Favourite tuner

marcok

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#1
What's your favourite FM tuner ?
In my family we have :
PL 5000 ( very aggressive and good tuning due to PLL )
Sony 5000 F ( excellent circuit and good sound )
Nad 4150 ( good selectivity and noise reducer )
Dynaco FM 5 ( excellent sound and good tuning due to Dynatune ( a sort of PLL )
It must be noted that I and my father have roof mounted antennas ,
"perfectly " adjusted for Milan zone .
Ciao e Buona Pasqua
Marco
 

Northwinds

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#5
The Sansui TU-X1 I have sitting at my sisters house for the last 20+ years. I never listen to radio anymore though. I should sell it as they have become quite pricey but paying for an alignment to get top dollar sucks
 

orange

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#6
Still Pioneer TX-9100 and I love Kenwoods in general. The tuner in a Sansui 2000A is a nice one as well with the added benefit that you can easily retune it to cover expanded AM band and should be able to do some manual tweaking of the AM bandwidth as well, which made it and the 5050 good candidates for AM stereo conversion in the daze.
 

WOPL Sniffer

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#9

Northwinds

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#10
They are all over the board Perry, mine is about as nice looking as you can get. I hung on to it hoping the matching amp showed up at the same pawn shop in Rochester. I paid $150 for it back in 1994
 

oldphaser

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#11
The Sansui TU-X1 I have sitting at my sisters house for the last 20+ years. I never listen to radio anymore though. I should sell it as they have become quite pricey but paying for an alignment to get top dollar sucks
Ron,

I sold a Marantz 120 tuner to a friend of mine. He in turn traded it to Hawthorne Stereo (a used stereo dealer in Seattle) for a Sansui TU-X1. I think my friend got the better end of that deal! I had my friend take it to Dean and Dean performed an FM alignment on it. Dean doesn't have the test equipment to perform a AM alignment. So needless to say, the AM alignment was never done on it. My friend still owns the TU-X1.

Ed
 
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oldphaser

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#12
I have been running this Sansui TU-717

I like it a lot. I like the output/volume pot on it. Very clean and pulls in the stations (what few I have here in the boonies). The Mariachi bands never sounded sweeter (yuk)...

Great reviews and specs on it too

http://www.fmtunerinfo.com/sansui.html
Perry,

One of the first pieces of stereo gear I bought was a Sansui AU-717 in 1977. I was looking at a lot of tuners at that time frame in the same price range. The list included the Phase Linear 5000, Pioneer TX-9800, Sansui TU-717 and Kenwood 600T. Needless to say, I bought the Kenwood 600T based on the specs and 3 IF bands. Having read the reviews on the fmtuner web site over the years it looks like I should have bought that matching TU-717 tuner.

Ed
 

orange

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#13
Ron,

I sold a Marantz 120 tuner to a friend of mine. He in turn traded it to Hawthorne Stereo (a used stereo dealer in Seattle) for a Sansui TU-X1. I think my friend got the better end of that deal! I had my friend take it to Dean and Dean performed an FM alignment on it. Dean doesn't have the test equipment to perform a AM alignment. So needless to say, the AM alignment was never done on it. My friend still owns the TU-X1.

Ed

5 bidders had an X1 up to $1200 in no time flat yesterday.
 

Elite-ist

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#14
Sansui TU-717

This Sansui TU-717 was one I picked up a few months back at the local used record store, "The Volume Room." Their focus is mainly selling vintage receivers, speakers, and, most importantly, turntables. I bought it for $15. No one is interested in older analog tuners. To bad for them which is good for me.



I have a number of other older analog tuners, Pioneer, Technics. My top dog tuner is my Pioneer Elite F-91 pictured at the top my Elite stack.



Ron: The TU-X1 is a beaut. It's no wonder it commands top price.

Nando.
 

Elite-ist

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#15
Technics ST-8600

This is a tuner I had two of. I sold one of them with the matching SA-8600 Technics integrated amplifier on consignment sale at Innovative Audio.





Nando.
 

orange

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#16
It's gonna get worked over this fall. Power Supply and audio caps and alignment.
I don't think my Pioneer has ever been touched while I've owned it (maybe ten years) and it runs like 44 years ago when it was new.

Then again, even the 517 and 217 would be welcome additions to any stereo system.
 
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BlazeES

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#17
ST-S730ES ...

My first ES component ever ... 30 years old in 2018.

730ES.jpg

It pulls in distant stations with ease and has a few different modes for conditioning weaker signals.

Sony_ST-S730ES_2.jpg

Sony_ST-S730ES_3.jpg
 
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orange

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#18
I've always like the Pioneer TX-950 EXCEPT for the panel buttons that are really levers that push on perpendicularly situated microswitches on the mainboard. They break like your aunt's garters after a pie festival.
 

grapplesaw

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#20
So a couple of tuners I have are Sansui. The TU-919 and the Tu-9900
I have to decide which of these two I should keep. I am leaning to the Tu-9900 over the Tu-919 here is some info on them

Sansui TU-9900
(1974, $570, front 1, front 2, back, schematic, owner's manual, service manual) search eBay
The TU-9900 has 5 gangs and 3 IF filters, two of which have 4 stages rather than a typical ceramic filter's 2 stages, so it's like 5 filters if we count them in the traditional fashion. The TU-9900 is solidly built and our panelists who have used it praise its sound quality and DX performance, but David "A" rates it well below the TU-X1 for sound even though Eric (a non-audiophile) felt that it was "close enough." Our panelist Bob did some mods on his: "The TU-9900 has incredible potential. At first, it just did not open up sonically, but after trying a bunch of things, I nailed it. It is there now. I removed tantulum caps in the signal path. The big gain was replacing the TA-7136P op-amps, which were limiting the sonics in a big way. They are inline 7-pin units, so I had to put in 7-pin inline sockets, and custom modify a standard single op-amp to solder onto a 7-pin header. It was about three hours' work just to make the replacements, but well worth it. I also added six polypropylene caps, along with new power supply caps. With all the mods, the TU-9900 may be one of the top all-around tuners ever built. I have talked to many people who feel that a stock TU-9900 just smokes about everything out there for distant reception capability. If your unit does not astound you, it is broken or out of alignment. It will easily surpass a stock KT-8300 by a decent amount. I think the sonics were the holdback on the 9900s, but not anymore."

The TU-9900 is very sensitive and selective in stock form, better than just about any analog tuner that commonly sells for under $500 on eBay. It also offers many nice features, including a calibration tone and scope outputs. Because it uses LC filters that are encased in metal and plastic enclosures, no one should buy a TU-9900 expecting to replace the filters, but our panelist JohnC says: "Aside from the power supply, the TU-9900 is very easy to work on and mod. Bill Ammons' op-amp boards make it very easy to change out the old op-amps and since you can leave 4 caps out of the audio output the cost, compared to using say Black Gates for those 4 caps, is actually a wash." Read about John's mods to the TU-9900 on the DIY Mods page, and a comparison of his modded TU-9900 to his modded TU-919 in the TU-919 writeup above. Our contributor doug s. says, "I own a modded refurbished TU-X1, and I can say that its performance compared to the TU-9900's is only the tiniest bit better, with a bit more low end, and you really need to hear them side-by-side to discern differences." On eBay.
 
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