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You want to use a TS-430 for SWLing? And you ask if it will perform as well as a Sangean ATS909?
The 909 is okay as a portable RX (and it's a bit better with an external antenna), but the 430 will outperform it for SWLing, big time.
Tuning the 909 is clumsy at best for most purposes. Add the BFO and try tuning SSB signals and its even worse. You'll prefer using the 430, but keep the 909 for camping and other times when you don't want to lug the 430 all over the place.
The 909 is okay as a portable RX (and it's a bit better with an external antenna), but the 430 will outperform it for SWLing, big time.
Tuning the 909 is clumsy at best for most purposes. Add the BFO and try tuning SSB signals and its even worse. You'll prefer using the 430, but keep the 909 for camping and other times when you don't want to lug the 430 all over the place.
:laugh:
:laugh::laugh:Sorry about that but I had to chuckle about that. I have to agree with Beetle,those two rigs are not even in the same class. The 430,as old as it is, is head and shoulders above the Sangean especially when tuning a crowded band with strong signals.
If it didn't have a BFO you couldn't receive SSB.
And as far as finding any "new" TS-430s, that'd be a pretty good trick. They stopped making them around 1990 - maybe earlier.
The AM filter might make the received AM signals sound "better", but that's a subjective call, and listening to international shortwave broadcasts was never a HiFi prospect.
Rarely do I ever use wide bandwidth when listening to shortwave broadcasts. My Kenwood R-1000 has 2.3 and 6 KHz bandwidths (internally switchable to 6 and 12 KHz) and although the wider bandwidth sounds better on AM it also picks up adjacent freqs better as well and on a crowded SW band that is not good.
That's essentially it. The BFO simply injects the carrier that the transmitting station removed. By careful adjusting of this "missing carrier" frequency, the receiving station can change the Donald Duck sound into actual language.
Receivers that don't have BFOs, like your typical clock radio, or the older console radios from the 40s and 50s that had a shortwave band or two but didn't have a BFO, couldn't have clarified SSB by themselves. In many cases, such a radio can do it if you have a very stable external oscillator tuned to the proper frequency and loosely coupled to the receiver.
Receivers that don't have BFOs, like your typical clock radio, or the older console radios from the 40s and 50s that had a shortwave band or two but didn't have a BFO, couldn't have clarified SSB by themselves. In many cases, such a radio can do it if you have a very stable external oscillator tuned to the proper frequency and loosely coupled to the receiver.