Transmission1

What would be your vote for the worst rig ever? Maybe more than one!

I used to work in a shop fixing CB rigs, and to be honest it gets to the stage that as soon as you take the lid off, you can tell from one look at the PCB if the rig's garbage.

Perhaps this list will serve to stop folk buying crap rigs - although to be fair, if you found your way to this site, you know enough to avoid them already.

So a quick list of my worst ones, and reasons if necessary:

Eurosonic/Tokai/Lake Manxman/Elftone/Cheiza - quite simply, the worst built, worst designed and worst performing rigs ever. Think we had about 20 of these lying around not working, I never successfully fixed one, and I wasn't long in throwing them all in the bin.

Interceptor TC3000 - had a few of these, the ones that worked did work well enough, and the lights were cool - but when i opened up the knackered one, it was obvious it wasn't really that good a rig!

Compact 40 - very early small rig, same size as the later Midland 77-099, but with a 'proper' S-meter - so small you'll never see it though. Awful performance and weird mike wiring.

Eurosonic ES-404. Utter crap, not even heavy enough to use as a doorstop!
Crusty.

Don't think I ever had the misfortune of working on one or using one - but the poor fitting buttons, sliding controls for volume/squelch and the awful PCB give it away there.

General 'old school' indication of a crap rig - the power lead's soldered straight into the PCB - no socket

They're all like that now, cos it's cheaper.

Fidelity 3000 homebase, biggest pile of **** i ever owned with the cheapest & tackiest feel/design to it, i hated it that much i ran over it with my car just to make sure it was dead & to not let it fall into any other poor individuals hands.

LCL Economy 40
Harvard 'Good Buddy'

My first rig - the LCL 2740, utter pile of junk.
Think it was later badged as the DNT M40?

Ah yes, the good old Fidelity home base - they fooled everyone by making the 2001 etc with half decent boards, then made the 1000 ( I think it was) and the 3000 with the Eurosonic boards!

The LCL/DNT rigs weren't great - the reason I didn't include them was the PLL was easy to mess with. They did have the most pointless feature ever though - the 'channel busy' LED!

murphy homebase were crappydooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

stalker9fdx555 wrote:Fidelity 3000 homebase, biggest pile of sh*t i ever owned with the cheapest & tackiest feel/design to it, i hated it that much i ran over it with my car just to make sure it was dead & to not let it fall into any other poor individuals hands.

A noble and guaranteed good karma winning action if ever there was one.

Cheers John yes i felt it was the morally right thing to do, & to retain a clean conscience.

dnt homebase Erugh horible bland green pcb

Midland 2001
Fidelity 1000
DNT 40 (something)
Murphy Homebase

Those are the worst radios I've encountered. I'm sure there are hundreds more tho.

viper 88 and braemar pt40,lowe tx40,piles of sh!t,if i'm not mistaken there was a spectrum version too,possibly spectrum m8.

I'm clearing up my loft 'n found a copy of "CB World" December 1981, SAD GEEZER!

Lowe TX40 - did such a big amateur radio dealer really sell such sh*te?

Lake Manxman - look pretty 'mank' to me

Rig Round up: mostly Cybernet clones - not the best, not the worst

Amstrad, flimsy knobs, awful mic but at least they used a MOSFET mixer circuit

Arrrgh! Fidelity CB1000FM - ABSOLUTELY the worst radio ever made. Hertz's spark gap was better.

Binatone from Halfords: the 5 star a favorite on eBay

LCL 2740FM - dreadful soldering, and a piece of potato (ceramic filter) between your antenna and the weedy MC3357 mixer

Enough, enough!

lol@earwigger. arrrrgghh
does looking through old cb mags bring a tear to your eye

i hated the fidelity1000/ lake/chieza rigs with a passion back in the day,
never liked the amstrad even though it lab tested better than the other cybernet board found in many top end fm cb's, it came in a cheaper chassis and seemed generally cheapo compared to the old cybernet chassis,
i do prefere the tx audio and the receiver of the amstrad over the other cybernets which always looked like an am radio modified for fm to me,

i used an amstrad in the car a few years back and got good results which sparked a revival for the old amstrads round here, we used them for foxhunting and the value went from ?10 to ?20-30 in a short time, theres not enough strong signals about when mobile anymore for the problems you got years ago and a tuned amstrad has slightly better ears than a uniden /audioline if your up a hill looking for weak distant stations, they are still no good for homebase in this area, clip the resistor from the back of the rf gain control so it works right and they are good for foxhunting,
the amstrad boarded radios are not all equal, some have a narrower/steeper 455 filter than others,

the worst POS i remember was the domico convoy1, its only good point was that it had some usefull components inside at a time when finding parts was much harder than it is today,

other sh_tters,
most grandstands
jwr
icom
dnt's
the maxon midland/commtrons
lcl economy
interceptor tc3000

be much easier to say what i liked,
uniden/audioline
realistics that used the uniden 100/200 board
filtered magpie autoscans