Fadingįading is one reason that shortwave radio doesn’t sound as good as local medium wave and FM stations. The SE-6 is housed in the same size and color cabinet as the SE-3. The price for the SE-6 is $99, $125 or $149 for the 4, 8 or 12 input models respectively. If you have more than one radio that can be used with the SE-3, the SE-6 switch box is available to provide switch selection and level matching for the radios. The overall quality of construction is excellent, although I found a ground lead to the headphone jack that had not been soldered in place on my unit. It appears that the SE-3 is assembled to order, so it may take at least a week or two for delivery. A rack mounting panel option is available for an additional $49.00.
The price for the SE-3 is $549.00, plus shipping. You will also need to make or obtain a cable with the appropriate connectors to connect your radio to the SE-3. Other receivers will require modifications to provide the appropriate output to interface to the SE-3-see the Sherwood Engineering website for more information. The SE-3 is plug and play, as long as your receiver has a 455 kHz intermediate frequency (IF) output-such receivers include the AOR AR7030, AOR3030, TenTec RX-340, Racal GM6790, Watkins-Johnson HF-1000, later versions of the Palstar R-30 and the military R-390A. There are outputs for a speaker, ¼ inch stereo or mono headphones and an auxillary line level output to drive a tape recorder or external amplifier. The SE-3 contains an audio amplifier supplying five watts into an 4 ohm load with a frequency response of 30 to 15,000 Hertz.
It comes with an external power supply supplying 20 volts AC at 500 mA. It is an external box measuring 3.25 x 8 x 5.5 inches (HxWxD). The SE-3 also provides for passband tuning to select either sideband of an AM signal to reduce adjacent channel interference. The SE-3 uses a product detector which generates less distortion of the audio signal than the usual envelope (diode) detector used in most receivers for AM reception. This local carrier is stable and immune to fading, unlike the signal’s own carrier. It does this by substituting a locally generated carrier that is phase locked to the signal’s carrier. It is designed to make listening to shortwave more pleasurable by significantly reducing the distortion induced by the selective fading of an amplitude modulated radio signal’s components. The SE-3 is a replacement for a receiver’s detector and audio output stages. Have you ever noticed in the receiver reviews in Passport To Worldband Radio that the reviewer may think that a particular radio is very good, but that the addition of the Sherwood SE-3 synchronous detector makes it great? What does the SE-3 do that makes it such a useful addition to an already good receiver? I had used an earlier version of the SE-3 with a JRC NRD-515 many years ago, but I decided to see what was different with the new model and see how it worked with more modern receivers. Equipment Reviews, April 2006 Sherwood Engineering SE-3 MK III Synchronous Detector