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In Reply to: RE: Mac Tuners posted by dgaapc7 on June 15, 2015 at 10:08:38
I'm kind of curious about where listening to radio, fits in to how you listen.
Do you use a tuner more for background music, or as a main source?
I use mine for both, so I bought the best I could afford. Always admired Mac tuners, but cost and number of tubes made it prohibitive.
The Macs are so pricey, have you considered a vintage tuner? These guys can recommend some very fine older tuners, and seeing as you are willing to have mods done, maybe a good option.
I have an untouched Yamaha CT 400, not in the class I am suggesting, but that thing pulls in stations, and is really quiet, no multipath issues. Maybe find something known to be good at pulling in stations and upgrade the audio stages.
On a side note, for background music, a used Polk XM tuner can be bought for under a $100, and has digital outputs. It is MP3 quality sound, and you do have to play games to get a good monthly rate [5 months for $24], but lots of good stations, and good for background listening. If some money comes through, I am thinking about a new dac, that would offer upsampling. Yes, I know you can't turn for example a CD into a SACD, but a review I read claimed it improved the guys listening experience with MP3 files. I'll believe it when I hear it. You may already have that option on your dac.
Follow Ups:
I use my tuners for both casual listening- morning news and serious listening- a lot depends on the time of day/program; however ther eis good stuff coming through the air-
Yes the Tubed Tuners are a bit harder to keep up-
but the MR-74 is SS and since an alignment- has been wonderful - great sound quality- great tuning capabilities and easy to use!
Happy Listening
Thanks for all the replies. I got an MR 71 off e-bay, unmodified. The multiplex display did not work, the output jacks had a grounding hum, and the dial brightness switch was broken as well. I was unpleasantly surprised when this tuner, with no repairs, received several more listenable stations than the modafferi modded MR 71 that I bought from audio classics, using the same simple dipole antenna set-up and placement in the room as I had before.
I am now having the tuner upgraded with a new PS capacitor and other performance improvements, aligning the filters, better co-ax input, things like that. If the number of listenable stations is good enough to use as a permanent source, I will keep it, as I noted before.
If not, I will use the Marantz 2220B receiver in my bedroom system to listen to sports events not available otherwise, (AM mostly.)
By the by, the tubes in the tuner, mostly Amperex labeled McIntosh, would be worth a good deal in themselves.
A plug here: Bill Moritz of Pro Camera in Charlottesville does great work on hi fi electronics. He principally repairs electronic photo flood units and cameras for pro photographers, and restores new and vintage cameras (Leica, Contax, Hasselblad, etc.) He recently had two restored Leica M-3s in the shop (I've only seen one in my life before,) but when I went back a few weeks later, they were both gone. If you know cameras, you know M-3s are as highly prized as Marantz 10-Bs, hard to find just to look at, much less to find one for sale.
He also has a small machine shop in the back with a small mill, lathe, and drill press. A customer at the time had a real nice vintage receiver (Marantz, I think), missing a knob. Bill was fashioning a replacement from some round brass bar stock to match the others. When my ARC D52B blew up my Proac speakers some years past, he sold me a Mac MA 230, with new Blue Aero caps, that he modified via the hi-filter to bypass the (not very good) transistor preamp section in order to use the 7591a tube amp section as a stand-alone power amp. Cost: $300. I used this for several years with a CJ PV-8. I sold the 230 two years ago for $1200. He's doing the upgrades and repairs to the MR 71. Barring some strange problem, I really hope to keep it.
LowIQ
;-)
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