Yes. On most boomboxes, the AM ferrite rod is attached directly to the tuner board. That rod is actually the AM antenna. Contrary to popular belief, the chrome shaft antenna rod only feeds FM and not AM. But AM antennas are highly directional. If you don't believe me, tune to an AM station on your boombox and if the reception is not good, you can frequently improve it significantly by shifting the boombox on it's axis. That seems sorta stupid if you ask me. But boomboxes are not meant to be highly sensitive receiving devices anyway. Anhow, in order to change the directional function of the AM antenna on the typical boombox, you will have to rotate the entire boombox in order to rotate the fixed ferrite rod. Again, seems stupid.
Now if you look at the electrobrand or the Eton Grundig 750, or the Sanyo RP-8880, or the Realistic SW-100 -- they all have the rotating rod on top. That functions as the AM antenna and instead of rotating the entire boombox, you just rotate that rod.
Squelch is a way for you to select the noise floor. Basically, AM/LW/SW is far noisier than FM which is mostly immune to the types of interference that plagues AM type RF signals. Without squelch, all the noise comes through. With squelch, you set the noise floor that gets "blanked" out. Only signals stronger than the squelch level will filter through. Make sense?
