Drake SSR-1 reviews

I agree with all the comments of the first reviewer. Tuning this radio is crazy! No wonder they didn’t last long. Kenwood and Icom never bothered to build a Wadley Loop radio because they were already designing a better PLL digital readout radio in the R-600 and R-1000.
Most digital portables today with a BFO (for LSB and USB) tuning will match and even exceed the performance of the FRG-7 and SSR-1.
SSR-1 reception on MW produces annoying ‘birdies’ across the band if there are strong signals present.
Selectivity in SSB mode is poor - too wide causing lots of cross interference - because there is no good filtering in the IF stages.
Audio quality is mediocre from the small 3” internal speaker.
These radios are always being traded indicating owners upgrade to better sets.

Similar to the tuning system employed by the better Yaesu FRG-7.
Unless you like endlessly turning knobs when moving from one band to another, tuning these radios is extremely cumbersome and tiring. The Preselector must be continuously ‘peaked’ to receive the signal at maximum strength. One also has to set the MHz and kHz knobs.
While the FRG-7 has a lock light to indicate correct MHz position the ssr-1 has no light. Likewise the Preselector control on the SSR-1 is not calibrated like the Preselector on the FRG-7.
Synthesized digital sets by Sangean, Sony, Kenwood, or Tecsun are better choices than any wadley loop radio.