Best am/ssb radio

My personal favorite is the new Uniden 980. Great receiver in it. Good TX when paired with a good microphone. Leave the insides stock; if you want more power, use an outboard amp. Mine doesn't drift, at all.

I look for two things in a sideband rig; a good receiver and frequency stability. This one has both.

 

Ditto MsJamie's vote. I've got AM/SSB rigs going back 40 years, and even with the best & most accurate factory-spec tuning, all drift to some degree.
The new Unidens (and their ilk) use surface mount devices to a great extent, so they don't have much mass, and are less likely to be knocked out of their adjustment. They also hold up better to physical shock because of their lower mass (per component). That doesn't mean that severe vibration might not crack the solder joint between the circuit board and the silvered end of an SMD cap or resistor, but it's easy enough to mount a radio so that vehicular vibrations don't jiggle the radio as much as the dashboard.

My 980 looks good on the bench, including signal purity as shown on the spectrum analyzer. On SSB, with a proper two-tone input, the signal puts out a shade over 13 watts with no flat-topping, overshoot, or undershoot.

The only (sorta) lack is in modulation levels. Even though I can drive the radio to 100% modulation with a test signal, it's hard to get it up there with the stock mic. I put an older D-104 base mic with the pre-amp base on it, and it now sounds just killer (forgive the technical jargon there )

Reluctant though I am to admit it, it even sounds better than my vintage Royce 1-641 AM/SSB base station. <sigh> Progress marches (or crawls) on.

Nice rig all around, but for mobile use I'd recommend a noise cancelling "power mic" for it. Just don't dime the audio level. "Loud and proud" too often becomes "Loud and junky" unless a critical listener helps you adjust it.

That's just my two cents' worth.
73

 

Don't rule out the older side mic Cobra 148 GTL or the Uniden Grant. Also the Uniden PC122 is the smallest FCC certified SSB/AM rig on the market.

 

I wonder how well one would sound if I added an Astatic 575-M6 mic to it?

 

I'd look into the new President Lincoln 2. Got one for my Jeep, and I believe that it has better receive than my Stryker 955.

 

I'm really surprised more cb'ers don't talk on ssb.

Much quieter and less bandwidth than am which means higher efficiency and farther range.

The problem with ssb and the main reason most cbers/truckers haven't used it is getting everyone on the same frequency.

If everyone didn't talk at once and were all on the same frequency you could talk 50 miles up and down the interstate with ease.

Never need more than 100 watts either.

148gtl used to be a pretty good ssb rig. You don't want all the modulation circuits cut out of it though.

 

Ranger RCI-2970n2 gets my vote..

 

Yup we really want driver trying . to tune in the other guy while driving.

SSB is just not stable enough. Give 11 meters to the HAMS and move CB's to much higher freq's, above 500mhz. There are lots of freqs on hold not being used.

Clear short range communications. line of sight. puts the golden screwdrivers out of business.