Grundig Radio Boy - Review of Satellit 400

Radio Boy

Satellit 400 review

(Revised June 2006)

The Satellit 400 is a PLL synthesizer tuned portable radio receiver, launched onto the market in 1986. It has full coverage (in International form, as reviewed here), with dual conversion & SSB on SW (more later). Introduced alongside the 650, a mildly modified 600, which offered the full set of traditional Satellit facilities, the 400 was useful for those who wanted a more compact radio, or didn't need the full range of facilities that the 650 offered.

Reception.

On FM, this set is more sensitive than expected, having similar reception abilities to the 500/700, and certainly more sensitivity than the 300. The tuning meter is a gem, well calibrated, consistent and rock steady. Grundig appear to have got the damping just right on the meter, the needle moving quickly to the right spot, but not overshooting. It also seems to give a true indication of signal strength. In short, a better meter is hard to imagine. It may not be a proper “S” meter, but is that necessary on this class of radio? It's worth mentioning here, that the restyle given to the meter is inspired. Replacing the wishy-washy and hard to read, though similarly dynamically perfect meter of the 300, is a superb design made to look like an LCD, giving a themed look to the area under the glass. It would have been so easy to get this wrong, and end up with a cheap-and-nasty "not-quite-there" look. However, it has been done so well, it will keep most people guessing as to whether it really is an LCD. The backlighting works perfectly to maintain the illusion, too. Despite this, it is a real meter, so much better than the LCD ones as used on the 500 or 700, which are OK, but lack the real "feel of what's happening to the signal" that a proper meter conveys.

On AM, there is a surprise. Most radios in this class have 2 main sections inside. An FM section, and an AM section. This radio is different! As well as the FM section, there are 2 AM sections! One, for MW & LW, is single conversion, wide bandwidth, with no frills, the other , for SW, is dual conversion, narrow bandwidth, with a few extra tricks. Not for nothing does the front state "SW-dual-conversion".

On SW, again a surprisingly good performance. Sensitivity seems similar to the Satellit 500, though there is more background noise, almost as if this were not dual conversion, though quite clearly it is. The difference is small, but noticeable. Again, the tuning meter excels, with a much more accurate indication of signal strength than the 500/700's LCD meter, which gives full scale on any adequate signal. Having said that, a look inside at the room taken up by this meter explains why it had to be integrated with the LCD on the 500. It occupies a lot of internal space.

Audio.

A widely acknowledged strong point of Grundig radios, this is excellent considering the size of the speaker, about 4 inches / 10 cm. diameter. Bass is not as strong maybe as on some older Grundig Satellit’s with bigger drive units, but better than the 700, and with similar clarity too. On this particular sample, bass on FM seems too strong, leading to distortion, and I suspect something needs adjusting, owing to age and use, but simply cutting the bass to about 8 on the 10 scale using the control solves the problem. Which radio you’d prefer the sound of is a matter of taste maybe, but, as with the 700, few would find much to criticise. The facility to use the radio as an amplifier for tape recorders also exists. Incidentally, ignore talk of 6 watts output! That figure is peak power, the RMS figure is 3 Watts on AC, and is therefore the same as the 300. This is more than the 500 or 700, and it shows in side-by-side comparisons when both are battery driven. When mains powered however, the difference is eaten up by the 500 and 700's cleaner, less distorted output stages, so the advantage disappears.

AM sound quality is mixed. On MW & LW, the set uses a wide bandwidth, about the same as the 700's wide setting, and so the sound is very pleasant. (LW/MW channel spacing is 9kHz, so a tight bandwidth is not required.) On SW, Grundig have used a narrow filter, the exact same filter as the the 500/700's narrow setting (Though other circuit choices have resulted in a duller sound than a 500 or 700 on "narrow"). This avoids the adjacent-channel interference common on SW, and allows for SSB use. It is, however, a little on the dull side as a result. Whatever Grundig's reasons for not using switchable bandwidths, it's a mistake they corrected on the 500! You can work around it to some degree however, by off-tuning by 1kHz either side, which opens up the treble nicely.

