[Squalish]

I'm looking for recommendations as to the best tuner under $50. Is there anything approaching audiophile quality down in that price sector?

 

[Number9]

Check out this site - the "tuner" equivalent of Head-Fi.
This will tell you all you need to know about tuners and more.

http://www.geocities.com/tunerinfo/
They also have a link to a discussion group at this site.

At $50, I personnaly don't think you will be in "audiophile" territory. Not by a long shot. The good stuff has earned a reputation, and is subsequently hard to find, or sold at a premium price. The best you can do for $50, is get something which you sink a couple of hundred bucks to upgrade by a tuner expert.

I own a vintage Kenwood analog that was upgraded by Don Scott formerly of Stereophile.

 

[Budgie]

Cool web site, Number9. Thanks for mentioning it. My current tuner is a Sansui TU-717. Love it.

 

[zowie]

I paid $50 for a nice factory wired Dyna FM-3. Nice smooth sound, although the reception is a little better on my crappy 80s Fisher.

 

[Number9]

That's a great price Zowie. I've seen the Dyna FM-3 going in the $100 to $150 range. The downside because of their age, is they usually need fixup.

Sometimes, you never know, you may get lucky. Someone supposedly picked up a Sansui TX1 at a garage sale for $50 - as mentioned on the Geocities forums.

 

[PAGEFAULT]

Please explain what a DX'er is. Im looking at a cool tuner, but it says this, "not much DX'er input on this tuner, but is a good deal for the money (less than $75) "

 

[PAGEFAULT]

Also, how well will thses tuners match with the HD Head? No problems I awsome, but I want to be shure!

 

[millerdog]

if DX is the same as hams interpetation....DX is pulling in distant stations. I believe FM DX involves using directional antennas like yagis which have db gain to pull in those far away stations.
anyone, please correct me if I'm wrong.
md

 

[Number9]

That is the correct description of DX.

The tuner is desired for its sensitivity characteristics first and foremost - its ability to pull in distant stations.

Sound quality is not a consideration.

 

[zowie]

I was under the impression that DX, as opposed to local, narrowed the (forgot the term, the channel width) so that weak signals would have less interference adjacent signals, but some frequency response and fidelity is lost in the process. I suppose there could be a Db boost on the antenna as well. I might be wrong, it's been a while since I was in to this.

 

[Fortune]

I found a good tuner on e-bay for $21!

The Yamaha CT-410II is a fairly common inexpensive tuner. It's listed on the tuner info page referred to earlier in the post. It works very well for me and sounds much better than any other tuner I've ever used in my house.

This is just my experience.