I have a Drake R8 receiver (discontinued) and it’s matching external speaker for better than 25 years. About a year after they went out of production I called Drake Service to inquire about servicing my R8. (A friend had just purchased an Icom 75 receiver and we thought we would compare them. When we did it was apparent my R8 had lost some of its origional capabilities.) A service tech told me Drake no longer supported the radio but he did on his own, at home. So I sent it off to him. It was returned in perfect running order, complete with a list of what it needed. Apparently some capacitors had gone bad so the tech simply replaced all of the same type of caps and fired it up, retuned it and returned it. Anyway, I’ve not touched the R8 in a few years. It works but for all I know the replacement caps may need to be swapped out for the same reason the original ones were, or it may be in perfect shape. I am wondering what the radio is worth as I’m considering selling it as is. Since the circuit boards in it are spacious, any parts replacements needed should be relatively easy for those handy with this type of work. Any help in determining what it may be worth is welcome.
Drake R8 Receiver
- Thread starter n1chu
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dxace1
Member
R8 with caps replaced gets a bit higher price. One NIB can still get over $500.
I have an R8 and an R8B. They are still highly regarded receivers and superb performers, especially on AM broadcast. Unfortunately, my R8's power supply smoked and by that time Drake was not supporting the radio any longer.
I don't know what the R8 sells for used these days. Years back, the R8B was selling for more than it cost new after it was discontinued. The R8 usually commanded a lower price than the B, but it has the superior optical encoder vs the B's mechanical encoder that had a higher failure rate.
I recommend searching Ebay for completed auctions/sold items to get an idea of a price range. That is where I would start if I was going to sell any equipment. Having the original box and owners manual is a plus.
I don't know what the R8 sells for used these days. Years back, the R8B was selling for more than it cost new after it was discontinued. The R8 usually commanded a lower price than the B, but it has the superior optical encoder vs the B's mechanical encoder that had a higher failure rate.
I recommend searching Ebay for completed auctions/sold items to get an idea of a price range. That is where I would start if I was going to sell any equipment. Having the original box and owners manual is a plus.
Sorry to hear.
Thanks. I will check out ebay
The earliest R8's are approaching 35 years old. No piece of equipment lasts forever. It's not unusual at all for capacitors to dry out and resistors lose value and need to be replaced after 10/20/30 years of use, both in "solid state" and tube gear.
All things being equal, transistors have a longer service life than vacuum tubes, but of course, they can fail too.
One thing for sure - just about any tube-based radio made in the last 100 years can be rebuilt and brought back to life. It's doubtful many current radios will still be repairable when they are several decades old.
N5ZKK
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My father's S-38 Hallicrafters still works just fine other than the glass was broken out. I did re-string the control knobs but otherwise no repairs.
tuihill
Member
S-38 was the first communications receiver ever I listened to. Probably ~ 1957. Belonged to an uncle who showed me how to use it and left me to tune around the spectrum. Remember coaxing out the CW with the BFO.
Wow. I have a Hammarlund HQ-129X that I got from my uncle, who acquired it from his father-in-law. It still works also. No idea if it had any repairs over the years, but the caps are original and I do not use it much any longer. Any radio that old with original caps can fail suddenly, and sometimes spectacularly. Just FYI.
I guess the difference is/was tubes have an expected shorter life expectancy compared to transistors, akin to an incandescent light bulb. It was expected replacing them was part of the game. But that’s where it ended. The rest of the electronic parts, coils, resistors, capacitors, lasted longer. But the R8 used some caps that would dry out after time and need replacing, especially if the radio sat dormant for months or years. After I got the radio back from being repaired, the replacement of these particular caps, I was advised to turn the R8 on from time to time to help prolong the caps life… which confused me because heat is the main enemy of electronic devices and turning them on produces heat.
My R8B has sat dormant for long periods. Last time I used it, it seemed fine, though.
I thought the same way, namely that heat would cause them to fail sooner. However, I have a Radio Shack handheld scanner that sat on the shelf for years. When I tried using it recently, the audio was very low and had a tinny sound. Most likely it's due to bad caps. The radio is about 20 years old.
“My R8B has sat dormant for long periods. Last time I used it, it seemed fine, though.”
I thought the same thing until I sat it down next the an Icom 75. That’s when I realized It’s reception had noticeably diminished.
Good point. I have an Icom R75, Kenwood R-5000 and two JRC receivers. I have nothing new to compare it to, as even the newest radio (R75) is nearing 20 years old!
It's kind of weird how some of the old timers just seem to go on working forever, and other ones have failures that are known to happen. Sometimes, it's just from running the radio on AC power, like the Kenwood R5000 (I haven't seen one in a long long time) that runs insanely hot, and I've had a couple of Icom R71as that had to have the yellow caps that turn brownish replaced due to them being run on AC power. A lot of these radios are over 40 years old, and if an IC or some oddball part dies, your only hope is an Ebay corpse or parted out radio.
My Kenwood 1000 seems to be doing fine, I took it to a friend's house recently and it did fine against an Icom R75 and a couple of portables. Dead on freq and sounds better than any of the other recievers we were using on AM.
My Kenwood 1000 seems to be doing fine, I took it to a friend's house recently and it did fine against an Icom R75 and a couple of portables. Dead on freq and sounds better than any of the other recievers we were using on AM.
The R5000 does run very hot. Another known issue is keyboard bounce, which mine exhibits occasionally.
My Icom R7000 also runs a bit hot like the R71A. It's recommended to run both on an external supply. The R71A had an internal battery backup that held the unit's programming in RAM. When the battery died, the unit would have to be sent back to Icom to be reprogrammed.
The R1000 is a highly-regarded radio. Never heard of any real known problems with these beyond aging capacitors.
I have a Wilco board that I'm holding on to in case I ever get another R71. I can't remember who made the other replacement board that eliminated the backup battery. I've had R71As that were bone stock, loaded and modded. There were two of them I really regretted selling. One had all the options, but the remote was missing. The other one just had the FL44 and another filter, but I did the audio mod on it, and swapped the detector out for a Shottky diode that was fantastic. Super quiet unless the RF gain was cranked up. That R71A and my NRD-515 were just about equal in sniffing out weak stuff, but the audio on the R71A after the mods was much better, so you could understand weak stuff better.
Never owned or used an R71A but I remember the ads in Popular Communications back in the late 80's/90's. I wanted one of those tabletop receivers badly, but as a high school kid, I had to settle for a DX-440.
I picked up an NRD-515 and the matching speaker a few years ago on Ebay from a seller called Big Apple. It was in amazing, survivor condition and completely stock, and came with all the original manuals. It's a great receiver and feels more solidly built than my NRD-525. The only issue with the 515 is the 2.4kHz filter, which needs to be serviced, as it produces very muddy audio on SSB. I searched out the instructions for servicing the filter a few years ago, but never got around to doing it. The 6 and 0.5 filters are fine
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