Grundig Radio Boy - Review of Satellit 650

Radio Boy

Satellit 650 review

The Satellit 650 is a general coverage communications receiver, launched onto the market in 1986. It carried on almost unchanged from its predecessor, the 600, introduced in 1983. That in turn offered almost identical facilities to its forerunner, the 3400, but with one important change. The 600 had a PLL synthesizer tuner, the first in the Grundig range to do so, and at a stroke, the drum tuner was yesterday's news. Having said that, the drum tuner had been a fine system, and served Grundig and it's customers well for nearly 20 years. But now they were offering a radio with, by 1986 standards, today's technology. So, how successful was this first attempt?

Reception.

On FM, this set receives more stations, with more quality, than any other portable I’ve come across, bar the Satellit 700, which is so close in terms of sensitivity, that its hard to be sure which is more sensitive. It could be down to production tolerances, but the 650 seems to just have a very slight edge over the 700, but it's so slight as to be of no practical difference, though the 650 has a slight advantage in using 10kHz steps, against the 700's 25kHz steps, which means that occasionally, the 650 can dig out a station hemmed in between 2 others slightly better than the 700. On the other hand, the 700 has stereo, the 650 does not.

On AM, similar high levels of performance are delivered. Doubtless expensive table top models can outperform it, but at what price? Whatever, this is a very sensitive set. Again, production tolerances must be taken into account, but in this case, the 700 seems to have the edge over the 650 generally, though the difference varies over the SW range, and sometimes (but not always) the synchronous detector on the 700 is the key to the difference. That said, some signals are more "readable" on the 650 because of it's better stand-alone audio and lower synthesizer noise, of which more later.

It’s worth bearing in mind that after selecting an AM frequency, pre-selector peaking is important. This is done automatically by a motorised analogue pre-selector, as long as the auto function is turned on, by pressing in the centre of the small tuning knob, ("Auto-Presel" appears in the display when this is active) but if it is turned off, you must remember to tune this manually with the smaller tuning knob.

Image rejection is excellent, and SSB, selectable bandwidth, plus Auto or manual gain, mean most signals can be handled well. The clarify control (fine tuning in effect) only works on SSB.

One point worth mentioning is the almost total lack of synthesizer noise! Most PLL radios generate quite a bit of noise from the PLL circuitry. It's probably a function of the sheer size of this model, and thus the distances between components, but close your eyes, and tune around, and you could think you are using an analogue tuned radio.

Audio.

A widely acknowledged strong point of Grundig radios, this is outstanding on the 650, with a 4 inch / 10 cm. diameter high velocity, long throw woofer with a half-roll rubber diaphragm surround, and a 1.9 inch tweeter, (which can be switched out) mounted in a sealed, acoustically dampened sound box.

People will argue about whether this model sounds as good as some older Grundig Satellits (205/208/210) with bigger woofers and separate tweeters mounted in a wood case. After all, personal preferences come into play when talking about sound quality. Nevertheless, whichever is better, both systems are first rate on FM. On AM too, few would find much to criticise, for this is a rich, full sounding unit, arguably unequalled by any radio.

If you rate sound quality as important, this really is the radio for you! An external speaker could be connected to a socket at the back, but what speaker you'd choose to improve on the internal ones is hard to say. A hi-fi one would generally be needed, and the amplifier can certainly drive it, with a 15W RMS output while mains powered, into a 4 ohm load. The front mounted quarter inch headphone socket is mono only, but wired to drive both channels of stereo 'phones. The internal speaker has to be switched out manually. Output is reduced on batteries, a "mere" 2.5 Watts RMS!

On balance, the compromise of quality against portability is a personal choice here. The sound is great, but the size and weight is vast. It's hard to imagine anyone carrying this radio far, but if you are going by car, or in a motorhome or boat, it makes good sense, particularly as the radio can be powered by any 10-16V DC source, which means most of the above modes of transport are covered. It can also be fixed down onto a surface with screws, making it secure while in motion. It is hard to think of any comparable radio able to compete with its power and quality, regardless of size.

Ergonomics.

The LCD display is vast, and easily read, even across a room. The meter too, is big and clear to read. The preselector dial is relatively small and harder to follow, but really it serves little useful purpose, giving a quick guide to which band you are in, and comforting traditionalists who like to see a tuning scale! It has no function on FM, incidentally, where the preselector is inoperative! It's all a nice sight in a darkened room when mains powered, however! As someone once said, "real radios glow in the dark!"

The clock displays when the set is switched off, but has to be called up in place of the frequency when the radio is on. There is only one clock, so you have to decide, local or world time? It does display seconds though! The date is also available, but for no practical purpose, it always has to be called up, and it isn't used by the timers! It also cannot deal with leap years!

Like the Satellit 300 & 400, the meter is ideal, As a tuning aid, it's perfect, even though with digital tuning, you don’t really need it to get a station spot-on.

Analogue controls are well laid out, but the keypad is a bit of a mess! Unchanged from the 600, the keys work perfectly well, but while the numerical keys are laid out in the usual manner, the layout of the other digital keys is haphazard, and worse still, some are duplicated to work around the crude software. Instead of one key to enter and recall the time, there is a time entry key and a time recall key! On the 700, one key does both functions for 2 clocks! There are 2 date keys for the same reason. There is no function lock switch.

All the above seems a bit negative, and in fairness, if I was writing this in 1983 or thereabouts, I would never have realised all the shortcomings with the layout, I'm sure. If I was writing this then, I'd no doubt have commented, as I will now, on the quality feel of the switches, the smoothness of the controls, and the fact that eveything is big, easy to find and easy to use. The tuning knob has a superb feel to it, nicely weighted to enable a quick "roll through the band" and the magnetic notching effect is very nicely done. The right hand handle gets in the way a bit when using the tuning knob, but it's not a real problem. Moving the tuning knob quickly increases the steps in the AM bands, allowing fast movement from one end of the dial to the other. In the absence of a metre band skip key, this is a useful feature.

