are headphones the antenna for fm?

I was recording a FM station and disconnected the ear-buds and set the fuze down … on playback I realized the reception went from good to poor when I unplugged the headset 

If I recall correctly most mini-radios use the headphones as an antenna, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by this except I had forgotten that. 

I assume that’s the case for the fuze? (a nit, but maybe it should be in the manual)

Yes, the headphones are the antenna for fm.

WOW i never knew that.So what if i buy a new pair of headphones?Will i be able to listen to the Radio?

Thanks,

SR

Of course. Any headset will act as an antenna, not just the ones that came with it.

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WOW. I never thought that headphones were used as an intenna on a radio! That’s cool!

The downside is that if I use my Griffin dock (lineout only) the FM reception is quite poor, apparently ‘lineout’ is not the antenna only headphones. The solution is of course to only use the dock for canned music.

Yep, there is no connection on the fuze dock connector common to the headphone “ground”. That means no antenna with docked units or lineout cables. A future project of mine is to remedy this. I see 2 possible ways: 1 will require jumping a connection inside the fuze to an unused dock connector pin, the other would be plugging a cutoff cable in the headphone jack and making clearance/exit holes in the Griffin dock to clear it.

The “problem” with the fuze is that it does not use a common ground on the audio jack, it uses a “phantom” ground. I won’t try to explain it, but basically it eliminates the need for output coupling capacitors and improves the low frequency response from rolling off in the audible range.

hey, just tried something that helped a lot. Like any FM radio I noticed that putting my hand near it improved reception… so I went and grabbed a 3 foot piece of cheapo speaker wire (10 guage zip cord)  and looped 3 turns around the Fuze and hung the other end from the curtain, and almost as good reception as with headphones (no static) for the station I wanted to hear.

Looks like heck, but works for that station…  probably wouldn’t help for distant stations 

Message Edited by timn on 05-09-2009 03:06 PM

Only 2 1/2 years out of date. Amplifed speakers = line out?  and try the below wire wrap?