Originally posted by radiolee
Second, for you MCS fans, was a combination receiver/cassette the lady had sitting by her garbage cans. She didn't even put it at the sale. Found a bad ground on the power chip and off it went! This thing has the best tuner I've used yet in my new house location. It's the only one I've tried that pulls in my favorite public radio station from Rochester MN in quiet stereo.
Cheers!
Lee
Sometimes you strike gold with cast-off equipment. I had several old TVs years ago, trash-day finds in my hometown, that either worked perfectly well from the word go or else just needed minor repairs (new tubes, etc.). I once bought a 1949 Zenith AM/FM radio at a thrift shop that didn't work. The only thing wrong with it was a blown fusible resistor under the chassis. Replaced it, and the set worked perfectly. The fusible didn't blow again, so the only thing I can figure is it must have died of old age. That radio had very nice sound for a table model; not as good as my Zenith K731 or H511, but good nevertheless.
As to tuners, I'm not familiar with the MCS series, but I think they were marketed by JC Penney in the '60s/70s. FM tuners in these older systems are often much better from a sensitivity and selectivity standpoint than the digital tuners in modern bookshelf stereos. I have an Aiwa CX-NA888 shelf system with an AM/FM stereo tuner, purchased new almost five years ago, that I'm reasonably sure would work fairly well in a prime signal area, but it needs help in fringe areas. I live in a small town which is some 45 miles from the FM stations in Cleveland; my Aiwa stereo will not bring in these stations well (i. e. in stereo) unless I use an amplified antenna ahead of the tuner. Even that setup will not bring in a translator station just a few miles east of me that rebroadcasts an NPR station. That is, the tuner, with my amplified tower antenna, brings in the station well enough for me to listen to in stereo, but as soon as I boot up my computer, the CPU hash drowns it out, indicating that the translator signal, even with the amplified antenna, is still much too weak at my location. The irony is that every other FM radio I own, including a 1973 Sony AM/FM stereo portable, brings in every Cleveland FM station just perfectly (the stereo portable pulls in all these stations in stereo just as well with just a telescoping whip antenna). What's going on? I always thought my Aiwa stereo would outperform the portables many times over from an FM reception standpoint (the shelf system does outperform my other sets as far as sound quality goes, as well it should with surround sound, 8-band equalizer, three-way speakers with powered subwoofers and 240 watts total power). The AM reception on the Aiwa system's tuner, however, is completely blah in this area, using the supplied loop antenna. I can only hear the three 50kW stations from Cleveland (and two from Detroit) well enough to listen to at night; the smaller ones (a 5kW Radio Disney station and another 5kW talk station, not to mention a 5kW standards station and a 500-watt oldies station) often fade into the noise even during the day.
My Zenith K731, however, receives these stations perfectly well all the time with an indoor line-cord antenna, which to me speaks volumes for the manner in which older radios/stereos were built. This is a level of quality we may not and, unfortunately, probably will never see again in electronics gear (or anything else, for that matter).
Blame it on offshore outsourcing.
