I just picked up a used one and should have it next week. I'm wondering how
it performs compared to other "wide range" receivers (Icom, Yupiteru,
Uniden). How good is the HF performance, especially for SSB utilities?

Frank

The filters are pretty wide for shortwave. On AM, the filter is 12Khz.
SIdeband is more reasonable (2.4Khz). It's a good scanner otherwise.

The VFO is quite programable in the sense that it can have both a step
size and offset. Most scanners are such that if you set the step to say
0.1, then all the frequencies that the VFO would hit in a scan are
evenly divisible by 0.1. With the AR3000A, you could introduce an
offset, say .05, then make the scanner span for example 100.15, 100.25,
100.35, etc. The only time I found this to be handy was in scanning
Airfone.

If you like milair or satcom, you will be happy.