This is a very nice working Hammarlund HQ-180A shortwave amateur HAM receiver complete with matching speaker and a photocopy of the original manual. Evidently it is actually an HQ-180AX since it has the crystal selector switch on the front panel where the clock would normally be. While I would not classify this unit as museum quality, it is very nearly so. With just a bit of detailing you could easily get it to that point. There are minor scratches here and there but nothing major and overall it is in remarkable condition for being over 60 years old. The chassis is not pristine clean but it appears to have come from a non-smoking environment and what little grime is there should be easily cleaned up with a minimum of effort. It could stand to have some capacitors upgraded but I brought it up to full voltage slowly with a Variac over the course of a whole day and then left it operating for several days with no problems. The knobs and switches are all in good shape and fully functional. The Main Tuning dial is weighted and spins like butter with a very nice feel and a bit of inertia. The Bandspread dial is just a bit stiff, not so much that it’s difficult to turn, it just doesn’t spin freely on its own after you give it a good twist like the Main dial does. There is probably an adjustment that can be made to loosen it up if you wish but I didn’t dig too deeply into it. The speaker is complete and looks all original. Its case is in similarly nice condition. The driver has an alnico magnet and the cone is free of any obvious damage. Connected to the receiver it has the classic warm sound you can only get from a quality tube amplifier through a vintage speaker. The included owners’s manual is a photocopy of the original and looks complete save for the last few pages missing, which unfortunately includes the schematic but of course those are all available from any number of online sources for free download. I have tried packing heavy fragile items like this myself in the past and it is difficult to obtain adequate materials and just way too much work to do properly. They encase the entire unit in expandable foam creating a virtually bombproof enclosure that I could never duplicate on my bench. The item “Vintage Hammarlund HQ-180AX Ham Tube Radio Receiver with matching Speaker” is in sale since Sunday, May 01, 2016. This item is in the category “Consumer Electronics\Radio Communication\Ham, Amateur Radio\Ham Radio Receivers”. The seller is “smw3″ and is located in Eureka, California. This item can be shipped to United States, to Canada, DK, RO, SK, BG, CZ, FI, HU, LV, LT, EE, to Australia, GR, SI, KR, ID, to Taiwan, to France, to Hong Kong, to Germany, to Austria, HR.
- Type: Base Station
- Brand: Hammarlund
- Model: HQ-180AX
- Supported Modes: AM
- Country/Region of Manufacture: United States