Whats the best used tuner for under 1000

No question about it, buy a McIntosh MR78.

Wow. There is certainly a lot of bad information floating around on Audiogon. Suffice to say that most of the Magnums are garbage. The MD-90 is nothing short of a joke that any informed consumer would laugh off the showroom floor. I'd love to post a diatribe here regarding which tuner is best for which purpose, but that discussion has already been done. Stop over at the FMTuners Yahoo Group for much of that. Here I'll just provide a brief laundry list.

In short, Almost none of the usual audiophile approved brands are going to be any good in the area of tuners, apart from the audio section. FM design is something which baffles most of them, and is not their area of expertise. So, even if you feed the best audio section in the world with junk, you still get junk. The GIGO principle at work.

Vintage analog tuners can potentially be good, but their primary strength is limited to RF performance, where some were truly excellent, although that number is still quite small. All other areas, such as the FM detector and the stereo decoder have been surpassed by leaps and bounds by modern units which are available for less money. At one point, I was also firmly on the analog tuner bandwagon which many still advocate. I'm now firmly off it after more experience with new tuners. Unfortunately, the desirable ones, while remaining inexpensive, are often difficult to find. Many modern tuners are junk compared to vintage analog units.

Here is a short list: Onkyo T-9090II if selectivity is your thing. Also pretty good all around. Denon TU-800, which was a genuinely good all around tuner. Yamaha TX-1000, T-85, T-950, T-930, T-900 are all decent tuners with various strengths. None is really head and shoulders above the others. Tandberg 3001 was perhaps the best tuner when it came out, and remained so throughout its 20 year production history. This was a $4000 tuner by the time it was discontinued in the late 90s. Kenwood had the L-1000T and the KT-3300D, both of which were apparently quite similar and arguably among the very best tuners ever designed from a technical standpoint. Pioneer had the F-90 and F-99X, which are identical, and are out there for about $100 or less used, which is a steal. Stereo separation and distortion on these units are actually BETTER than the Accuphase T-109, which is strong evidence of remarkably good engineering and design choices. Sony had a number of good tuners in the ES line, the ST-S730ES, ST-S707ES, and ST-SA5ES, although the ST-S730 was probably the best of the bunch. Audiolab had the 8000T, which was somewhat decent, and Sumo the Charlie. Harmon Kardon had the Citation 23, which was a decent tuner. Sansui had the TU-D99X, X701 and X711, and Hitachi the FT-5500. Finally, we have Rotel with the RT-990BX and RHT-10, which might just make the $1000 mark if you find one. This is your under $1000 and decent digital list and is fairly complete.

In the vintage tuner arena, there are many opinions, with many tuners of various qualities. The Macs were never respected for particularly good sound, but a Rich Modafferi upgrade should take care of a lot of thisl. Kenwood had the KT-917, which isn't cheap, but is very very good if overload is a problem. Pioneer had the F-28 and F-26, which were their best models. Sansui had the TU-919 which might be decent, and the relatively good TU-X1. I personally think vintage Sansuis are sickeningly overpriced. Mitsubishi had the DA-F20, Nikko the Gamma I and Gamma V, Yamaha the T-2 and CT-7000, Sherwood the Micro/CPU 100, with a few decent offerings from other manufacturers which I've left out.

If sound quality is the name of the game, a top modern tuner is probably the way to go. In an urban environment, overload may or may not be a problem, depending on what the strongest signal in the area is. If overload is a huge problem, nothing tops the Technics ST-9030. Selectivity is always a battle, but it also usually wreaks havoc on sound quality. Around New York, switchable IF bandwidths are a MUST. If you're willing to go to $1000, any of the above would serve as a top notch tuner. As always, the best recommendation is to save a little on the tuner, and spend what you saved on a roof mounted antenna with a rotator.

Or.... if you go on "e-bay", you should be able to get you a Magnum Dynalab FT-101 for around $400.00 to $500.00 or so. Ryan may not like Magnums (and I am not about to knock him on his opinion, he's entitled to his opinion like I am entitled to mine), but tell you what, I have Magnum (an FT-101...... the "ORIGINAL" Magnum Dynalab.... the one that was made in 1985!!!!), and I sure as hell love mine. Unless I get a tuner that was made in the 1970's (unless it an NAD Monitor Series 4300 from 1988, or a Nakamichi ST-7 with Scholtz circuitry from about the mid 1980's.... (unless of course, if it is a Magnum Dynalab, or one of the other two I have just mentioned)), I won't be getting anything that was made later than 1980, and there is "NO" way I'm parting with my FT-101. I bought mine in 2000, and guess what??? It was one of the best buying decisions I have EVER made. And I have no regrets in buying a Magnum either.

Like I said, "Ryanmh1" may not like Magnums (or maybe he has had a bad experience with them.... and so forth), but I happen to love them. My FT-101 is a great tuner, and I don't plan on parting with mine anytime soon.

Spend $400.00 to about $500.00 and get you a Magnum Dynalab FT-101, and be happy afterwards.

You won't regret it.

--Charles--

I'm not saying that they are bad tuner, but only that you don't get your money's worth in terms of what is inside the thing. According to the company's own literature the MD-90 employs only THREE tuned stages in the front end. Most decent tuners have at least five. Three, in fact, is the bare minimum to even make reception work. Furthermore, it employes a "variable blend" circuit to reduce noise, which suggests that it uses a chip originally designed for car radios, not high end tuners. The stereo THD is terrible, as is the lower -3dB response, not to mention the stereo separation. Bass will be noticeably weak, if their specifications are to be believed. That's the cheap Magnum though, if you call a thousand bucks for a tuner about as good as the one in my car stereo "cheap."

Ah, but wait, the MD-101A which you recommend has the same specifications across the board, which likely means that the MD-90 is little more than a cosmetic retouching. The 75dB Image rejection specification bolsters my claim that this is actually a very bad tuner, audio stage notwithstanding. Not just bad, but terrible by a high end tuner standard. However, it might sound decent on the stations it actually manages to pick up decently due to the apparently large attention given to the audio stage, where most tuners fall short. Only when we work our way up to the $2500 MD-102 do we get to anything resembling decent tuner performance.

Magnums are good looking high end approved tuners, but anything but their top two offerings are little more than car radio junk stuffed into a nice chassis with what claims to be a decent audio stage. In fact, many car radios are certainly better as tuners. Magnum's top two seem to be fairly decent, the MD-108 especially.

For comparisons sake, my Sony ST-S730ES sports 125dB Image Rejection, 125dB Spurious Response, .007% Stereo THD and IM(measured), 92dB Stereo S/N ratio, 70dB Stereo Separation at 1kHz. You get the idea. As a tuner, it is much better than the Magnum. Sonically, it will provide better sound on a greater number of stations, this being an objective statements based on actual tuner performance. However, it is possible that the Magnum might sound better on a limited number of stations which are received properly by the very bad tuner in the Magnum.

By the way Charles, how many high end tuners have you actually used besides your Magnum? I've used well over twenty in the last year alone, probably more. More experience might lead you to throw that Magnum out the window once you can get past the cosmetics and the name.

Ryan

Ryan, As you have spent much time auditioning tuners can you explain to me why so much emphasis is placed on the spec's and not the actual quality of the sound they emit? Most other area's of audio resolve, ultimately, on how a product sounds. I have limited experience in tuners having settled for a Perreaux TU3 (which will win no spec's race and has poor sensitivity) after listening to a lot of tuners that just "sounded" like crap, so to speak, even though highly spec'd out (including many discussed in this thread).