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Real CB Radios are side mic
- Thread starter Slowmover
- Start date
Well it's an Lt. which in the military is lieutenant and they are well known to only be 3 IQ points above retarded.
My taught as well! It seems to be the place to get it.
It is too bad that UNIDEN changed a bunch of things just for marketing purposes(Cobra did the same), but the Grant LT is not at par with the Grant XL.
Yup! Happened to deliver just up the road so I stopped in on the way out and left with a new radio! How does that happen?
JD
LOL. Patiently waiting to hear the differences between a Grant XL and a Grant LT.... You do know it's the same exact radio, same board, same parts, but has backlit knobs and a front mic jack, and a DSC (Dynamic Squelch Control add in board from factory)? Same everything as Grant XL (I own a XL too, more than one).
It happens, specially if you have a "bit of an addiction". There are places where I just can't do window shopping. I'm sure a few members on here feel the same way. Plus, during these times, might as well get them while you still can!
73
It happens because you couldn't resist haha. A cb shop or accessories shop is a drivers toy store, I proceed with caution as the account will more than likely lose weight before leaving.
I've contemplated mounting mine on the dash of the cascadia too. The older kenworth trucks had a spot on the dash like that and was much better accessible that way.
Did you mount the bracket directly into that dash tray?
It looks good there
Heavy duty VELCRO. Makes it easy to change radios and no holes in company truck. You might need some folded up cardboard to steady things.
JD
Same audio chip? Do they receive the same? I only have XL's but a buddy of mine had an LT and as far as receive and being loud it wasn't like the XL (I am not saying that the LT is junk, it is still way better than a lot of the Chinese crap made today). Sometimes (and Cobra is the proof of it) even when they used the same board and components, what made a difference was actually the quality of the components used and that got worst as radios got newer.
73
Yes all same. The difference may be, and I couldn't prove it one way or another because pretty sure all my Grant's are Made in Philippines. I have heard that the later model LT's may have some issues, but no way to confirm that, pretty sure I have an older one. None of the Grant LT's were made in China as far as I know.
Not a truck driver, but I am a Pilot Car driver, a 10+ year Ham, and been radioing for 30+ years now, have repaired 100's of radios, amplifiers, just for some background.
The Grant LT is not a common radio, and though it has a front Mic Jack, it's the same "old Goodness" as the side mic radios. That's why I said, my Grant LT saw this thread, and said "that's dumb". But that's one of the only exceptions, the LT, and surely a few others older than the year 2002 or so.
I get in and out of the CB hobby, but from what I can remember, when they changed the Cobra 148gtl's to Front Mic, that wasn't the only thing they changed. The real issue if I remember right was the crappy cheap 3 pin voltage regulator design they went to in most all of the front mic radios, and the drifty capacitors used throughout all of the radio, including some fake capacitors, which also plagued LCD TV's of the era. A Chinese company made capacitors with the wrong formulation, and they would leak/blow up, go bad etc. It was a huge scandal. I may be forgetting some things so if someone comes along that's been more active in CB for the last 20 years or so than myself, feel free to correct me.
Ya, you do have a point. There could have been an issue here and there even with the LT Philippines made radios. The Chinese 148’s are mainly junk, but they had many issues with the side mic Malaysians as well(you can ask @Handy Andy as he is very knowledgeable about the insides of radios and has a lot of experience). Some of the boards where the same but not the quality of the components and they made very minute changes that change how the radio operates (specially SSB). There could be very small changes even between radios made in the same country during years of production. As the radios got newer it got worst for quality control. At the beginning it was Japan, than Taiwan, than the Philippines, than Malaysia and than crap. I would pay more for a radio (sure others would too) if it was made like “back in the day”! Uniden and Cobra now try to rely on the name and reputation they once had but quality is not the same as it used to be.
73
Absolutely. Modern Cobra is a joke. I was around in the Uniden glory days, if I had only known how things would end up, I would have bought all the old school 148's, Grants, 29's, PC68/78/122, etc that I could get my hands on for later down the road when everything went to shit.