If sound quality is important to you, bear in mind you cannot connect an external speaker, as the output socket has a buffer resistor to run headphones. If you never want to use headphones, the resistor may be fairly easy to remove, or you could fit a switch to by-pass the resistor, to allow the full output to pass. This assumes you don’t mind spoiling the originality of the radio. The socket is a stereo one, wired for mono as no stereo facility exists. Monitoring through Sennheiser HD480’s on FM listening to a broadcast CD, the sound quality is very good, though slightly inferior to the Satellit 500/700. Line-out is provided by a DIN socket, and though lower in level, surprised me, by being as good as the Satellit 700.

Ergonomics.

Controls are well thought through, the keys fairly logically grouped, the sliders silky smooth and still crackle free despite the age of the set, quality components pay in the long run! Unlike it's predecessor, the 300, the 400 doesn't have the numerical keys set up as memory keys first, direct entry keys second. Grundig learned from their mistake with the 300! You simply enter a number, then decide whether to press "freq" or "station" (which means "memory").

Dial and meter illumination is permanent when externally powered, switched when fed by batteries. Unfortunately, the switch also selects battery check, which means you can’t use the tuning meter facility in the dark when using batteries.

Auto search is available on FM, (more below) MW & LW, but on SW the scan buttons act as metre-band skip keys. You can also enter metre-bands using the numerical keys, and unlike the 300, which had no SSB, amateur bands are included. (A metre-band chart, identical to the 500's, is printed on top).

Given the lack of other tuning facilities on SW, the tuning knob is definitely a necessity. Fortunately, its a gem, smooth and easy to use. For band scanning, it is much better than the Satellit 500 or 700 with a lighter, less notchy action, little chugging and no muting. Unlike the 300, it also doesn't change step size according to how quickly you move it. SW/MW/LW uses 1kHz steps, FM uses 10kHZ, smaller than the 500/700's 25kHz step, why, I don't know!

The LCD display is small and not very comprehensive, the possibilities having not yet been realised by manufacturers. Thus it is capable of displaying only the waveband, using pre-formed letter combinations, a few functions like auto-time, kHz, Mhz, station (memory position), metre band, and so on, plus the frequency in the segment-character section. This occupies the same section that the clocks use when switched off, so the clocks have to be called up manually when the radio is in use. The display is an improvement on the Satellit 300 in terms of contrast and viewing angle, though still not as good as the pin sharp LCD's on the 500/700.

Also, the same criticism as I have leveled at the Satellit's 300/500/700, regarding the rear stand/telescopic (whip) aerial arrangement, applies here. The aerial tilts and “locks” at 45 degrees, so it would have been nice if the stand had held the radio at 45 degrees too, thus holding the aerial vertical.

Overall, the above criticisms are based on hindsight. Bear in mind the fact that this set was leading-edge technology at the time, and you will realise that I’m not implying that this is not a good radio. Had I been writing this in 1986, This would have read very differently. Even today, all things considered, this is a nice set to use, and own.

Facilities.

Two clocks, joined by one fixed-at-one-hour-on timer, to the last tuned station only, 24 memory positions, & mechanical switching of power seem prehistoric now, but back in ’86, this was an impressive and innovative radio. An aerial socket is provided for SW. Switching out of the internal aerial is automatic, using a small switch in the socket.

Memory & clock/timer backup is maintained by 3 AA cells, in addition to 6 C cells that run the radio. Given that C-cells and D-cells are the same price in the UK, but D-cells have just over twice the capacity, (battery life on Alkaline batteries is 47 hours in this radio, 95 hours on 4 x alkaline D-cells in the 500) and you can see that battery costs are over twice as dear on this radio as they are for the 500, and that is not including the AA memory cells.

