super ears?

[Kornbread]

does anyone know if this mod can be done on a galaxy 959 as well as on a rci 2985dx? i did a search and came up empty. many thanks in advance.

 

[9C1Driver]

Never heard of "superears", I suppose it is just a name created by a shop to sell a receive mod. There are several mods that shops do to improve the receive, they can call it anything they want I guess. First step would be to have a good tech do a proper receive alignment on the radio and then go from there. Also remember that the antenna is the most important part of the system, base or mobile. If your referring to a base set-up raising your antenna even 15 more feet would probably beat any receive mod.

 

[BammBamm]

The "super ears" is a scam. if you look online you will find a small 3 wire pre amp that you can add to a radio. This is the same as a "super ears" mod. I had the Schottky diode upgrade done to 1 of my Galaxy dx949's and did notice a difference. Not drastic but less white noise and I run it with the squelch off when skip is rolling at it is not bad at all. I might have gained like 1 db on receive but by swapping between my 2 949's I can't tell a difference other than noise. I will be doing this mod to my other 949 if I can ever get it set up right. It cost me $10 to have this done at my shop when I had him replace my meter light for me. Just my 2 cents.

 

[sparkysko]

It works better on 148's, etc..

Galaxy receive is horrible.. It's sensitive, but horrible and full of harshness

Get an alignment AFTER modifying your receiver, not before. (If you have a choice).

 

[unit_399]

Get an alignment AFTER modifying your receiver, not before. (If you have a choice).

If you have it aligned before, than you will know exactly how much improvement (if any) is due to the mod. Maybe an alignment before and after is best.

- 399

 

[Carl]

i did this on a 2547, it works very very well but mine was installed using the talkback pot, i didn't use talkback and it was nice having variable gain. if you talk to anyone in town you cant use it at all. they will just sound garbled. the closest to me was 8 miles away or so.

This modification significantly lowers the effectiveness of diode D9 and greatly increases the injected received signal to the radio. This was very popular when the Galaxy 10-meter radios first hit the market (D7 on the Galaxy DX-series 10-meter chassis). The modification requires that you remove the banded end of diode D9 and add a 1/4W, 1.5K resistor in-line with the banded end and the now vacated board location. This actually works very well for any distant station giving you an S-1 to an S-5 signal. A typical example is a station giving you an S-3 will increase to an S-9 (relative) without any increase in background noise (as is the case with most preamps). The downside is that anyone in your immediate vicinity keying up will tremendously overdrive the front end of your radio, possible causing damage to the receive portion of the board. Because of this, I ALWAYS perform this modification with a SPDT sub-miniature or micro-mini switch so that the modification can be turned ON and OFF as needed. The Galaxy DX959 and 949 front panels are heavily populated so your installation options are limited. I installed my switch between the Clarifier and Talkback controls.

 

[Kornbread]

Thanks Carl. I have this mod done on my gen. lee and both my galaxy 88hl and 99v. When I opened up the 959 the diode did not look the same as my other radios, so I figured that I would ask.

Either way the mod is now done and works great. I located the micro switch on the rear of the radio near the upper right corner ( if you are looking at the front of the radio). Again thanks CARL.

 

[Robb]

Did the receive mod (Shottky diodes and 2999e transistor) on a Ranger 969-FD1 - which uses the same chassis as the Galaxy 959 if I remember correctly.

Worked VERY well as a matter of fact.

I do this to any radio that I plan on keeping. AS well as giving them complete alignments too . . .

EDIT:
I must completely disagree with the poster above that said that a Galaxy's radio receive sounds like crap. That is only true if they are out of alignment. After aligning a few Galaxy radios, I can confidently say that they have an excellent receive. Get yourself a cheap/working RF Signal Generator and do your own receive alignments if you must. The only real down side to these radios, is that they drift a lot on SSB . . .

 

[psycho]

does anyone know if this mod can be done on a galaxy 959 as well as on a rci 2985dx? i did a search and came up empty. many thanks in advance.

The way I look at it.....if another station doesn't have the beans to be heard by you clearly, then they need to upgrade their junk.
"Super Ears"????? never heard of that.

 

[mackmobile43]

Your complete one stop shop for super ears

 

[psycho]

Your complete one stop shop for super ears

So that is what a superwackpack receive mod is all about.