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I am an electrical engineer working on a product that needs a loopstick antenna.

I had thought that AM radios were so commoditized that I'd be able to find an off-the-shelf vendor. However the closest thing I found was a recommendation in silicon labs AN602 app note for some shady Chinese company.

Can anyone point me to a reliable supplier that I could purchase from in quantity? I have familiarity working with magnetics suppliers to build custom magnetics but was hoping to avoid that route.

Mike Waters
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Aaron
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  • After hunting around for a new loopstick antenna for a hobby radio project, I ended having to buy new-old-stock off of eBay, at vintage collectors pricing. Used to be able to get them from any Radio Shack. – hotpaw2 Jan 30 '20 at 06:20
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    Regarding “is this the right forum” — nominally, product recommendations and sources are off-topic, but we have been more lenient towards questions that are more towards the “is this possible to obtain at all” end of things, so this is (in my current opinion) OK. – Kevin Reid AG6YO Jan 30 '20 at 17:52
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    If you can get the correct core and some magnet wire, it's easy enough to make a loopstick, and that way you can tune it for your application too. There is also a lot of literature on the correct way to wind a loopstick, so that shouldn't be too difficult. You may want to look for custom transformer companies. – user10489 Feb 19 '20 at 15:56
  • Added link to this in [EE chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/15/electrical-engineering) – Mike Waters Jul 16 '20 at 05:08
  • You have not mentioned your requirements, do you need a secondary? with tap or without tap? what inductance?. You can check out the antenna book from ARRL. You can buy the ferrite rods on eBay or Aliexpress and use either Litz wire or magnet wire to wind your own antenna. – S.s. Jul 16 '20 at 14:19
  • One possibility is to buy AM radio kit on Amazon just for the antenna. But it's not scalable as it's like $30 a piece. Another option is to buy those larger square AM antennas. They work on the same principle, but don't have a ferrite core as well as fewer loops. Probably the larger area in the centre (6sq inch) compensates for the other things being the lesser. – Daniel Jul 26 '20 at 22:36

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https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/ferrite-coil.html?spm=a2700.7724857.22.2.39a54807W9PFes

Many Chinese suppliers offer these on Alibaba

user17230
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    Hello and welcome to ham.stackexchange.com! BTW in general short answers that are mostly a link are discouraged, but in this case I think it's a good answer: ferrite loopstick antennas are probably only made in China now, and Alibaba is a good a place as any to find manufacturers. – rclocher3 Jun 16 '20 at 16:44