"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
Michael Lawson wrote:
"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
news
Michael Lawson wrote:

"m II" wrote in message
news:hC%De.148005$tt5.90754@edtnps90...


m II wrote:



mike maghakian wrote:



I have owned both several times and currently own the 800.
the price of a later edition 8, which is the ONLY only one
that

a

person should use is too high. almost double the cost of a
good

tested


800





I've been wondering about the manufacturing dates on the 800.
How

can I


tell when a set was made? In what order were the fixes made

during

manufacture?

If I see a set, how can I tell if it's the latest version, so I

don't


get stuck with garbage quality control?


Thanks for the information. I'll look elsewhere for the help.


RHF provided this a long time ago to the Yahoo Sat 800 group:

"The SN is # 8010008400"

Serial Number Decoder: 8YMM******
Y = "0" = 2000
MM = "10" = October

NOTE: The so-called Third Generation Grundig Satellit 800
Millennium Radios with all the "Fixes" built into them
started to be built in the First Quarter Jan-Feb-Mar 2001.

--Mike L.


The so called Third Generation Sat 800 is a term that was
started

by

our favorite e-Bay scamster. It was so effective a marketing tool

that

it was picked up by Lextronix/Eton and used in their promotional
materials. Its use was also strongly encouraged when setting up
the
numerous Grundig drop-ship "retailers" on e-Bay and other other

outlets.

But the term is entirely fictional. It has no meaning.

There is only ONE change in the Sat 800 over its entire

production

cycle: ball bearings on the tuning shaft. No other changes were
made
throughout the life cycle of the product. This according to an

insider

from Lextronix, now Eton, and reported here, numerous times.

Though QC appeared to have improved in successive production

runs,

the rate of failure was still high enough in later runs to require
a
significant percentage of refurbishment at Drake.


A general rule of thumb was (and still is) to buy the
Sat 800 from a reputable dealer, such as Universal.
We used to argue about this back when the Sat 800
was released, Peter. It always seemed that the Sat
800's sold by Universal seemed to work fine, but
the Sat 800's sold by places like The Sharper Image
seemed to have a high failure rate.


If you're really determined to go with this radio, find one
that

has

been through the Drake repair center. History and user comments in

these

fora strongly suggest that there is no guarantee of a quality unit
simply by selecting from 'desirable' serial numbers.

All of the 'fixes'--- all ONE of them--- are found in any unit

with a

ball bearing tuning shaft.


That's rather odd. When I spoke to the Drake people
when I went to pick up my Sat 800 after a tuneup, they
said that they made several changes authorized by Eton
as part of bringing my Sat 800 (one of the first ones
sold) up to the current model. I didn't press them on it,
but several usually means more than one, and I don't
think they meant the couple of caps that were bad and
needed replacing, either.

Also, I do know that Lextronics did replace the original
power supply after a lot of people complained about
the RF in them; I did complain, and received a different
power supply model free of charge.

--Mike L.



I remember the arguments. Yes, Universal sold rigs seemed to have
fewer difficulties. Universal's own people admitted that they had
opened
and tested/verified each unit sold. While the distributor,
Lextronix,
seemed to have trouble keeping Universal supplied, while SA,
Heartland,
Damark and other discount outlets seemed to be blowing them into the
streets at will.

Honestly, I believe I said then (and I still believe it)
that Grove, Universal and Co. wouldn't have sold
the Sat 800 if it was a real turkey, and Lextronix
knew this. Therefore, Lextronix made certain that
the shipments that went there were better than
to other places. Why?? Who shops at Universal??
The people who are into the hobby, not the casual
guy who's just dabbling. To that latter guy, The
Sharper Image is a place to blow a wad of dough
with the impression that you're getting a quality
product, when the reality is that it's just a fancier
way of saying "I don't know what I'm doing, but
I'm making too much money to concern myself
with knowing what I bought."

