What are some of the better tuners out there?

A Sansui TU-777 is my favorite.  I have had a few tuners over the years but this one seems to be the best of the lot.   

That must be frustrating about the tubes mitchb.

My Sherwood S3000 III tube tuner just had a power supply capacitor replaced and one tube replaced. All of the other 50 year old tubes were in great condition. As others have said tubes should last a long time in a tuner.

While I'm here, first post here BTW, can I better the Sherwood for less than $500? I don't need dx ability as I have one station that I listen too. Sound quality is my number one priority. Any other tuner ideas?

I recently had a Sansui TU-9900 in house that was nice but would have needed a rebuild to better the Sherwood, which has been re-capped in the past. I like the magic of tubes, but wonder how much I'm missing?

@ancient_tones  Pay attention to the discrimination and selectivity circuits of the tuner, the old tube units don't have the good specs the newer SS units have.  Regardless of how good the Sound Quality output is, if it can't handle bleeding in from other stations or distant ones, when you want to listen to one, then SQ becomes a minor issue.

As for sound level, I can't argue with a tube unit.

I just got my Magnum Dynalab md106t tuner back from repair and had the caps in the output section upgraded and I upgraded the tubes to Telefunken tubes and my tuner sounds good again. It should further improve with play time. My tuner is 12 years old but I will keep it.