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FINE TUNE CB SHOP FOR REAL?

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I just checked out the latest YouTube clip from fine tune CB shop and was wondering if this guy's for real? He starts off by saying (not verbatim) that he's not making the clip of a brand new Stryker 955 in order to school other tecs, and if anyone else knows how to correct an internet problem with some out of the box 955's their selling you something they can't do. He's outright claiming he's the only one on planet Earth who can do whatever it is that needs to be done to fix this so called issue.
IS HE DELUSIONAL, OR TRULY A ONE OF A KIND GENIUS? I would assume delusional. But being I know nothing about the way transceivers work and obviously how to repair them I'm baffled at his claim. But claiming to be the only one who can perform this repair seems delusional. At least to me


mark is a master of all trades master of none. nothing special about his tunes. my friend had him do his stryker 955hp it sounded much better before. he had mark touch it.
 
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OH GREAT. Another Fine Tune shop thread. Sonar......you will see on this forum and elsewhere that people do NOT think too highly of this shop or of Mark himself. There are reasons. You will also see that Rabbiporkchop is quick to run in and brag up that shop as being the best of the best of the best. The masses versus one. You decide who is more reliable in their info.

Oh and rabbi speaking of challenges.......we are STILL waiting for that report on that radio you claimed Mark did that has sensitivity down to 0.001 microvolts. YOU said you would have it done to prove how good Mark is. Still waiting...............
I didn't know how infamous this character was. I just happened to see his latest clip and thought his claim to be the only person on God's green earth be able to do something to a CB radio that no one else could (to quote another) is outright narcissistic. I have since read other posts on fine tune CB shop and have come to the conclusion that this guy (mark) is one of those people who is basically lost in space. There's medication doctor's subscribe for what it is he suffers from. I've said it so many times but feel I need to say it again. "I know less than anyone about how transceivers, amp, antennas ECT ect work." But I'm not dense and I know when someone is outright or borderline delusional. And this guy fits the bill. I can't question his knowledge or workmanship because of my own lack of technical knowledge but I know when someone isn't all there. I was born in NYC and raised BK. I recognize the signs of someone with mental health issues. I hope my fellow New Yorkers don't take my comment as a jab on NY but if you've lived there and walked the streets as many years as I have you know what I'm talking about. Hell! Bellevue is world famous.
 
Some folks prefer to get work done by someone who's a very nice person with a great personality who will sit and talk to them for hours at a time over a cup of coffee and yet get mediocre work in the process and some people would rather pay a narcissist for excellent work simply because of the performance they know they will get even if the personality is less than friendly.
Me personally I would prefer to get radio performance out of a financial transaction as opposed to a pat on the back with less-than-stellar radio performance in exchange for my hard-earned dollars. Different Strokes for different folks.
The guy who works on my equipment happens to be a great guy with an excellent personally, and enjoys talking. His knowledge and workmanship are top notch. I find your statement strange. I guess everyone's criteria for choosing a technician is different. Just because a person likes to talk or is jovial doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's doing. According to you a technician should be a narcissistic non talkative person with a personality of a flea. I find that odd. 73
 
The guy who works on my equipment happens to be a great guy with an excellent personally, and enjoys talking. His knowledge and workmanship are top notch. I find your statement strange. I guess everyone's criteria for choosing a technician is different. Just because a person likes to talk or is jovial doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's doing. According to you a technician should be a narcissistic non talkative person with a personality of a flea. I find that odd. 73
Given only 2 choices, my choice would be based on skill, not personality.
According to me, a technicians personality isn't the deciding factor.
My choice would be made simply on the results I'd like to achieve.
 
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Any tech that knows his way around the test equipment and radios should know his way to make them right. At least - one would expect as much. But experience is also a huge player, and this feature makes or breaks a good radio tech - IMO.

I'll give RPC the benefit of a doubt that he got his decimal point in the wrong place when he gave that info. No such thing possible as .001uV. Easy enough mistake to make if one isn't aware of that significance of an additional place(s).

The radio community at large needs more techs that don't do hack work. I've seen my share of pulled limiters and slinkied trap filter sets, as I'm sure I'm not the only one.