There is a lot about this radio that has never been adequately
explained by Lextronix. Why Universal, Grove and other reputable
radio
dealers had trouble getting their hands on them, while SA had so
many of
them in store rooms that they discontinued accepting shipments, is
only
one. Others include the more than deceptive marketing, which
included
direct mail pieces claiming that the radio was actually designed by
Grundig engineers, when it wasn't (Grundig not only had no part in
this
radio, they actually refused to acknowledge it. And one Grundig
engineer
who regularly participated on one of the Grundig/Satellit discussion
groups of which I was a member actually called it an embarrassment
to
the name.) One direct mail piece I received claimed that Sat 800,
was in
fact, a German radio. I sent that one back to Lextronix with a big
red
circle around that claim and instructed them to remove my name from
all
mailing lists. (Which, to my surprise, they actually did.) But there
were no corrections in promotional literature. Why information
about
this radio has been so jealously guarded, that schematics and
service
manuals have not been available from official sources (unlike any
other
Grundig product for which service manuals, parts and service
information
have been readily available), is another question that's never been
answered. Break an antenna, get a replacement? Try that one
sometime.

To be honest, I've never owned a Grundig/Lextronix
other than this one, so I have no point to compare
with other Grundigs. As for the other items, I will
concede all points. I suspect it comes more from a
jealous guarding of company secrets (this is Lextronix,
not Grundig, so the viewpoint is different) than from
a screw thy neighbor approach.

Why Radio Nederland was never able to get a factory sample for
evaluation afer being promised publicly that they would (remember
Sundstrom had to purchase not one, but two, at retail from SA to
finally
get a review written), and yet, Larry
(endorse-it-before-the-prototype-has-been-produced) Magne got not
one,
but three of them at a time from the factory, all hand tweaked, for
not
one, not two, but THREE evaluations, for a total of NINE receivers.
From
the factory. But no other reviewer was countenanced by Lextronix on
this
product.

I do not think it an accident that they got it to Magne
the way they did. If they were putting Passports into
some of the boxes for shipments, it would behoove
Lextronix to have a review of the Sat 800 in the best
possible light in the Passport inside the box. Dishonest??
No. Trying to maximize exposure?? Yes. Doing it in
a less than aboveboard manner?? Yes.

As for Radio Nederland, that doesn't surprise me much.
The Sat 800 was designed for the American market,
and the marketing geniuses at Lextronix probably figured
that it wasn't a high priority to get a sample out to a
"foreign" reviewer. Last I checked, though, Tom was
still located in the U.S. I've seen how marketers think,
and getting a lot of them to think outside of the narrow
viewpoint that they have and accept a wider scope
is an exercise in deprogramming.

And there are more questions. But these alone paint a picture of
a
product that's more mystery than substance under the hood. Why, in
fact,
has so much been made about Drake's involvement in SAT 800, but
nowhere
does the name of Drake appear in any of the direct mail pieces, or
advertising. And no one, even inside Drake, can actually explain
what
Drake's involvement was. One person here, reported a conversation
with a
Drake employee who said that Drake's involvement was in the design
and
licensing of the sync detector, and no more. Another post here
detailed
a conversation with a Drake technician who said that the total
involvement was a couple of conversations about the IF strip of
SW-8.
But definitive information is still missing. That's not true of any
other product mentioned here.

When I spoke to the service manager at Drake, he
told me that eton/Lextronix had bought the Drake
design for the SW8, and tweaked it themselves
for use in the Sat 800. A nice little side effect of this
is that you get to put your name on the box, and
don't have to reference Drake's name.

Hell, anyone can call someone at ICOM and get detailed
information,
even parts, even full documentation on their products, at will. But
this
radio, produced under so many deceptions, remains a mystery. With
only
marketing department smoke and mirrors consistently available to
the
public.

Rarely has so much passion been on display about a product that
so
few people know so little about, with such a history of substandard
quality.

Like I said then, I can say that I know I didn't get
a turkey. That doesn't invalidate all those other
people who did, but that also doesn't mean that
the people (like me) who didn't aren't idiots, either.
I honestly have not kept track of the quality of the
runs after I dropped out of the hobby for a couple
of years in the early 2000's, so I also can't say if
Lextronix has ever solved their production issues.

All I can say is that it is a good portatop if you get
a good production model. At the time, if you
couldn't plunk down the kilobuck for a good
tabletop, the Sat 800 was a decent alternative.
I know that the Sat 800 isn't the Second
Coming, and I know that the Sat 800 has had a
checkered past mainly based on the fact that
to keep costs down they rolled the dice and went
overseas to China for production.

