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write your own review of the ICOM R-9000.
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MW0ZZD
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Rating: 5/5
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Sep 24, 2009 06:22
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My best rx ever
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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This is a recent addition to the shack.Avery good receiver ,in fact,I do not use half what it can do as yet.
Very solid construction.
On AM listen to the world!
Very heavy and obvously high quality.Pricey when new but if you can find one used ,snap it up.I am told the CRT version is better than the LCD,but I do not speak from personal experience.
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WB6MYL
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Rating: 5/5
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Aug 6, 2009 09:23
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Still a top choice receiver
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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This is my second review of this fine receiver; everyone's comments and experiences are helpful in evaluating equipment; additionally, I do not like to "review a reviewer", but the previous review does spark some debate; his comments of "most units are faulty" is based on what? I have an R-9000 that I leave on for hours (yes, I turn the screen down or even off during those times) and had such hooked up to my M-8000 decoder and I have not any problems; I still A/B my rigs on a routine basis and despite my torrid love affair with my Icom 7800 and Harris 590, I still rely on my R-9000 for long term use; it just does not get in the way of the signals and love the simplicity; I was using it to transceive with a 775, but sold the 775 when I got the 7800. These rigs are still in demand as I don't see a lot reach the used market. Like me, I have friends that use the rig for long term use and they have experienced no problems, either; IMHO. Thanx for the bandwidth. Respectfully submitted for review and edification, Phil
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VK2XCQ
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Rating: 4/5
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Aug 6, 2009 06:31
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NIce radio, BUT.
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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The Icom IC-R9000 is a nice to operate radio.
BUT
Although these radios are not that old in years most have been heavily used for their short life and are starting to fail in many ways.
My own radio has had over 10 faults in it, some should have stopped the radio from working but this radio was over designed in many ways so it kept on working even with RF input components cracked and shorted to ground and the RF amp open circuit. There were over 30 very faulty electro caps, I have replaced over 90 caps to date, their failure was probably from the heat the receiver operated at for so long. These things get hot if you have no fan fitted to the back.
I think this is a radio for the experienced radio repairer, any one else should stay away from it.
Most are faulty in some way.
The good news is Icom have had all the parts that I have asked for and their prices are low, but you need the skill to find the faulty parts because icom charges high rates for repair work and then they will not warranty their work on radios over 15 years old.
I think this would be good to mention, do not align your 9000 when you first buy it, go through it and repair the electronic faults first, you may find that it will suddenly be working right and alignment will not be needed.
The good news is when you get it working properly, it is a very good radio.
Its RF and IF chain is exceptionally quiet even when it is at full gain, before the repairs, I often received signals within the noise floor and they were readable, for the same signal my other receivers provided a high local noise floor and the signal was hard to read amongst the background noise.
Its selectivity is excellent even though is has only a few filters, they do their job well, although Wide FM is a bit too wide for my personal liking .
Its noise blanker when carefully used is unbelievable what it can remove, DSP eat your heart out, this NB does not work only on pulse noise but other noise types, the other night I was listening to a station and noticed a small amount of distortion, I looked to see the NB on, I press it off and the station disappeared under 20 S points of noise, I turned the NB on and the station reappeared showing 1 S point.
When you get the hang of the NB with the Notch filter, the RF gain and the IF shift. there is very little that will stop the signal getting through.
If I had a choice to buy the IC-R9000 again, I think I would.
If you can repair it, it is an easy radio to use and listen to, it does just about all I would ever need, it is also the best base to start with, if you want to do modifications.
Every control is about the right size , although not always in the best place.
Internally the 9000 is repairable as most of the parts used are desecrate components of the larger size so you can hold them without tweezers.
A good de-soldering and soldering station is needed to safely repair all boards. A well established ESD procedure should be adhered to, if you do not want to cause yourself more problems .
Icom spares support is excellent, NOT LIKE YAESU or JRC.
Do not expect any board exchanges, they have none to swap with you.
Regards To all
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KD5VC
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 12, 2009 12:19
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Great Easily Modified
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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My first R-9000 was bought new in 1992, since then I have owned many different receivers, but had to go back and buy another one. This receiver is easy to work on, and can be made to work as well as any receiver with the advantage of the analog audio as opposed to DSP. I also have the IC-781 and IC-7800, I have owned Ten Tec RX-340, Collins HF-2050 (1st choice in DSP radios), Racal 6790 GM3, Mackay 3040, Drake R-8B (best "affordable" receiver), IC-756 Pro series (all 3 of them), 75S-3C, R-390A, etc. This time I won't let this one get away. In 1993 I wrote an article for the IRCI Icom Newsletter, I ordered custom 500 Hertz and 2.4 Kilohertz bandwidth filters for the 10.700 MHz IF. I then enabled the switching so that you had a pair of 500s with low or high cut using the IF shift in CW and RTTY narrow, and a pair of 2.4 KHz with low or high cut for SSB narrow. I also enabled the 6KHz filter at 10.7 MHz with the 6 KHz filter at 455 KHz for AM medium. This brings the TOI at 5 KHZ up into the 80 DB range (mostly due to the 500 Hertz filter in place of the 6 KHz filter. Add the Sherwood cooling fan, SE3, and conversion board and there is nothing that you could want that this setup could not provide. Originally I used it with an IC-781, but traded the R-9000 for a 2nd IC-781. Finally I am getting back to the best setup I have tried.
