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Thanks for the great flashback. For a short time in the 1990s, I was a shortwave radio aficionado. For those few years, I really got into it. The holy grail for me was the Grundig Satellit 700 set (pictured below) that I acquired around the 1992-1993 timeframe. It was wicked expensive for me at the time as I was just getting started in my career and not yet making good money. Before that I had something cheap from Radio Shack and I can't even remember the model.

I still have this radio today and even now it delivers the deep, rich sound that only German engineering can deliver. Once in a while I'll take it out and try to dial something good in on the SW bands but it's nothing like it used to be. The Internet just blew up shortwave radio broadcasting and as you state, it's just a shadow of itself.

But I have many happy memories of sitting at my picnic table on warm evenings, "DXing" - as we called it in the day. Sometimes I would pick up some really exotic music from some third world outpost and I'd sit out there transfixed, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, but not caring as that music was nothing like I ever heard before.