Greetings. Back in the 1970s, amongst other circuits, I used to build simple crystal radio sets using a tuned LC circuit and a germanium diode based on designs in the 1950s electronics magazines. They were not very good, maybe picking up a couple of stations with poor selectivity and only then with a 20m wire antenna. The good news is they introduced me to a career in RF electronics (electron physics) design which has served me very well these past 40+ years.
Recently I thought about how I would make a better amplitude modulation crystal radio, in a simple way, using only a few, more modern semiconductor devices and without resorting to exotic spider wound coils and such things. Spider coils, if used correctly, can provide higher Q quality factor and therefore higher frequency selectivity because they have lower parasitic capacitance. However, any kind of low impedance load and their selectivity benefits are immediately lost.
Instead, I thought I would use two JFETS, used as voltage followers for high input impedance, in order to not load the LC tank tuned circuit, and the detector. Also, a low power npn bipolar RF transistor for RF Voltage gain. I also used a simple LC circuit with ferrite antenna to concentrate the RF e.m. energy inside the inductor and a low forward voltage drop IN34A type germanium diode for the a.m. detector, similar to those we used to use in crystal sets. I applied a small amount of d.c. bias current to the detector in order to provide a d.c current return and to reduce envelope distortion.
This very simple design below is what I ended up and it works reasonably well considering its simplicity, receiving at least a half a dozen stations, with good selectivity. I think this radio sounds better than a typical modern superheterodyne receiver design, but perhaps that is just me. With a power supply current of less than 3mA, its efficiency is hard to beat. No other antenna is needed, and it provides an audio output level high enough to drive an amplified computer speaker. Another benefit is that with no superheterodyne 455KHz local oscillator, the receiver operation cannot be detected. A future upgrade might add auto level adjust, or you can simply use your speaker volume control.
I added the LTspice simulation zip file below the schematic.
A stroll down memory lane and the crystal set perfected?
Chris Owen
Nov 5th, 2022
A quality 15cm x 1cm ferrite rod antenna was used, around 400 perm.
For high inductor Q, the coil used Litz wire with 175 strand/46 awg.
Coil Inductance Calculator - Engineering Calculators & Tools (allaboutcircuits.com)
Q of ferrite-rod inductors & contra wound coils, applied to crystal radio sets (kearman.com)
LTspice schematic inside ZIP file:
A new addition for Jan 2026 - A simple Colpitts oscillator with a.m. modulation for use as a short-range a.m. transmitter.
The dc power supply is 5V to 12V, 2.5mA, 12mW.
There was often not much music I like on the a.m. channels, too much talk radio, so I built my own simple a.m. radio transmitter so I could use my own MP3 player music. L2, (~ 5uH) was constructed from a single turn of 20awg wire with 5 feet diameter.
The range was around 10 feet or so. The range of a similar VHF oscillator is higher, around 100 feet.
The sound quality of both the receiver and transmitter was excellent.
Below are L2 time domain inductor current a.m. waveform and spectrum plots.
The radiated power (0.1uW) is determined by the current in L2.
99% of the d.c. power is wasted in resistive loses, which are high as a result of the low radiation resistance at this relatively low RF frequency. The total photons emitted ~ 10^20 per second.
R10 is the parasitic resistance of L2 including skin depth. L2 Q is ~ 220. In circuit the LC Q ~ 37.
A higher LC tank capacitor ratio would improve circuit Q because most of the LC loading comes from the low collector impedance.
The amplitude modulation index (28%) is lower than normal and the AGC of a Superhet Receiver can reduce the level of the demodulated audio. However, this does not happen in an amplified crystal set circuit like the one above.
