AM listening in a hostile environment

[donles]

Hopefully, someone here can offer advice. I'd like to listen to AM radio at work. Problem is that there is a lot of electrical noise in my small and humble "office". It's in an industrial building (metal siding) and the office houses 3 pc's and a plc rack. There is also an electrical distribution panelboard immediately on the other side of a block wall from my workspace. Electric is 460 volt 3 phase powering some motors,etc. Oh yeah, did I mention fluorescent and HID lighting.
Is it impossible to overcome the interference? Would an external antenna help? I started by looking at radios such as GE Superradio III because I read many favorable reviews but am I putting the cart before the horse?
Thanks for reading.

[ku4a]

If you are in a metal-frame building, or even a building that just has metal studs, you are not going to do too well for radio reception, especially at the lower frequencies. If you have the ability to put up an external antenna, it will make a huge improvement.

[WX9T]

I'd have to concur. With that much junk around, trapped inside a building of that type, pretty much all you're going to get will be buzz and other RF crud, along with only a scant handful of stronger locals. You need to find some way to get an antenna outside of that environment, or just resign yourself to listening to FM. The only thing that _might_ be useful otherwise would be some sort of loop, but the fact that you'd have only a limited useful directional range for this would seem to make it more trouble/expense than it would be worth.

[AmericanDXer]

Not much you can do with all that RF crap around, external antenna would be your best bet.