Is it true that an amateur HF rig could be the best AM radio receiver you could have? If you put up an HF antenna, it would almost certainly be able to receive signals at MF frequencies, and the receiver is well-designed to receive weak signals.
Yes and no.
The communications receivers Yaesu, Icom and Kenwood did put on market during 70's-90's almost invariably had a MW attenuator to protect them from overloading. In places like Finland all those systems had to be removed and modified before one could use them for dxing. In simpliest case modification could have been to cut 1 wire inside the unit. In more complex case components had to be soldered out and new ones placed in.
Also 70's-80's communications receivers had very seldom real narrow IF filters. How they dare to call 2,7 kHz bandwith "narrow", is still beyond me. "Wider" selections might have been something like 4 kHz and 7 kHz, and at least one of these two was completely useless for all purposes. I would have wanted to see 2.1 (or 1.5), 2.7 and then maybe 4 kHz. The result: During period circa 1975-1995 many hundreds, maybe even a thousand dx receivers in Finland were opened, old filters were thrown away, and new ones placed in.
Unfortunately every modification more or less ruins the performance of receiver, because it was not designed to work like that in the first place.
And now the shocker: Again, almost invariably those communications receivers were simply the receiving units of transceivers, packed alone in a different box.
This is why I wouldn't have high expectations if I had to use a nearly-vintage solid state transceiver.
On the other hand, the very last communications receiver Yaesu produced, FRG-100, was excellent and didn't suffer these problems. The reason was simple: it was designed as a communications receiver. Alas, around that time in 1990s demand of those receivers sunk, and it remains today as the last classic communications receiver Yaesu made. AOR-7030 and Lowe HF-225 are very recommendable too.
Then if you are interested in high class used professional receivers a la Racal, Plessey, Telefunken, Siemens, Rohde & Schwarz, Hagenuk, AEG, even RFT EKD-500 of East Germany, the prices vary between 700 - 5000 US dollars but usually quality and performance is top-notch even after all these decades.
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