Top Ten Tuners of all Time??

El: Even with "modern digital circuitry", there are still PLENTY of unit to unit variations that one has to deal with. I work on mass produced PLL based transceivers on a daily basis and see identical units that perform from one extreme to another.

Doug: I hear ya and agree. I've got a $15K signal generator at work and can do this myself but i've never gotten around to it. While part of the problem would be that i would like to have a service manual for each tuner that i have, the other part is that working on this stuff would be too much like work for me. The carpenter doesn't want to come home to a leaky roof and i don't want to have to take my tuners to work : )

As to the Sherwood, i've seen the info on the tuner website and even have an original review of it. I've talked to a few shops about these and their opinions are typically that they are VERY hard to keep running. I would imagine that this is like any other product though. That is, once you get it into the hands of someone that knows the in's and out's of it, it becomes a lot more manageable. Sean
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sean...Is it fair to say that the many PLL transcevers that you work on are all in the shop because they aren't working well? After you fix them, don't they all work great?

I work on brand new units right out of the box and notice these problems even more than on used units in for repair.

Having said that, i can align a brand new unit after the manufacturer's recommended period of warm up and when it comes back in after a few weeks or months of use, many of the parameters of operation have changed due to break-in. As such, i always recommend a "follow up visit" after an alignment to bring things back into spec once everything has fully settled in. This goes for new or used units as they all drift slightly after prolonged operation. As i've mentioned before, the effects of "component break-in" ARE measurable and this is not debatable as far as i'm concerned. Sean
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Of course tuners by their very nature can only be judged within the confines of time and space, the here and now.

I think the Tandberg 3001/3001A are probably among the best (analog) tuners ever built, with stereo S/N ratio of 92db and capture ratio of 0.4. The Revox B760 is an excellent tuner as well, though it does not quite have the same level of performance as the Tandberg. While the latter has digital tuning, it is still an analog tuner since the signal is analog. I have both tuners and intend to keep them. Magnum Dynalab makes excellent tuners as well. However, we are finally at the dawn of digital FM broadcast and we are dealing with S/N ratio of 100 db and frequency response of 20-20kHz from these digital signals. Who needs to spend a few thousand dollars on analog tuners? To be sure, there can still be the argument that analog sound is warmer. The same debate like the proverbial CD vs vinyl or transistors vs. tubes. I am sold on the digtial FM broadcast. The perfectly clear, distortion free signals are something no analog tuners can ever deliver, not even the legendary Sequerra tuner.