cobalt pet shortwave / mediumwave weblog

12 December 2006

the end of the sangean line

A user on the rec.radio.shortwave newsgroup relayed part of a thread from avsforum.com. In the thread, a Sangean employee made an unofficial announcement about Sangean shifting its focus from shortwave:
No, Sangean will not release a new Shortwave radio. The closest thing to it will be our DRM-40, featuring DRM, Digital Radio Mondale, digital shortwave. The reason being that we have over the past 5 years seen a 50% reduction in the shortwave category. People unfortunately are not interested in SW.

The quote comes from this thread: Sangean HDT-1 Tuner.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

While I think there may be some truth to this, it could also be a way for Sangean to tell people "hey, you might want to buy up as many SW radios now while you can."

My Sangean 909 was my first SW radio and will always be my favourite, even if it is lacking in some areas, which are very few and far between.

weatherall said...

Did you get the Radiolabs modifications to your 909?

Anonymous said...

No big loss in my book. I thought the lower-priced Sangean SW radios little more than junk, very deaf on SW. The high-end models (818, 909) were too expensive for their rather mediocre reception abilities on all bands, especially the 909. Now that Redsun/Kaito have greatly improved their SW radios and can offer similar reliability, the Sangean line really can't compete in price or capabilities.