$500-600 Used Tuner

Another kept secret in bargain tuners is the Sansui T-80 tuner, early 80's vintage. It has very simple circuitry and can be found for about $30.00 on Ebay. Then send it to Ed at www.antennaperformance.com for a $100.00 mod, which consists of a thorough cleaning,replacement of key capacitors with Blackgates and installation of their own APS amplified filter boards, as well as an exact computerized alignment. After mod,this tuner will compete sonically with most of the mega-buck boutique tuners from any era.They also can modify the Sansui TU-717, which looks nicer with more features but will cost you a little more.My modified Sansui T-80 has given me immense listening pleasure when I tune in to our local,uncompressed college station. Have fun. Also, I remember reading in another thread where the venerable Don Scott recommended the Sansui T-80 as one "sweet" tuner.

Hey, thanks a lot to you all for the input. I was gone for a day and came back to the surprise of so much response. My "current" tuner is a Sony ST-3950SD, a decent tuner in its day which I bought new in about '79 and it really does a fairly good job now. It has never had service and the alignment is way off. I figured it would be better to buy something better rather than sink a couple hundred into refurbishing the Sony. Sounds like some of these older tuners can give a run to newer models with a little updating, but I'm thinking this Sony may not fit into that category. Opinions?

4yanxs,there are some other very informative threads you can browse through re:tuners here in Audiogon discussions. I don't think the Sony tuners are well regarded in the industry.Generally, analogue tuners,particularly those made in the "golden age"(late70's-early 80's) are the most sought after by audiophiles and DXer's.Go to website: Http://www.geocities.com/tunerinfo/ for one of the best and most knowledgeable websites for tuners.These guys live for tuners and know their stuff well.You can browse their tuner review section,click in Sony to see what they think.There are also some interesting threads on tuners in www.audioasylum.com website. Good luck.

It always makes me feel warm and happy inside when the components from yesterday kick butt on the new stuff.

Sherod - I have to confess, our Sony section on TIC is much less complete than that of most other manufacturers. It just happens that we haven't had a chance to play with many Sony tuners from the '80s, but a few of them look like they might be pretty good. We've just picked up a couple of different models that will probably be reviewed on the site within the next few months. -Eric