The Sony ST-SB920 Tuner as a dx receiver

(for weak-signal long-distance FM reception)

DESCRIPTION

main PCB

The ST-SB920 is a popular component-audio AM/FM tuner with RDS, manufactured by Sony from 1998 until about 2008. It has been chosen by many FM dx-ers because of its wide availability while offering switchable IF-bandwidth, direct frequency entry and two antenna inputs for FM, and quite commendable RDS decoding

It is normal to modify the tuner by fitting narrower IF filters

 

 

 

tuner module with lid removed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DRAWINGS

The block functions of the receiver are shown here - there is nothing very unusual about the design, but the IF bandwidth switching for FM is of interest for dx use, and the front-end module can be seen to have bandpass filtering (two adjacent coils) and seems to have been designed with the option for two bandpass stages

Block Diagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

IF FILTERING

graph of filter responses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RF ALIGNMENT

I am sorry this page is incomplete. I posted some notes on the filtering and alignment to SkywavesDX