Jack Schmidling wrote:

Picked up an S38B to relive my childhood and it seems to work on AM
about as well as my only other receiver, TS430.

I am going to make it my AM station receiver if and when I can get the
BFO to work.

Just for fun, try a kludge BFO. Place an AM broadcast band radio (non-digital)
as physically close to the S38 as you can get it. Tune the broadcast band radio
until you hear a beat with the AM or CW signal you are listening to on the S38.
The oscillator in the AM radio should leak into the S38 to cause the beat.
Course it depends on somewhat poor shielding on both receivers to work. I
sometimes used this method as a kid to listen to SSB and CW on those old SW
receivers that didn't have a BFO. Those were the days...