There are a lot of impressive techs out there still doing fine work.
 
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Aligning a radio with a tone generator, frequency counter and scope isn't rocket science. From what I can see that is all he does. He doesn't change anything out in the radios to get more power or to change the performance of the receive or transmit. He is against swing mods and any other mods people do to get more watts and audio. I agree with his opinion on "dirty mods" and creating fake watts, but he isn't doing anything special to these radios. In fact his tuned up radios sound pretty flat and are not going to impress those seeking loud audio.
"Sounding flat" to me would involve 3000hz frequency response like a stock radio. I guess you must be tone deaf or unable to notice the altered response. The hissing sound of the letter "s" occurs at 5000hz. How often do you hear that? Most folks radios are unable to reproduce this sound. I've been to the best techs in the country and none have been able to reproduce this type of audio frequency response and fidelity tuning an export radio.
Sounds excellent to me and very intelligible.
My audio is identical and I get compliments from smart people and I hear it "doesn't sound special" from less knowledgeable folks. I've heard lots of recordings of myself and I really dig the sound.
 
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"Sounding flat" to me would involve 3000hz frequency response like a stock radio. I guess you must be tone deaf or unable to notice the altered response. The hissing sound of the letter "s" occurs at 5000hz. How often do you hear that? Most folks radios are unable to reproduce this sound. I've been to the best techs in the country and none have been able to reproduce this type of audio frequency response and fidelity tuning an export radio.
Sounds excellent to me and very intelligible.
My audio is identical and I get compliments from smart people and I hear it "doesn't sound special" from less knowledgeable folks. I've heard lots of recordings of myself and I really dig the sound.

Are you 163? I've heard 163 out there plenty of times, great sounding station. If that is a stock mic with no processing I take back what I said, but it sound like some type of signal processor is being used.
 
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Are you 163? I've heard 163 out there plenty of times, great sounding station. If that is a stock mic with no processing I take back what I said, but it sound like some type of signal processor is being used.
163 is the technician we are discussing in this thread and he is also the technician that has done all my work for the past 12 years. People have said that I sound like him on the radio and I've been accused of being him but I can assure you I'm just a truck driver that appreciates quality audio and I'm not the same guy.
there is no audio processing in that recording that's purely all analog audio with microphone plugged directly into the radio.
 
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"Sounding flat" to me would involve 3000hz frequency response like a stock radio. I guess you must be tone deaf or unable to notice the altered response. The hissing sound of the letter "s" occurs at 5000hz. How often do you hear that? Most folks radios are unable to reproduce this sound. I've been to the best techs in the country and none have been able to reproduce this type of audio frequency response and fidelity tuning an export radio.
Sounds excellent to me and very intelligible.
My audio is identical and I get compliments from smart people and I hear it "doesn't sound special" from less knowledgeable folks. I've heard lots of recordings of myself and I really dig the sound.


How much wattage is mark getting out of the 955s he tunes? I'm not asking so I can say some other tech gets more but he never seems to show too much about power in his videos. Are his tunes cleaner than brand X mainly because he has reasonable expectations from the devices being used? You can only get so much clean power out of a transistor.
 
How much wattage is mark getting out of the 955s he tunes? I'm not asking so I can say some other tech gets more but he never seems to show too much about power in his videos. Are his tunes cleaner than brand X mainly because he has reasonable expectations from the devices being used? You can only get so much clean power out of a transistor.
He generally doesn't push things past 75% of what it's capable of doing, the rationale being 90% of a transistors gain occurs within the first 66% of its power dissipation so the extra heat generated by the extra 10% gain isn't worth having.
Removing distortion and cleaning up signals are his specialty.
 
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I'll give RPC the benefit of a doubt that he got his decimal point in the wrong place when he gave that info. No such thing possible as .001uV. Easy enough mistake to make if one isn't aware of that significance of an additional place(s).

IIRC we went down that road but he insisted it was correct. Anyone with half a clue about radio would realize immediately that the decimal was in the wrong place and not vehemently defend the statement.
 