I was just adding in about my Grant LT, because, even though I detected the OP's sarcasm about side mic radios ruling, I think a lot of people didn't detect that. A front Mic Jack has absolutely nothing to do with whether a radio was good or not. Heck I had probably 5 or 6 RCI-2950's back in their heyday, and while they did have problems, especially with the soldering, once a good tech went in there and properly soldered everything, those radios were great. I may have some 70's CB's in storage that still work great, with front mic jacks. It's a placement, nothing else, no secret sauce in a side mic radio. Grant LT a great example. Some say best AM/SSB chassis ever made other than maybe the Palomar SSB500. Grant XL, Grant LT, Cobra 148GTL, Cobra 2000GTL, all same radio, same board, same parts, same performance. The Grant LT just happened to have backlit knobs (I like at night!) and front mic jack. Nice because in my install a side mic jack would be a PITA, I'd have to move it to the bottom cover or use a really small right angle adapter.
A side note, it's a whole lot cheaper to make the modern day SMD parts radios. They are cheaper altogether to build than anything from the past.
IF, you were to build a radio, like they did 30 years ago, in todays world, it would exponentially more expensive. Even the modern Galaxy (RCI Chassis, ALL) radios are cheap garbage compared to the old ones. All you have to do is use a DX959 or something like that, then go use a old 90's Galaxy 44 or 33 or old Connex 3300 to understand just how cheaply made your modern Galaxy radios are. I was disappointed that the brand new DX99V I bought in 2003 was drifty on SSB. The older ones were not. I only thought I had been offended until I bought a brand new DX959 around 2008-2010 maybe? I couldn't believe the cheap knobs, potentiometers, switches, the whole 9 yards, felt like cheap garbage. It was a talker on AM, with a noisy receiver, but also drifted so bad on SSB that there was just no hope for it. I tried to fix it, eventually sold it, cheap.
Will the time come when you can buy a brand new "normal" radio like a Cobra and it not be a cheap POS right out of the box. Maybe. CB is a niche market, it's certainly not a mainstream thing like it was, so cheaper is the name of the game. Make it look fancy, change colors, add Bluetooth, all that jazz, to get them to BUY. Don't worry about the stuff that actually matters, like 50 cent pots and switches that may break before the warranty is up or hopefully (for them) right after!
IF, you were to build a radio, like they did 30 years ago, in todays world, it would exponentially more expensive. Even the modern Galaxy (RCI Chassis, ALL) radios are cheap garbage compared to the old ones. All you have to do is use a DX959 or something like that, then go use a old 90's Galaxy 44 or 33 or old Connex 3300 to understand just how cheaply made your modern Galaxy radios are. I was disappointed that the brand new DX99V I bought in 2003 was drifty on SSB. The older ones were not. I only thought I had been offended until I bought a brand new DX959 around 2008-2010 maybe? I couldn't believe the cheap knobs, potentiometers, switches, the whole 9 yards, felt like cheap garbage. It was a talker on AM, with a noisy receiver, but also drifted so bad on SSB that there was just no hope for it. I tried to fix it, eventually sold it, cheap.
Will the time come when you can buy a brand new "normal" radio like a Cobra and it not be a cheap POS right out of the box. Maybe. CB is a niche market, it's certainly not a mainstream thing like it was, so cheaper is the name of the game. Make it look fancy, change colors, add Bluetooth, all that jazz, to get them to BUY. Don't worry about the stuff that actually matters, like 50 cent pots and switches that may break before the warranty is up or hopefully (for them) right after!
Ya I still try to buy the old school 148’s and Grants(sometimes you still find them in excellent shape and “unmolested”). You should get your old ones out of storage and working because they probably work better than most of the new stuff. You know the same is also true for some double barreled shotguns (barrel performance is affected because of the lower quality of the steel compared to 1960-1980’s), not to mention the pride that back then went into manufacturing(today only available when you spend a fortune). Too bad that nowadays we are looking at a throw away society.
73
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