Yes, I remember the arguments. I remember them well. Amused by
them,
in fact. Because they were SO fierce, in wake of the overwhelmingly
deceptive marketing of this product. They remind me of the arguments
we
had in a World Religion class I recently took. A lot of fierce
passion
and faith. And a whole lot of ignoring any perspective other than
our own.

Ha. That's like telling people on r.r.s. to stop responding
to political postings. At least it was on topic back then.

As someone said at the beginning, it's real clear that Marketing
is
driving this train. That the company that claims to have produced
this
radio has neither an engineering department, nor a manufacturing
facility, and has so obscured the lineage of the product that the
only
thing that users are really buying for their $500 or so, is the
advertising.

This is what a lot of companies want to evolve into:
a marketing and "core business" company. Sell off
assets that aren't part of the "core business" (whatever
the hell that means) and concentrate on what you
do best. Thing is, when you sell off things like
factories, you're at the mercy of a contractor to provide
the quality people have come to expect from you.
Think of the upsides to this that IBM is pitching
to their customers: let us handle your HR or your
IT or your payroll or your accounting, and you can
go and do the "big things". The problem is, IBM
has a different set of goals to make a profit, and that
may or may not intersect with your own.

Unfortunately, I see more of this in the future, rather
than less.

Now specifically: the external power supply change is not a
production change. The external power supply is not really part of
the
radio, as much as it's an accessory. They changed to a different
model/vendor for the external power supply. And it was made
available to
any purchaser. That's not a production change to the radio.

Technically, you are right, but it was a change to
the end packaging. And that was done within
several months of the initial release of the Sat 800,
which means that it was done because they sucked
and the consumers let them know about it.

There have been reported that some of the Drake refurbished
models
were modified to be different than production models, with changes
made
by Drake in the shop. Some Drake technicians have supported this
claim.
Specifics seem always to be lacking when pressed as to what those
changes actually are. Always 'to bring them up to current
production' is
the claim. But that's something you hear about ANY product in for
refurbishment. It's standard Marketing Mantra 1-1A. A appeasement.
But
at Lextronix, insiders are admitting that there have been no
changes
to production, with the single exception of the bearings on the
tuning
shaft. Now, Drake technicians would be able to make modifications to
SAT
800 models in for refurbishment, in the same way that they were able
to
make modifications to their own radios. After all, SAT 800 is
reputed to
be a clone of SW-8. This after Drake engineers and technicians have
publicly said that many of the parts that went into SW-8 were out of
production and no longer available, btw. Truth is, that the only
thing
that made SW-8 unique was the IF strip, and of that, only the sync
detector. So, while parts for SW-8 may no longer be available,
Tecsun,
the actual manufacturer of SAT 800, being experienced in radio
design
and manufacture, can easily create their own circuits using parts of
their own selection and tie them into a Drake inspired, if not
designed,
IF strip, using a Drake designed sync. Drake's involvement could be
slight, at best. Even peripheral. So it makes sense that Drake
techs
would be able to execute mods on incoming SAT 800 models, cleaning
up
production errors, and making improvements, all under the heading of
'refurbishment,' and 'bringing performance up to current
production.'

As I mentioned above, I was told that Lextronix bought
the design and then tweaked it. The extent of the tweaking
was something I didn't follow up on, but he did mention
that he knew that the audio was tweaked a bit.

Absent specifics, these terms are also meaningless.

And specifics, as always with this radio, are lacking. And yet, a
few
consistencies remain, one of which, by the admission of Lextronix'
own
people as reported in this group by more than one who have had
contact
with persons on the inside at Lex, the only change was the tuning
shaft
bearings, and another, that the so called 'Third Generation' was a
marketing appellation that came from a e-Bay vendor.

Ugh. I should have probably mentioned that my reference
above was a quote from RHF. I'm gonna have my head
dragged in the mud for that for a while, I suppose.

In this light, arguments about SAT 800 fall, again, into the same
class as the arguments this week over Bush, elections, Iraq and
religion: A lot of passion and faith, while ignoring any position
that's
not our own.

You'd think, for the kind of money that's being spent here, there
would be more critical thinking. And that the vacuum created by
questions unanswered would not be so readily filled with marketing
slogans and 'handling' remarks.


You'd think.

Ha. I'm older and wiser than when I was back then,
and I know that a good slogan and damage control
can hide many defects and deflect energy away from
what really matters. As does enough yelling and
screaming. Unfortunately.

--Mike L.