After the nightmare that was my GF-7500 It can now sit with it's bigger brother & I think they both look great..... A real snapshot of the 80's
Hi, Mr Eccles. Both these "flattop" Sharp stereos have clean-cut, good-looking silhouettes overall, though I fault them both for apparently lacking fine-tuning control for their lone shortwave (SW) band. That feature is quite important for SW reception. Especially for a single-band analogue SW-tuner. That somewhat improved chance at tuning between, say, 2300 kilohertz (kHz) and 22 megahertz (MHz) with a five- or seven-band analogue shortwave-tuner simply isn't there with this one-band, 6-to-18 MHz arrangement. At least my Sharp GF-800H(S) -- also having an FM/MW/SW/LW tuner format like this same-brand pair -- is more sensibly equipped with a fine-tuning thumbwheel. Speaking of the GF-800, I must say I still wonder why I can't tune a blamed thing with its SW band. Both the FM and MW (or AM) bands pick up radio stations about as well as can be expected for a non-receiver analogue-tuner here in Florida, USA. I feel that I register an oh-so-slight increase in the signal sound when -- out of curiosity -- I I try tuning the longwave (LW) band. (As if the unit were trying a bit harder to tune LW signals just then. And, yes, I know there is no vocal-content LW broadcasting here in North America; it is over there in Europe that broadcasters still transmit news programming, entertainment or whatever along the radio spectrum between 140 kHz and 350 kHz or so. Any LW signals here in the U.S. would be from military and civilian beacons. Not something a casual DXer would hunt for on the dial.) Did the shortwave-tuning components in that big, three-piece stereo get damaged during some repair attempt on, say, the cassette deck mechanisms? I have started to suspect that is the case. And, speaking of tuner controls, I never liked the look of those exposed-top thumbwheel tuners that some manufacturers built boomboxes and mini-boxes with back in the day. Even questionable "sliders" are visually and, perhaps, ergonomically less offensive than those "sliced top" tuner wheels. Minutes ago, I discovered the near-four-minute YouTube clip of the bigger, more impressive-looking GX-250 that you repaired and restored as of late June 2017. It's atop a spread-out white towel as it plays a presumably 90-minute EMTEC Chrome II audiocassette. I was going to write that it sounds good (and it does) playing what my Googling with heard lyrics indicates should be "Emotion" by the legendary falsetto trio the Bee Gees. But no; a certain Australian, Samantha Sang, is credited with first singing that song in 1978, though two of the Gibbs, Robin Gibb and Barry Gibb, are credited as the songwriters. The Bee Gees, apparently, recorded their version of their own songwriting much later, in 1994, "as part of an album called Love Songs which was never released but ... was eventually included on their 2001 collection titled Their Greatest Hits: The Record," according to Wikipedia data. I suspect that I heard "Emotion," in as least in part, a couple dozen times before 1994. And I was going to post the message stating that it is strange -- if not stunning -- to think that the recording heard before 1994 was never that of the Gibb brothers. But, having listened again to your fixed-up beauty's playback of that disco-era classic recording: yes, the lead vocals are certainly female, apparently those of Samantha Sang. I thought, during the second listening, that at least two of the Gibb brothers were backup vocalists. But Wikipedia data indicate that only Barry Gibb, one of the co-writers, sang backup. (Shrug in confusion) A short while ago, I glimpsed what seems to be a two-shortwave-band version of the GX-250. Even that presumably better SW-tuner doesn't seem to have fine-tuning assistance, judging from the somewhat blurry YouTube screenshot in the Google search results. But worry not. Enjoy the music -- by Cheryl Lau "Samantha" Sang or some other good artiste.
