Personal Tuner Evolution

1. Pioneer TX-9500II
2. McIntosh MR-78
3. Marantz 20b

For me the Pioneer sounds best by a small margin (although the MR-78 is now what I listen to--go figure!) The Marantz lags behind (and it has been recently serviced.)

Thats interesting!  Those Pioneers were great tuners!

Yes, and perhaps a bit undervalued because they are not as nice looking as many of their Japanese competetitors, let alone Marantz or McIntosh.

Just added a Sony ST-313 analog tuner to my pair of NAD integrated amps (3225pe & 3020i) and Technics SL-1700mk2 vintage system. The Sony has a big beautiful analog dial with a flywheel weighted mechanism. It’s got a servo-lock feature and nice big analog meters for signal strength and tuning center point. Reception is good even with a lousy indoor antenna. It has a cool unique feature that allows you to place 10 moveable markers along the tuning scale (5 for FM, 5 for AM) that trigger the tuner to switch to the respective band that the marker is on when you dial in one of the 10 marked frequencies. It’s relatively huge, (as large as the two NAD integrated amps if stacked), but definitely period-correct to match the other gear. Now if I could have all that, and a nice remote control!

Cool looking tuner, looks to be made for the European market.