Favorite vintage or new FM tuner?

Modified cubical quad (home built)............bests my 12' boom on a 20' pole for FM (most of the time)

 

MD-205 - Signal Sleuth FM Signal Amplifier
ST-2 - FM Omni-Directional AM/FM Antenna - Rooftop

 

For a short while, I had to choose between NAD and Adcom equipments in the mid to late 80's but eventually went for NAD until the late 90's. During much of that period, NAD equipments were mostly made in Japan and some in Taiwan or Singapore. From the early 2000's onward, I shifted to either American or Canadian made gears since I no longer wanted to buy NAD ...

 

I never had an Adcom product fail yet. And from a dollar to sound value I've always been impressed. I have a Jung modded Adcom GFP 565 pre amp. A few decades have passed and I've yet to find anything that I would bother replacing it with. The phono section is to die for.

I've been running my main rig Bi amped with Adcom GFA 5800 amps for quite some time now.

They made some nice stuff for quite a few years at a reasonable price point. I still have a GFA 555 II amp laying around that refuses to die too and sounds pretty good considering it's cost.

 

I've had a few nice vintage tuners.An Aragon 4t2(circa 1993) made my favorite ones a Sansui TU717 and a TU-719 expendable.I loved tuners but there is only about three stations that are worth a **** around here.Good memories of listening to classical late at night through a pioneer tx-7100 and sa5200 amp.

 

As a kid we had a fantastic local late night DJ, Ron Cuzner, his show was called The Dark Side. This guy was the best of the best, seriously. Fact is there are very few folks that ever lived that had the depth of jazz knowledge he had, his show alone made it worth the while to tune in to radio back in the day.

Nowdays Ron is gone, but there are a few good low power local stations I enjoy from time to time. WBSD out of the local high school has a pretty wide selection of music being played. Sometimes I just want to hear something other than what is in my collection.

 

FWIW, my 2 vintage Realistic receivers currently still in daily use:

STA-2080:


STA-90:

 

How is that working for you? My antenna is mounted inside my attic crawl space as previously posted and does a pretty good job but I got to think your solution is the cat's pajamas. I have a kit with all the parts to put together an outside antenna which I am planning to do when the weather breaks. I am looking to enhance shortwave as well on my Telefunken.

 

I had not had good experience with NAD in terms of reliability.

 

It is great sometimes to let someone else do the programming. I discover a lot of interesting music of which I was previously unaware. One station has a terrific jazz show at night which plays a lot of stuff from various eras.

 

PS -I finally re-discovered the "Eric in the Evening Program" on Boston WGBH on Friday to Sunday evenings. Used to be on each evening until they went to talk format. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things jazz.

 

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After a year with the MD ST-2 antenna in the attic, the results were marginal.

In my situation, roof-to-attic-floor height clearance was sufficient for vertical placement of the antenna and secondly, snow on the roof caused a reduction in signal quality. The water content effectively barriers the signal - almost as badly as metal siding or a metal roof.

Another thing I noticed is that reception for one particular station deteriorated every spring. I spoke with the engineer form the station who ran an elevation scan from the transmitter to my address and discovered a mountain to the west. He said that as the trees bloomed in the spring, the water in the leaves pushed reception to the tipping point at my location and that this was a common occurrence in the spring in our mountainous area.

In any case, he recommended that I get the antenna mounted on the rooftop and once I did, the results were night and day.

Not doubt about it, your tuner is only as good your antenna and its installation.

 

I've had Mac, Fisher and Scott tube tuners and they were sweet, however I recently picked up a Luxman T117 and it is simply a great little tuner. Not that much to look at, but sounds fabulous! The T117 has to be one of the best "bang for the buck" tuners on the used market today. Too bad our radio program selection in St Thomas sucks!

 

What I really want for an FM tuner is a McIntosh which sounds like a good MR 74, has AM and the MR 74 sensitivity and has the selectivity of a MR 78. With no sacrifice in audio quality. Schotz NR does degrade the audio a bit. And for me, Super Narrow IF is sometimes necessity. I also want a nice MPI 3 or MPI 4 scope to go with it. And a deep fringe Yagi on my roof, with rotator and capable of nulling signals from the other direction. So, I can choose which of the two medium markets I live between.

 

Last night I pulled my old Yamaha T 700 tuner out of storage and will be setting it up for a re-listen.

 

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That is very cool looking! I had the 9900 for a few years and it looked good, but not as good as that.

 

I have several tuners here:

Kenwood L-1000T
Denon TU-800L
Yamaha T-2
Sony XDR-F1HD with a few mods
Sony ST-SA5ES (currently being looked at)
Yamaha T-85 (in storage)
Kenwood KT-1100SD (with narrower filters, in storage)

The first 4 are in my stack and I connect them up to a 9-element Yagi on a rotator. The first three are my favourites and were bought domestically. I need to send the L-1000T and T-2 to a tech to have them serviced and aligned. The XDR-F1HD was sourced from the US and the others from Germany. I have long been into DXing but I prefer tuners that can do DX and sound fantastic.

Regards,
Nick

 

I've always wanted to get the matching AU-777 integrated but I'm not quite willing to throw down the $$$ for one; especially a capacitor-coupled output stage on a SS amp. Also the price is almost entering McIntosh territory and I would rather spend the money on a preamp to match my MC2100 amp.

 

I get that. I have always wanted the Magnum Dynalab MD 108T. Quite expensive new, but even used, I have never seen the price get down to my price range : )

 

The Yamaha T 700 needs to be connected to a better antenna to pull in the stations. My attic antenna cable connection is not compatible and the wire antenna originally supplied doesn't help much so I will have to try something else this weekend when I have a little time. My listening room is a challenge-it is located on the lower level of the house which is built into the side of a hill so that the room opens out onto the slope but is surrounded by earth on the back and right side with some drop-off also on the left side.

 

Hi, I'm a newbie to this site but I need to find an answer that I think you can answer. I just purchased, and received an Aragon 4t2 tuner and the power cord plug is a three prong but the ground prong is missing. Is this correct ? Thanks for any info. I am getting a bit of static that I never got from my Kenwood KT5020....Rgor2

 

It should be a three prong.Does it look like it was once there?

 

I am using a Sansui TU-7700 and a Sherwood S3000 V tube tuner