Kenwood 440s and 450s

[TonyV225]

Are these radios simular in the operation department and in reliability?? or is one better than the other???

 

[cyclops1970]

450 wins hands down. Don't get me wrong the 440 is a nice radio, but I've spent hours and hours and hours fixing different peoples 440s (VCO troubles), and have yet to find a problem with my 450 after 11 years.

 

[Hamin' X]

I have to agree with the 440 VCO trouble. However, I redid mine according to the Kenwood technical bulletin, about 8 years ago and it is still running trouble free today. No experience with the 450, however.

Rich

 

[Carl]

my buddy rick had a 690 (450 with 6m). digital s meter with mod scale works on recieve, very nice radio. he liked his very much but sold it as he never had a ticket, he would just listen and money talked. the fan liked to come on even when the radio was barely warm. he ended up changing it so it would come on later, pretty annoying as he would turn it on and 10 seconds later the fan would spin.

if you are going to be using this on 11 meter in town i would look at a different radio.his was getting hammered pretty hard as the agc was slow to react and you would nearly always have to have the 20db pad on and it killed most far signals. very clean audio, powerfull (40 watts am and just over 100 ssb) ran no problems on a mfj 35 amp power supply. it was unbelieveable as far as ssb goes and had solid am sound. very clean. it was not as loud as most of the current radio's go but it was clean.

all in all if you can score it for a good deal than do it make shure it has an auto tuner. its much cheaper to get one with it installed rather than buy one from ebay. if you dont plan on using it take it out and sell it, should see $80 or better. otherwise take a look at a kenwood ts 570d. might be a little cheaper to go that route and you pick up some more options like dsp.

 

[TonyV225]

I had a 440 for years and sold it last year i was being hammered buy people wanting to buy it well i let it go it was a great radio and sounded better on AM in my opinion anyways. I did have to go in and fix the bourd problem once where the display showed the dots and that was it I had that radio for about 8 years with no problems really. I also think that the 440 sounded better on AM than my Yaesus did and do. Nd the filtering for the recieve was also excellent. As far as being in the city nope Im out away from that scene and I also dont really Am and when I do I dont run my HF rigs Ill run my gallaxy 2527 or one of my 2000 no tuning for AM turn on and go after a few minute stabliizing warm up which is something I just do. Anyways I was looking around and seen a few 440s forsale but also stumbled accros that 450 and they seem kind of simular. I was looking at the Yaesu 990 but have a 767 being redone so another base hf is really not needed. What is a fair price on a decent 440 or on a decent 450 Im guessing about $375-$500 on a ok to great condition 440 but am not sure on the 450