The prices on these receivers seem to be rising, it looks like the market place is reflecting what it took me 15 years to remember. The UT-36 is useful if you scan and record shortwave signals, you can record the frequency on one channel and the program on the other. Without the speech module you won't know how to get back to the source of that recording. It would be nice if it could also record the time, but some of the programs incorporate the time in the name of the audio file.
With Rob's fan, even a plastic radio won't melt around the R-9000.
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EB1CYY
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Rating: 2/5
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Jan 1, 2009 15:38
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Please, waste your money in other modern DSP radio!
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Really sorry for lovers of IC-R9000 for my comments, but i have spent many money on this radio and, after many tests, finally i dont like this MONSTER RADIO at all.
I have also an AOR 7030 and the reception is better and more clear with this small radio. The antenna used was a RF DX-ONE MKII PROFESSIONAL that i hardly recommend for people who lives in noisy city areas.
The reception on VHF-UHF is better with any of my cheap UNIDEN or YUPITERU scanners.
The function that no other scanner have is the spectrum analyzer built-in the radio, but this is a 90s radio and you can find faster and colored, spectrum analyzers like AOR 2000A.
The scanning function is really SLOW, the same if you move the dial manually!
When you turn-on this radio more than one hour, you can cook a chiken on the back of the radio. I have to move all my radios because im afraid to burn the plastics.
Some options like the voice-speech card, or the variable scan velocity are stupid options (in my opinion) because allways i like to scan as faster as possible and if you can see the frecuencies on the dial, you donīt need a BBC english voice who talk them.
One good quality is the memory buttons configuration that are very usefull.
Finally the PC connection is a nightmare because computers in 90s was slow and today are fast. Only half of conexions are succesfull. For example, PC connection with IC-R20 is perfect always, because is a modern radio.
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LW8DJI
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Rating: 5/5
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Feb 5, 2008 13:44
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Great Receiver!
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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I am the happy proprietor of one of these receivers, it buys it without working and it repairs i myself to it (I am tecnico in telecommunications) and everything what I can say of is: excellent very good operation and very robust in its construction this fact to last long time, functionally I cannot object nothing since he is very good and versatil, the only objectionable point is the high temperature to which it works but it is solve with an external cooler, excuse but I do not speak ingles and I translated with the altavista Babel fish
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VR2XMC
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 20, 2007 08:39
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Simple the best unless you get a ICR9500
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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I bought my ICR9000 (with LCD display) from Osaka. It has been realigned by ICOM before sending back to Hong Kong.
Although this receiver was built in the last decade, it is still the top one in its class. There is no other alternative in the market at the second hand price range of US$3.5 to 3.8K. While in the HF and 50Mhz range, it cannot out-perform my IC7800 in terms of survival under contest condition. It is an excellent receiver in general coverage with sweet audio. It is a good pleasure to use ICR9000 for SWL and band monitoring.
For anything above 50Mhz, I simply cannot find other receiver comparable to ICR9000. If you want to work digital, there is after market P25 adaptor taking signal from the IF out of the ICR9000. There is no other receiver covering 50-1999Mhz with comparable performance except the ICR9500.
However, the price difference of an ICR9500 with a second hand ICR9000L is huge. I agree that the resolution of LCD display may be less than the CRT version. The LCD version implies less maintenance burden. Current consumption of the LCD version is less and hence less heat from the REG Unit.
The REG unit of my ICR9000L is cooler than that of IC781. The addition of a cool fan, however, will lengthen the life of your ICR9000.
If you can find nice one in the second hand market, just take it. There are not many available in the marker except those from the government users. I am not interested in those from the government users because they were being used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Since the receiver is through hole construction, you can service it by yourself to some degree if you have the service manual.
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VR2AX
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Rating: 5/5
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Dec 14, 2005 22:50
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Top Class Receiver
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Time owned: 6 to 12 months
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Bought mine, a UK model #2341, from the original owner who bought it new in 1992 and used it fairly infrequently. The IC-R9000 surpasses my expectations as a professional grade and feel instrument. I agree with the comments in the previous reviews except that mine does not suffer from any front end mixer breakthrough, presumably indicating that the (f0-21.4 mhz) notch filter is correctly aligned. I have previously owned a IC-R8500 unblocked version and, while that was a good receiver and an enjoyable one to use in many respects, it did not inspire the same degree of user confidence as the IC-R9000.