Facilities.

Comparing the software in this radio with the 700 is like comparing MS-DOS with Windows 98! In it's defence, the timeframe of that comparison is not far out, early 80's to early 90's. Remember, the 600, on which the 650 is based, was one of the first PLL's, and was Grundig's first! Having said that, the Satellit 300, launched at the same time as the 600, has functions which are missing from the 600/650, like search, and pre-programmed metre bands. My guess is that the 600 was being designed a long time before the 300 was started, and hence the software is older. The 300 is, after all, a smaller, less capable radio, which would have needed less designing.

Anyway, as little changed with the transition from 600 to 650, it was stuck with the outdated software. Of course, it's easy to criticize it for this now, but back when it was launched, it probably seemed space age. It remains true, however, that there are many facilities missing that we take for granted on newer models. Such as memory or frequency scan, & slew (Frequency up/down) keys. The memory system is particularly annoying, for example! You want to hear what's on in one of the memory slots? You key in the number, and hit "Station". You want to hear the next one? There's no short cut, like a "next memory" key, as found on most later models. You have to do it all again! Suddenly, the Sony ICF-2001D/2010 system of individual buttons for each slot seems like a good idea! Worse still, there's no way of calling up the last manually tuned station after dipping into the memories! You have to remember what it was, and key it in again. There is no way of checking if a frequency is already stored, unless you keep a written list, and no way of checking which memory slots are free, for in fact, they are never free! If you haven't stored a frequency, a memory slot will have the lowest frequency of the band stored in it.

In some ways however, the crudity of the software works for the radio, one example being that there is no problem moving the radio from a 9kHz MW area of the world to a 10 kHz one! The radio has no scan facility after all, and tunes MW in 1 kHz steps with the tuning knob, so it's perfectly at home in either location.

On the plus side, memory provision was quite generous by the standards of the day. There are 32 for SW, 16 for FM, 8 for AM/MW, and 4 for LW, and this is an arrangement I'd largely agree with, except I'd have lost the 4 for LW, I could just tune the radio into the only station I would ever use on LW, and leave it there!

All the usual Satellit facilities are there, Bass & Treble controls, power and sound quality in abundance, a generous complement of sockets, and the SSB and bandwidth facilities you'd come to expect of top-of-the-line Satellit models. SSB works quite well, but tuning a ham for example is harder than on the 700, largely due to the 1kHz increments, and the less successful manual gain control, the 700 has 100Hz increments, so the clarify control has less of a range to work over. I also suspect the 700 is more frequency stable, the 400 was criticized for this tendency to drift (a small amount by analogue standards, obviously, but a lot by PLL standards), and there seems little doubt that the earlier design of the 600/650 would suffer this (relatively small) problem too.

The timer was something new, and quite comprehensive, with 3 on/off times available, although they still hadn't given the timer any control over the tuner, as with the 500 & 700, so you can only turn the same station on 3 times, and you have to remember to leave it on that station when you switch off beforehand! There's no sleep timer either, though you could use one of the timers to perform this function.

FM is mono only on the 650, but that was only to be expected of a radio introduced in the early to mid 1980's, the Sony ICF-2010/2001D was mono on FM too, but FM wasn't very good on the 2010 anyway!

Sum-up.

Anyone who ever gets to use a 600 or a 650 won't need me to tell them that it's a first class radio, and an excellent receiver, with exemplary sound. As always, the added kudos of having two of the most important names in modern radio folklore, “Grundig” & “Satellit” written bold upon the front, is the icing on the cake.

If you are looking for a portable, this isn't the radio for you, at around 20 pounds in weight, and nearly 2 feet long, there are smaller ghetto blasters! But if you want killer audio and top notch SW and FM performance, you've come to the right place.

So which is better, the 650 or the 700? Well, actually, it's like comparing apples and oranges: Which is the best fruit? Both offer first class service and facilities, the difference is in the approach! The 650 is a Rolls Royce, nothing is minimalist about it, and the experience is one of luxury and sumptuous performance. The motorised preselector is the auto-transmission, the low synthesiser noise is the silent cocoon of the passenger compartment. The 700, on the other hand, is the Porsche 911 Turbo, all high tech and honed for the job. The vast memory is the race developed suspension, the turbo is the synchronous detector. Most people would agree that the Rolls and the Porsche represent the pinnacle of their class! So it is with the 650 & the 700. Which you prefer is down to which you appreciate the qualities of most.

And I guess that all depends on what you want to use it for, and what is most important to you. The 650 offers excellent stand-alone audio performance, easy one handed operation, and analogue like performance with PLL convenience. The 700 on the other hand offers portability, Stereo FM, RDS, and a range of facilities that are almost unrivalled at any price. In their own way, they are equally good, but if I could only keep one of them, it would have to be the 700, I wouldn't even have to think about it. Your decision may be different, and I'd respect that, we all have our own terms of reference. There is no question, as a stand alone unit, the 650 has more than just an edge in terms of audio quality. A good pair of external speakers on the 700 would work wonders however. Using either radio is an experience, and always a pleasant one.

Given that the 650 ceased production in 1991, those thinking of buying will have to be extra careful to ensure the set they are considering is in good condition, (It's all down to how they've been cared for, quality standards are not an issue here!) and that if it is sent to you by post or courier, it really needs to be overpacked (double boxed, and face down is best!) with no batteries fitted, but, once satisfied that you are looking at a good one, don’t hesitate. You won’t regret it! And provided it doesn't break, you won't lose money, as the prices on these are rising, reflecting the now limited supply and growing demand.