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| Reviews Summary for Kenwood R5000 |
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Reviews: 25
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Average rating: 4.8/5
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MSRP: $1050.00
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Description: General Coverage (30kHz-30MHz) All Mode with VHF option
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Product is not in production.
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AG6HS
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Rating: 5/5
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Jan 27, 2012 10:31
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Buy one, fix it, keep it
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I have several R5000's, all bought on eBay. All have had some age-related defects (key bounce, PLL issues, noise, heat) which needed repair / surgery. Some of the old semiconductors are tough to find, but almost everything else is available. Inrad still sells crystals for them, and a guy on eBay sells a set of capacitors. A white LED fixes the burned-out meter bulb. Keyboard surgery to clean the contacts is tedious. But once repaired / maintained, they are top performers with "classical" good looks, a joy to use, with legendary Kenwood sound.
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N3WAK
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 3, 2010 04:28
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Great Receiver
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I have owned my Kenwood R-5000 for more than 20 years, originally purchasing it at a Radio Shack in Tacoma, Washington, near McChord AFB. It made numerous PCS moves with me when I was in the Air Force. It runs hot. There's a periodic "key bounce" problem that I have to deal with, but never bothered about getting fixed. The display brightness, while perfectly adequate, is a bit dimmer than it was two decades ago. But, this is a fantastic receiver! Great audio, great sensitivity, great selectivity even with stock filters. I have the external matching speaker, but it was expensive and the internal speaker sounds better. In short, for mere mortals, you won't do any better than with this classic, capable vintage rig. Now, just bring back all of those classic short wave broadcasters like in the good old days! 73, Tony N3WAK
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KB8DNS
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 18, 2010 18:15
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One of the best!
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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No need to repeat but it is one of the best receivers! Better receive than it's transceiver brother the TS440s! Only the TS430S comes close! I kick myself for selling mine!
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SWL377
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Rating: 5/5
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Feb 2, 2009 10:21
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Fantastic non DSP rcvr
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I echo all the accolades for this fine old school design (non DSP) receiver. My only complaint is that it runs hot. I have had no failures so maybe the heat doesn't matter unless you are considering power efficiency.
One issue rarely mentioned is how RED HOT this is on VHF with the converter installed. It smokes dedicated VHF rcvrs of all kinds, beats em hands down on sensitivity and low noise. The only thing that can do as well on marine VHF is an old Motorola MODAR xtal controlled radio. The 5000 (with VHF converter) will pull in a very weak VHF signal and give you intelligible copy when many other rcvrs will not.
The HF scanning function works well. The rcvr is very stable, holds near zero beat on WWV for hours on end. Some report keypad problems as the rcvr gets older, but I have had none.
There is a reason that the 5000 still brings top dollar used in the era where you can get a black box DSP rcvr for less that has better specs. In a real world weak signal shootout, I'd place my bets on the 5000 vs the low end DSP rcvrs such as the Ten Tec RX 320 etc.
Kenwood's engineers hit a home run with this design and it will surely remain a classic.
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BARRYED
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 28, 2008 14:19
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Best receiver I have ever used
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Bought this radio about ten years ago and since that time I have used and owned a dozen radios and the Kenwood is still the best receiver I have ever used and I have had no problems with it. It has a very low noise floor and the reception is excellent to outstanding on every band and in every mode. The audio is excellent and sounds best with the radios internal speaker even though I have and used the Kenwwood external speaker for this radio. If you want a receiver that will allow you to hear hard to hear and very distant signals, this is the radio to buy, it has benchmark receiver written all over it!
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26TM119
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 26, 2008 01:07
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NEVER SELLING
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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i have had my r-5000 for 13 years now,it is used daily,sometimes for hours on end and it has NEVER let me down EVER,yes it gets warm but thats all i can complain about,i would like the vc-20 vhf add-on but i stand more chance of becoming pope than finding one.get one,use it,keep it.
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M1SPY
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Rating: 4/5
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Jun 20, 2008 17:04
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Usable
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Two drawbacks- no tuner dimple and no easily available qui9ck tuning mode. I now own 1 2 and 5K models. This is no better than the 2K except for the filters. No more sensitive than the other two. I cant see what all the fuss was about! Really should be 3.5
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KA2UUP
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Rating: 5/5
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Apr 28, 2008 05:56
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Excellent receiver
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I got mine with operating manual and original box from a SWL who is now SK about 9 years ago with some of the optional filters installed. He cautioned me that the rotating know on the notch filter controller was non-operational. Doing a search and joining the Yahoo R5000 user's group, it found out that i could get a replacement nob through Pacific Coast Parts. The replacement took ten minutes to do. This is a great receiver which I normally use to pull distant AM stations at night (NYC) from Massachusetts and also listen to shortwave broadcasts from Radio Havana, RNE, VOA, etc. Would not trade it for anything.
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PE1IOC
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Rating: 5/5
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Apr 27, 2008 23:14
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Stiil going strong !
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I bought mine from the son of a silent key some years ago. Since then this nice rx gave me many, many hours of pleasent listening. The sound of the internal speaker is amazing good and clear audio. Some improvement was made by connecting it to my old Yeasu 901 station speaker. One day the display started to give dots into the readout on higher bands with no receiving. Lower freq's o.k. , but after some time dots also appear here and no receiving at all. I found out in the internet that the VCO number 2 was not locking. I replaced the internal battery and ' voila ' , problem solved ! This rx will not leave my shack and hope to find the VHF converter once. My 5000 was running hot by using the internal power supply after some hours, but solved the problem by using a small 12 Volt vent of an old 286 CPU from the junk box..At yahoo groups you will find more 5000 enthousiasts ! 73's
Tjerk
PE 1 IOC
The Netherlands
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WDX7DBG
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Rating: 5/5
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Jan 10, 2008 10:04
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A supremely underrated DX machine
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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I picked up one of these radios stock on Ebay a while back, with the VC-20 VHF converter included. I spent some extra to customize it out and added the following:
1. IC-10 interface chips for computer control; resellers on Ebay carry the equivalent chips, or you can order them yourself for a lot cheaper from Mouser or another electronics supply house (they're an 8251A and a 4040; Google is helpful here). Also an IF232 interface cable from G4ZLP (available elsewhere as well)
2. A replacement 6kHz AM filter from INRAD - if you only make one upgrade to the radio, DO THIS! The stock filter is crappy at best, and getting a better one will get rid of the constant whistling heterodynes that otherwise plague AM reception. My interests lie in shortwave broadcast DXing, so I also added a 4kHz AM, and 2.8 and 1.8 kHz SSB filters as well. (The R-5000 has 4 filter slots.)
3. A finger dimple (from fingerdimple.com) to the main tuning knob to make it much easier to tune.
As a result I have a sensitive, selective, excellent DX machine that can handle anything from a weak signal buried near a stronger one to hours of program listening, and I can run the whole thing from my computer via Ham Radio Deluxe and Shortwave Log. And it still costs less than the vaunted Drake R8A/B, and IMHO performs even better. For some reason the R5000 never gets the attention that other receivers do like the Drakes and the JRCs and the Icom R75, but it's as good or better a performer than all of them.
The lone drawback to the R-5000 is keybounce, which can be really annoying when present, but using computer control is a workaround as well. Mine has it on a couple of keys and there's apparently an involved process to take off the keypad and clean the contacts, but it hasn't bothered me enough to actually try it.
Between that and the low-grade stock 6 kHz filter, if I could I would give R5000 about a 4.8 out of 5. But if you get one without keybounce and a good filter (either the Kenwood YK88-A1 or the equally good equivalent from INRAD), it's a solid 5-star performer.
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