Michael Lawson wrote:
"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."






If you read what I posted back then, I did say precisely that. The
point, however, is that there was clearly a double tiered QC
specification. That alone speaks volumes about what was really driving
this train. And the true nature of the product. While serious outlets
got hand selected or hand tweaked rigs, general production went to SA,
and their like and kind. With one SA outlet reporting almost 100%
returns, tipping the real story about SAT 800. No other product in it's
class has received such hand selected product distribution. Certainly
not R-75. One is as good as another in that line. Seems not to be the
case with SAT 800 and THAT tells the bigger story.




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.



Don't make the mistakee that Lextronix products are Grundig products.
Lextronix was only a distributor for Grundig, and bought the right to
the name. Lextronix products are produced without involvement of Grundig
in anyway. And in the case of SAT 800, Grundig AG didn't even
acknowledge it's existence.

I've owned and still own a number of products from Grundig AG. They
Lextronix products bearing the Grundig name don't even come close.

And the issue is not so much 'screw thy neighbor' as much as a
marketing department run amuk. Lextronix is a marketing company. They
have no product with their name on it, so they have no brand to protect.
They have no manufacturing division, so they have little influence over
QC, or, quite frankly, any motivation to have it. They only worry about
the marketing. Any hits taken by the brand are not their concern.




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.



Actually, Dishonest YES. If you're bringing to market a product and
promoting it in less than above board ways, that IS dishonest.

Microsoft and ATT were busted for precisely the kind of deception
displayed by Lextronix, here.



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.

That argument doesn't holdd water. Lextronix promised radios to RN
for the Media Network evaluation. Promised repeatedly. To the degree
that RN even went on the air with a teaser that an evaluation would be
coming shortly based on the expected, promised arrival of the radio from
Lextronix. With each missed evaluation, Media Network again promised a
full review based on receivers delivered from Lextronix. But Lextronix
never delivered. Instead superserving the one reviewer who had already
endorsed the radio as, 'the best shortwave receiver in the world,'
before the first prototype was built. Also something less than honest.





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.



You missed the point. Whether the design of SW-8 was actually bought
is also something of a mystery. Drake was discontinuing the product,
claiming that key components were no longer available. Lex/Tecs would
be buying a product design that would no longer be manufacturable. The
circuitry would have bo be modified. In fact, Tecsun has more than
enough experience to do this, and as I said, the only thing they would
really need is the IF strip, or more specifically, the sync circuitry.
But, there, again, is more mystery. A service manager tells you that
Lex/Tecs buys the SW-8 design, an engineer at Drake tells another member
of this group that they only bought the sync, another tells me that the
total involvement of Drake in the SAT 800 project came down to two phone
calls and a couple of faxes. More questions than mysteries. But the real
point is that while Drake is touted as the architect of this rig by
everyone and anyone who has an opinion, nowhere is Drake mentioned in
any official literature. If the Drake involvement is such a matter, no
marketing department would let that go unmentioned. Especially when
everything else about the marketing of the product has been so much of a
runaway train. Unusual and highly singular restraint. Which raises,
again, more questions about the true nature of the product.




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.



First of all, no one has suggested you were an idiot, so that's a bit
more defensive than the situation calls for. And secondly, you have been
more fair here than many have been about his radio, and I respect that.
But thirdly, and this is the point I've apparently not been very good
att presenting...for the newcomer to the hobby, or for the unknowing,
the level of hype and the marketing noise does more harm than good. If
the hobby is to survive, it need the knowledgable and the experienced.
Each with a decent sense of history. This single product and the
religion that's been built around it have done an enormous disservice to
those who have not been fully informed, just as it's done an enormous
disservice to Grundig, and to Drake through it's more than deceptive
marketing strategies.

Everyone here has read the frequent complaints if not diatribes
against our favorite eBay scamster, ....whatever he calls himself
today...offering products are far above going prices, with elaborate
hyperbole in his listing copy, even offering factory warranties for
products for which he is not an authorized retailer. And the complaints
have been quite shrill. And yet, Lextronix has been just as deceptive,
without a peep out of the same people. Why the double standard?
Deceptive marketing is deceptive marketing.




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.


Precisely.





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.



Very likely. But by acceeding to it as inevitable, we make it
inevitable. It may be an uphill battle to make sure the facts are
clearly heard, but it's a battle that must be fought.





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.





That was clear. More powerful audio, to be sure. But you see,
aggain, there are no specifics about what was actually done. It's
entirely possible that the audio is all the changes there are.


I have an SW-8. In fact, I bought it from a member of this group. The
audio is much different than that of SAT 800. But from my experience
with both radios, actual performance, on the same antenna goes to the
Drake. That doesn't speak very well of Lex/Tecs
design/adaption/production.






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.




Perhaps. Not from this end, though.




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.



You have learned well, Grasshopper.