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IIRC we went down that road but he insisted it was correct. Anyone with half a clue about radio would realize immediately that the decimal was in the wrong place and not vehemently defend the statement.
You misrepresent what I was vehemently defending. I vehemently defend my statement that "Russel Clift AB7IF told me it was 1/1000th of a microvolt" and that " it was the best work he had ever seen in his life"
I'm not in a position to say whether his statement was true although being the honest person he was I will say he believed his test equipment to be accurate and based on that he thought he was telling me the truth.
I think it is reasonable to conclude that his equipment was lacking accuracy and that his measurement was incorrect.
 
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... Most folks radios are unable to reproduce this sound. I've been to the best techs in the country and none have been able to reproduce this type of audio frequency response and fidelity tuning an export radio.
Sounds excellent to me and very intelligible.
Mark can do surface mount part changes, sweet.
His tunes look awesome; mean is clean, no doubt.

Once someone knows how the filtering works in an audio circuit, and learns what the "GoldFinger Hi-Fi mod" (from EPT3600 or newer version) is all about.
All they have to do is apply the idea on a newer export board.. There are some audio frequency response gains to be had, if you know what parts to change and how to install them. This would be challenging if no schematic was available.
But, anybody who cares enough to trace out the circuit, can increase the audio frequency response in just about any CB set. (After a better mic)

Will Mark Hi-Fi my Realistic TRC-444 for me? Doubt it. Could he, yes he could after some tech investigation. . But he won't go out of his way to work on your butchered Cobra from 1970's.. At least that is what I gather from my observation of him.


I'm not saying Mark doesn't have over 100+ hours tracing circuits out and developing this mod all by himself, but I'm pretty sure I've heard him say online that he only works on radios he can get a schematic for.

A technician does not need to only service a select few (radios), unless they cannot produce acceptable results with radios using a different circuit board design.

Or perhaps it fits his very efficient personality, you know: Doing the great (repeatable) work as quickly as possible, no time for odd radios that don't fit the cookie-cutter program.

The "secret sauce" has been discovered by Mark, after all if one connects the dots they can work out what it takes to "open the audio up", no I am not talking about modulation, only frequency response.
A good tech can make the driver stage linear, as Mark says it's all in the bias.
(Very few that promote online will ever go this far for a radio tune, most can't)

He picks his customers, I am sure of it. Who hands someone a masterpiece to see it clipped and snipped, no one. Never again shall I cast pearls before the "undeserving or unenlightened".

Ever see something you had a lot of pride in, get destroyed after it was sold because some idiot couldn't "make it swing right", (haha nevermind the 125% asymmetry), he needed a squarewave monster that rattles the dosy meter.. Too bad his "tech" couldn't see the custom bias circuit I used in the driver stage, no wonder he said the finals are bad, it didn't act like a mixed class C shit box.
That's why I lose more interest in this scene as the days go on. (watt meter tuning)

Good clean work is not loud enough, and the other end of the spectrum is "tree-top-tall" dirty... Guess you really can't please everyone.

Best Regards to Fine Tune CB Shop & the whole WorldWideDX crew
 
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I only repeated what Russel Clift aka AB7IF told me when he put one of my radios on his antiquated test equipment. Obviously he was wrong.
.0399uv is still awful good though.
Sherwood Engineering is going to have to wait until I get my other radio.

good for what?!

please tell me of one location on this earth with a natural noise level of below .0399uV,
because this is going to be the ONLY place in the world where this would matter.

I don't care if he can somehow get a receiver's sensitivity to .000001uV. It's still USELESS once you connect an antenna to the radio.

when are you going to understand this?
LC
 
good for what?!

please tell me of one location on this earth with a natural noise level of below .0399uV,
because this is going to be the ONLY place in the world where this would matter.

I don't care if he can somehow get a receiver's sensitivity to .000001uV. It's still USELESS once you connect an antenna to the radio.

when are you going to understand this?
LC
That's precisely what Russell was thinking when he asked me if I was trying to hear "frogs farting on the planet Pluto".

It works for me and as long as I can hear signals that nobody else can I'm perfectly happy with it. Unless all the connections and grounds are perfect no one would ever notice.
 
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