TUNERS..anyone?

I will step out and slightly disagree with Bob in that those he listed are not the best value for your buck, unless you are wanting to purchase a new unit, and even then I question if there aren't some "hidden" gems much cheaper.

I will say again that your best bang for your buck is a vintage tuner. Being that these tuners are used, obviously, they can be purchased at cheaper prices than new ones, for the most part, clearly there are exceptions.

In the 70's and early 80's some incredible tuners were being made. In comparison for example, the Fanfare, which I owned, has a four gang front end and the T-2 I replaced it with is a 7 gang front end; not that this is the end all to tuners design.

Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoyed the Fanfare for the year I owned it and you can find my comments on Audiogon to confirm this, but I never compared it to anything either.

There have been several on here to praise the T-2 along with me, I must point out that there are many other vintage tuners I feel would make people very happy as well, I just happen to have chosen the T-2. I also have a Sansui TU-717 and this also is a wonderful performer, probably the best of the three I have owned at pulling in stations.

As for using good interconnects and power cords, I have no arguement with that, vintage tuners genrally have fixed power cords though. BUT, if the tuner isn't good out of the box w/o "tweaks", how much better is one that is???

With some research, IMO, you can get a vintage tuner cheaper than some of the newer tuners mentioned and stand a good chance of having a better product. Consider this, the T-2 listed for $750 way back in 1978.

Hi Phil! In response, I know you really liked the bass in the Fanfare, but I don't think it has an advantage over the T-2 in bass.

By the way, unless I have several copies of the Stereophile with errors in it, the Meridian 504 was a Class B tuner. That said, I had the big brother to the 504 the 604. It was a very nice solid state tuner, a little time to get use to on the ergonomics, but none-the-less nice.

Hi David,

What they said...go with a vintage tuner (probably analog). They're relatively cheap and very good. I have a Luxman T-110 and a Revox B-260S...both are amazing (I also like an old, late 80s HK Citation tuner that I have too). You're tuner may not be the problem. I switched from a powered Terk FM antenna to my rooftop TV antenna, and the improvement was noticeable. The Terk provided a strong signal, but it wasn't a good quality signal...it merely magnified a bad signal. I would also keep in mind that there are so many things about FM broadcasting and reception that are completely out of your control. You have no idea what sort of equipment they have at the station...crap CD players?...old turntable with an old cartridge??...poorly maintained transmitting equipment??...a low power FM designation??...is their transmitter too close to your house, or too far away??...do they compress their signal a little or way too much (like most FM rock stations usually do)?? See what I mean?? Radio was a great idea, but it's become nothing more than a poor product ( a poor product using our so-called "public airwaves"). There are two or three companies that own most stations in the US...there is very little competition...and like most modern corporations, they'll welcome the profits, but they're hesitant to put that money back into their broadcasting equipment. The stations may be owned by some of the largest companies in the world, but the above post is correct...most college stations and NPR stations have much better equipment and it's usually maintained better too. I know several of our Viacom (CBS? Infinity?? whatever...) owned stations in Chicago share ONE engineer, and these are all popular, multi-million dollar, money-making stations. All rambling aside...I guess I'm suggesting that you try not to spend too much, because you may find yourself severely disappointed with the result.

With Stereophile what I think happened; was when the Rotel RHT-10 came out; the RHT-10 was so good, and the Rotel RT-990BX almost as good, that they knocked some Class A tuners down to Class B when listened to in comparison. So what you read depends on how old the issue is.

Correct me if wrong, but wasn't it Stereophile that compared the Fanfare FT-1, Rotel RHT-10 and one of the MD's years back? If I remember correctly, they liked all sonically, each having slight differences, as all tuners do, but they thought they were on par with one another; yet they gave the nod to the Fanfare for it's remote and presets.

Even though the signal we receive today, for the most part, is far from what could be, I enjoy using my tuner a lot and it is my most used source.