Grundig Satellit 900 (1995)
The Satellit 900 is a flagship world band receiver that Grundig presented to the public but never put into mass production. Grundig showed it at the 1995 Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) trade fair in Berlin as the new flagship of its world band receiver series and the successor to the Satellit 700. The company's financial difficulties at the time meant the set never reached the assembly line in any real quantity. As one collector's site puts it: the 900 was shelved, then dropped altogether.
What exists are prototypes, and the record suggests only about ten cased examples were made. One of those went to Eton, then operating as Lextronix, which is why the story continues there. The Eton E1, announced years later, was originally introduced as the Grundig Satellit 900. The lineage is well documented across multiple sources, and the E1 is essentially the Satellit 900 under a different brand. The Grundig original was to have an integrated RDS display. The Eton version dropped it.
The Satellit 900 was a portable HF/VHF receiver covering 0.15-30 MHz plus 65-108 MHz, with AM, AM-sync, SSB, and wideband FM stereo modes, and a double-conversion front end. It was housed in plastics - no bakelite here - and was described in period context as a sturdy portable with many of the features and much of the performance of a tabletop set. A pre-series unit surfaced on eBay some years back (item 231680148428). Forum discussion at the time suggested the asking price for one of the very few pre-series Sat 900s "was not that bad." Another forum thread mentioned a $1000 price point, though that figure is uncorroborated. A single RigReference user review praises the Satellit 900's antenna input, selectivity, and convenient operation for broadcast listening, with SSB support and the ability to pull in the 6,660 kHz station. That's one voice, so treat it as anecdotal.
Plenty is still missing. There are no production years beyond the 1995 debut, no original price, no dimensions or weight, no circuit details, and no sensitivity or selectivity figures. The set is known to have suffered delays and technical problems in development, which contributed to its fate. A 1996 issue of Passport to World Band Radio carried advertising featuring the unit that Lextronix had received. It is one of the few period print appearances of the 900 in any form.
Known facts at a glance:
- Type: Portable HF/VHF world band receiver (prototype / pre-series)
- Frequency range: 0.15-30 MHz and 65-108 MHz
- Modes: AM, AM-sync, SSB, WFM stereo
- Conversion: Double conversion
- Cabinet: Plastics
- Presented: IFA Berlin, 1995
- Status: Never mass-produced under the Grundig brand; approximately 10 cased prototypes made; lineage continues in the Eton E1
If you own one of the few surviving pre-series units, or have documentation from the development period, the Archive would like to hear from you.
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