Your thoughts/experience with very good, cheap tuners?

The man wants a “relatively cheap” tuner. I don’t think that’s going to be a McIntosh or a Sequerra or even a Magnum Dynalab.

second the cambridge audio.  a lively dynamic sounding tuner.  

jusam, I think the first question should be what is the quality of local FM sources?  Unfortunately the quality of FM seems to have diminished, both signal quality and content, over the past 10-20 years.  So unless you live in or near a major metropolitan area or have a couple of interesting college stations nearby, is it worth pursuing or will almost any tuner be up to the task?

If you are fortunate to be close to quality signals (on both counts) then my best advise is to review this site for recommendations which fit your budget.

http://www.fmtunerinfo.com.

Cheap tuners? Aren`t they all now?

I have an old modded T-85 still in use. Of course, I am in the Chicagoland area, and listen to WFMT and WDCB.

I just had a Tech bench a Sony ST-730ES, and the Tech told me it is a great sounding tuner. Can`t wait to insert it into my system. I believe, I only paid $250 for it.

You may be able to find a discarded high end tuner for a cheap price.