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W6LBV
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Rating: 4/5
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Oct 10, 2005 13:28
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Just a smidge below "ultimate"
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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For about two years in this decade I was privileged to have the exclusive use of an R-9000 for commercial monitoring purposes, followed thereafter by an R-8500 operating in the exactly the same configuration for almost an additional two years. The R-9000 was an early production CRT version (serial number now unavailable, probably slightly >1000) with the matching outboard ICOM speaker/audio filter. It had been purchased new in the early 1990s. I do not have its complete history, but it is very likely that it had received no service or upgrades after its initial purchase, and physically it appeared not to have been abused.
In my application the receiver was powered from a central 12 v.d.c. power source, and was operated in the straight (knob) tunable mode and also as a programmable register-recall scanner. I did not attempt computer control of the receiver through its integral RS-232 port.
There is no way in which I would or could denigrate the R-9000. It is a superior receiver, one which is capable of yeoman service in many different communications areas. But it is not an "ultimate" receiver; mine had a serious flaw.
Commercially at least twice-daily from a quiet ground-based location, I monitored the 894 - 956 MHz band with the R-9000, using an outdoor SCALA OGB4-900 resonant base station vertical antenna and about 50 feet of LDF4 hardline. And I discovered what I later identified as some serious intermodulation mixes in the front end of the R-9000.
The spurious signals presented in the 902 - 928 MHz "license free" band segment and involved (positively identified) 945-952 broadcast radio studio-to-transmitter aural link stations and, independently, also some of what were probably analog cellphone base station transmitters. Based on the evidence collected using the R-9000 I had initially contemplated filing a report of spurious emissions against a local (non-Amateur Service) licensee.
As a final check of the accuracy of the measurements, I added a high quality outboard 902 - 928 MHz bandpass filter ahead of the receiver. The mixes instantly disappeared, and I fortunately avoided some considerable embarrassment. Subsequently, while monitoring this spectral territory with several different R-8500s working under the same conditions AND without outboard bandpass filtering, no mixes were observed.
About this same time I also installed a remotely-controlled R-8500 at a commercial mountaintop radio relay site to listen at 896-901 MHz for commercial LMR mobile voice transmitters in the valley below. The commercial site contained several active 900 MHz LMR band repeaters. While one could certainly hear some intermod on the R-8500 generated by the heavy RF "smog" that enveloped the mountaintop, the 12 and 30 watt mobile transmitters were nevertheless usually receivable with good voice understandability. I have to believe that under the same circumstances this particular R-9000 would have been useless.
I note that a certain well-known Federal agency also uses R-8500s for remotely-controlled tunable VHF/UHF receivers at its local fixed-installation spectrum monitoring pods.
Since I did not own the particular R-9000 in question, I made no attempt to perform an alignment on it. Perhaps a thorough realignment would have improved the front end intermod problems. I again freely stipulate that this chassis was probably an early production unit, that it very likely had never been serviced or upgraded, and that I have no field experience with later production R-9000s for comparison. Certainly the "statistics of small sample sizes" could play a role here. And I noted no obvious problems with this R-9000 in the HF and VHF portions of the spectrum; limited A-B comparisons between the 9000 and the 8500 indicated substantially similar signal reception performances on most frequencies. The R-8500 as a design, however, seems to have much better front end intermodulation rejection at UHF than did my R-9000 sample.
The R-9000 is excellent as a tunable general coverage monitoring receiver. However, its programmable scanning provisions are, by today's standards, somewhat difficult and limited. And it has many more front panel controls than does an "average" receiver (not, in itself, a disadvantage), which accessible controls occasionally need some operator attention.
In its time the R-9000 was an excellent, serious receiver, as is also the R-8500 (which has its own independent limitations). But the R-9000 is not immune from problems, and candidates being considered for potential purchase should be carefully tested. Likewise, IMHO, a premium receiver which exhibits such substantial UHF front end spurious mixing cannot earn a "5" even considering its other outstanding attributes.
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NI6S
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 8, 2005 10:45
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Outstanding!
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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After reading K6JPA's review, I was prompted to write one myself! I, too have compared the R-9000, which incidently has the same Sherwood modifications as his, and wholeheartedly agree that this is a more enjoyable receiver to use than other high-end radios, like the WJ HF-1000, etc. I have both and can honestly say that the WJ serves as a great "spotting" receiver, with its ability to dig out the weakest of signals, while the R9000 is good for extended listening periods of those same signals. Plus, you can't beat that it covers all the way up to 2 GHz, with no blocks in between! Hooked up to my M-8000 decoder, I can tune in most RF. And the laboratory-grade feel of the R9000 is superb. If you're a receiver buff like me, pick up an R9000 and you'll see what I mean! But be sure to get the Sherwood mods, too, with the SE-3 IF Output mod, the optional filters, and most importantly, the cooling fan which looks like OEM equipment and prolongs the life of the radio. Rob Sherwood keeps threatening retirement, so send your R9000 to him before he does! Feel free to e-mail if you have any questions.
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