Kenwood TS-570DG

A middle-priced HF rig with 16-bit DSP, a built-in autotuner, and a hundred honest watts.

Overview

Kenwood built its reputation on making serious RF performance feel ordinary. The TS-570DG is a desktop HF transceiver that the product literature itself calls "a middle-priced HF transceiver offering an impressive feature set normally found in higher-end rigs." That's a fair description of what the radio delivered. The DG badge distinguishes it from the base TS-570D, and its sibling the TS-570SG sits alongside it in the same family. The rig has been out of production for years. One eHam.net reviewer notes flatly that "the 570DG is no longer in production but the Kenwood 480sat is."

What buyers got was a base-station transceiver with a full 100 watts of transmit output, a general-coverage receiver, and a feature set that punched well above its price class. The DSP section runs on 16-bit processing. That's modest by later standards, but at the time it brought noise reduction, equalization, and slope tuning into a price bracket that previously made do without them. Kenwood's own catalog copy leaned hard on that point, describing the design as providing "16-bit DSP technology for superb audio, noise reduction, equalization and slope tuning," and stating that "Digital Signal Processing technology is affordable to everyone with the Kenwood TS-570DG."

Owners who've lived with these radios tend to describe them in terms of endurance rather than flash. One operator reported running a TS-570DG for nine years, working 5BDXCC, DXCC MIX (291), and DXCC CW, all at 100 watts into an inverted vee. Another put it plainly: "it has been a work horse for me... same reliability... not all the bells and whistles of the more expensive radios but suits my CW lifestyle!"

Key Features

16-Bit DSP with Noise Reduction and Slope Tuning

The DSP is the headline feature. Kenwood's catalog material describes the design as providing "16-bit DSP technology for superb audio, noise reduction, equalization and slope tuning." In practice that meant the rig could shape its own IF passband digitally rather than relying solely on fixed crystal filters. That helps on a crowded band, and it was far from universal in this price class. It is not a modern SDR and shouldn't be expected to behave like one, but for its generation the processing was useful rather than decorative.

Built-In Automatic Antenna Tuner

Rather than make owners buy and cable a separate ATU, Kenwood built the tuner into the chassis. Documentation for the radio lists a "built-in DSP, automatic antenna tuner" among its features. That removes a box, a set of patch cables, and a whole class of RF grounding headaches. These tuners are also a known service point. One YouTube video circulating among owners is titled "KENWOOD TS-570D AUTOMATIC ANTENNA TUNER NOT WORKING," which suggests the mechanism eventually needs attention on a decades-old unit.

RIT, XIT, IF Shift, and Keypad Entry

The front panel carries a digital display, an S-meter, and keypad entry, and the feature list includes RIT, XIT, IF Shift, and DSP slope tuning. RIT and XIT let an operator nudge receive or transmit frequency independently of the main tuning, which helps with a station that's slightly off-frequency. IF Shift moves the passband relative to the carrier, so an adjacent station can be pushed out of the way of the signal you want. These are the working controls on an HF rig.

100 Watts on Every Mode

Output is rated at a full 100 watts. One dealer listing states plainly that the unit "transmits at a full 100 watts," and manufacturer documentation confirms "100W output power." The radio covers SSB, CW, AM, FM, and FSK. FSK is the mode used for RTTY work, though some documentation describes the mode lineup more loosely as including "digital modes." Either way, the power figure is the same across the lineup. 100 watts is the legal limit for most amateur operation and enough to work the world with a decent antenna. The nine-year owner mentioned above did exactly that, with 5BDXCC and a 291-entity DXCC MIX on 100 watts and a wire.

Historical Context

The TS-570DG sits in the middle of Kenwood's HF lineup, between entry-level rigs and the company's flagship-class equipment. Its own documentation describes it as offering "an impressive feature set normally found in higher-end rigs." The DG variant is part of a broader family that includes the TS-570D and the TS-570SG, and enthusiast review sites cover the model line collectively as the "TS-570D(G)."

Production years for the TS-570DG are not documented in available sources, and no original launch price has surfaced. The radio has been discontinued, and it was succeeded in Kenwood's catalog by models like the 480SAT. Owners comparing the two eras sometimes note that the older 570 still holds its own on weak-signal CW. One eHam.net thread observes that a poster "can hear weak cw signals better on the 570." Whether that's nostalgia or a real receiver advantage is hard to settle without measurement data.