No internal charger is fitted, but rechargeables can be used for the C cells. They are not recommended for the AA’s as you are likely to lose your memory when they go flat! Care must also be taken when changing the AA’s! Fortunately, the batteries are all secure in their holders, unlike the famous Sony ICF2001D/2010 problem. You could probably bang the set against the wall without it loosening the batteries. Don’t try it with mine, though! The mains supply is handled internally, and is fused on the primary and secondary side of the transformer, fuses being accessed by a small removable plate on the bottom.

As I stated earlier, the SW stage has dual conversion, and a narrow bandwidth all to itself. It also has a DX/Local switch, and SSB with a fully variable BFO. You can't select the sideband, but it does a fairly good job of resolving hams and other utilities, and also, being fully variable, you can use the BFO on SW broadcasts, where it sometimes helps, sometimes doesn't. In this respect, it scores one over the 500, which has no fine tune BFO facility, and so is generally OK on SSB signals, but useless when using the BFO on AM signals. The SSB and DX switch are inoperative on MW & LW.

Revision:

I hope you find the above useful, and an indication of how good this radio is, even if it is a slightly flawed gem. However, it is worth reiterating some of the points made with reference to the Satellit 700. In a few key areas it is better than the 700!

1/ The meter, it's just better!

2/ FM auto search: The 700 uses a system called "phase inversion". It's not very good, missing several stations, including very strong ones. If you have a 700 (or a 500 - same system) it's possibly worried you att times that yours is faulty. Don't worry! Even if freshly calibrated, it will still do a bad job. The 400 on the other hand uses a completely different system. I can't guarantee it won't miss a station, but in general, I find it to be perfect in this regard. The Satellit 300 is good at this too, but it's not as sensitive as a 400, so the 400 wins!

3/ Tuning SW with the tuning Knob: The 700 (and the 500) mute at far too low a speed of tuning, whereas the 400 doesn't. For bandscanning, the 400 is almost as good as an analogue (I think it is as good, but some people just prefer analogue, so I'll respect their opinion).

4/ FM tunes in 10 kHz steps, while the 700 and 500 only do 25 kHz. Not often much advantage, but for closely packed stations, occasionally worth bearing in mind.

5/ built in AC adaptor: means less to carry around if traveling. Plus, it'll run off your NR90 quite happily using it's DC input socket too, so, the best of both worlds.

6/ The 700 can have problems coping with nearby FM transmitters on 107.7 MHz causing "ghosting" on SW frequencies (Doesn't affect me, the nearest of the 4 UK FM transmitters to me is 80 miles away and unreceivable) but the 400 is not affected. (The 500 is not affected either, it seems.)

To sum up the revision: It's no 700. However, as you can see, there ARE things it does better, so if you were to already have a 700, and were thinking of getting another Satellit, say, a 400 or a 500, I'd go for the 400! It is better than a 700 in these key areas, while the 500 is only exactly the same, bar the last point. In my opinion, the 400 is more reliable than a 500 too. Indeed, it's only a feeling, but it seems almost bomb proof.

Sum-up.

Despite the appearance being similar to the 300, this radio bears little operational resemblance, containing the necessary attributes to be considered a "true" Satellit. The makeover given to this model, Gemini-grey finish, a proper grille over the speaker, and bright flashes of colour show that Grundig didn't want this model to hide in the shadows.

A useful radio with better than average sound for the size in modern terms, good reception, distinctive in appearance, and a part of the “Satellit” dynasty, these are still giving sterling service to both original and second owners. The scarcity of these on the second hand market may reflects overall rarity, and a reluctance of existing owners to part with them! Consequently, second-hand values were high, though they do seem to have slumped a little of late.

If you want a 400, you may save a lot of cash compared to a 700. If, however, you simply want "a Satellit" and the 400 presents itself, you may be well advised to wait for a 700. If you get a 700, you will get a better and newer radio, with huge facilities and better overall performance. In the long term, as the supply of 700's dries up, you may also have a better investment.

Grundig Radio Boy