltages). Only ever used it on CW.
The experience with the 753 certainly makes me appreciate 'modern' radios (like my Argosy II and Yaesu FT-77 ;-) ).
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KG6AF
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Rating: 0/5
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Nov 10, 2006 19:23
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The Yugo of HF transceivers?
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Somewhere in the deepest depths of the afterlife, the designers of this atrocity are buried up to their armpits in hot coals, with a cool glass of water and a copy of the RCA Tube Manual just out of reach.
I bought and assembled this incredible piece of electronic junk when I was 14, shortly after I got my General license. An astonishingly bad rig, the EICO 753 transmitted robotic, metallic-sounding SSB. Fortunately, the VFO drifted so rapidly that the person you were talking to usually attributed the bad tx audio to mistuning. Thanks to this rig's awful signal, I struck up an ongoing correspondence with an ARRL Official Observer in Palmyra, NY.
I did benefit in two ways from owning the 753: the phrase "You get what you pay for" was seared into my brain, and I appreciated my next rig, the excellent Drake TR-4, even more than I would have had I not had the misfortune to own this abomination.
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K3UD
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Rating: 3/5
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Apr 8, 2006 21:48
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Did the job
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I had a 753 that was built from a kit. Got it for very little money in early 1967 and it replaced my HF AM/CW Heath DX-100 (shows what I knew then)
but it was great to finally get on SSB. The main problem with the 753 was drift and plenty of it.
I once had a QSO with a ham who was running one mobile. It was a constant game of leapfrog in order to keep the QSO on track as both of us were drifting quite a bit.
I finally replaced it with a Swan 500 (also with a drifty reputation) but much better than the 753. I gave the 753 away to a ham who had just earned his General and was looking for something to get on SSB with. He used it for over a year and did well with it.
I rate it a three because of the yeoman service it produced for the ham I gave it to. It was easy to work on if something happened to it (like cooking the final because of a long tune up one evening) and other than the drift it was quite reliable.
73
George
K3UD
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VA3BD
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Rating: 5/5
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Apr 8, 2006 19:35
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Great Rig for the Price
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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C'mon you guys. Quit picking on the old 7drifty three. Fact is it got many of us on the air on Sideband at a time when even a Heathkit cost an arm and a leg.
I agree with many of the comments about drifting, and the radio wasn't overly sensitive, but it did get the job done. So you had to keep one hand on the tuning knob - Big deal!
Remember, in the mid 60's for the price of the 753, most of us could only afford old National or Hallicraters receivers and maybe a DX 20 or similar CW rig with outboard VFO. Those old boatanchors were ususally so worn down that they couldn't hear a signal above 40 meters.
For the same money Eico gave us a complete sideband transceiver with VOX, and it didn't take up all of your desk space. It was the VERY poor man's verion of the KWM2. (and you got what you paid for.)
Can't say that I miss the old Eico, subsequent radios I have owned were much better, but if not for the 753, as an impoverished teenager I wouldn't have been on SSB at all.
For that reason alone it deserves a score of 5!
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WA5UHK
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Rating: 1/5
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Nov 27, 2005 13:50
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The drifter
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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Bought mine in 1968 at Edwards Electronics in Lubbock as soon as I got my General ticket. I was too young to be suspicious about its low, low price. I chased every QSO(or perhaps they chased me) up and down the bands, tried all the mods and finally traded it, even money, for a Drake 2A receiver and went back to working CW with my old DX 20 until I could afford a Heathkit SSB rig.
You'd think after almost 40 years, drift would be defeated but I still read about it w/re: to MFJ products so I guess engineers don't worry about it any more now than they used to.
I'd rate it as "Awful" but that rating has to go to SBE's products.
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ON6AB
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Rating: 0/5
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Mar 9, 2005 14:14
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Ultimate junk
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Except for the fact that it got me into ham radio in 1973, this one should get the price of the worst rig ever made!
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