Throwing out my tuners!

I agree with the OP. It really makes me wonder why any vintage tuners are still coveted. There are plenty of very good used tuners to be had for less than $250, which will sound great for most purposes. Given the limited choice of stations, how often do you need to switch?

Because the vast majority are now sold on the web,to buyers outside the US,especially in Asia,although I can't see how that will last.I have bought a bunch of vintage tuners in the last year,for next to nothing each,and other than a like new Scott 382,from 1967,I plan to eBay the rest.I like the sound of the Scott,and I may be moving to the Boston area in a year or two,so there might be a use for it.
 
My 17 year old son constantly complains that the local FM rock station constantly plays the same songs in a loop as one would hear in the jukebox of a bar. Evan at his age he finds this homogenized crap revolting. I feel like an old man when I tell him stories about a NY rock station in the 70s called WNEW FM, run by staff who really knew rock music and would commonly play whole sides of an good album, with commentary on the group's history. It seems like FM receivers have become useless. There are a few good university stations on the internet, like WKCR FM, run by Columbia University. (Some great jazz shows there.) But the days of intelligent commercial programming seem to be over.
 
At least here in the Dallas Ft Worth area there are a few gems. WRR is a classical only station that is actually owned by the city of Dallas. KNTU is the University of North Texas (known for their jazz music department) and run a jazz format station. Signal can be a little weak in areas but worth the proper antenna. The public radio station is (to me) bland. KNON is a not for profit small station that offers a wide range of not common music formats. Then of course the clear channel and pop junk/classic play over and over formats and the predictable who's hot now in country stuff...

And on the AM dial is KAAM which will play oldies back to big band era stuff.

No need to get rid of the tuner around here.
 
I'm from Louisville, KY, and there is 1 rock station from "back in the day" left, 95.7 WQMF. They are the closest to an old school rock station that I have heard (My 15th birthday is in March) and they play an actual spectrum of classic rock, from Jimi Hendrix to Slayer. Even they are getting worse, playing slightly less than they used to and sounding like a format station. Unless they turn around, there are only a few years of its present state left.
 
Not to change the subject much but, I remember the good old days, 60's in my case, when we spent every minuet we could in our cars. Only had AM (with a re-verb) and loved it. In southern Indiana where I grew up we waited for the right song before we drag raced our cars some nights, (Beach Boys 409). After 10 PM local stations shut down and we tuned in to WLS from Chicago and kept driving all night on Fridays.(Gas 24 cents a Gal). I think they are the only station still that existent's with only 3 call letters. When the 70's hit FM was week and they invented AM stereo. Sold a few car stereos with it, I only heard 1 station before it disappeared FFC let the FM's boot there power. And now in this area we have 4 stations that 3 are just repeaters using computers to fill in local adds. So much for radio.
 
Here it is understandable. over the years i've amassed a nice bunch of fm stereo tuners but I rarely use any.
Used to be once per week now it's like once every other. And in the car FM is suitable for the occasional brainless redundancy of ClearChannel hell but not much else. Sucks because these tuners are precision instruments, really...
 
I can certainly understand the frustration associated with FM. I went close to 10 years without tuning into FM radio at home until I got my MR74 about a year and a half ago. I started to re-discover FM and found lots of interesting stations on the 88-92 band. I picked up an antenna tuned to that band and have since upgraded to an MR88. I spend a great deal of time listening to FM now as a result. When I travel for work I also find most of my listening in rental cars is done on the lower end of the band as well. If I wasn't in a good area for public/college stations I would definitely have no interest in FM either. AM also seems to have lost its purpose, though I haven't done a lot of searching on there lately.
 
I LOVE radio. My market isn't loaded, it just has the #1 AM station in the country (KMOX 1120 AM St. Louis, MO, Infinity Broadcasting) and the longest-running rock-formatted station in the history of rock music (KSHE 94.7 FM St. Louis, MO, Emmis Broadcasting). The AM is simulcast on 102.5 FM, giving it awesome quality, better than any AM station ever for me, and KSHE 2 has the most innovative, variety-chocked programming of any station I've ever heard, like the old KSHE used to be before we had 90 different rock and rolls. Between these 3 stations? Nary a preacher (I love a good strong sermon, by the way), not one sports program (although KSHE has a senior DJ that doubles as the stadium announcer at Busch Stadium for the St. Louis Cardinals), and no jabber on KSHE 2. This is entirely too much to ask out of any one market, but in St. Louis, we have it all. We did recently lose classical giant KFUO 99.1 FM to Contemporary Christian music station Joy FM, but as a Christian I say go for it. We have a VERY diverse programming selection within just a handful of well-programmed and engineered stations, including KDHX 88.1 FM, public radio extraordinaire. I used to DJ there and of course broke all the rules and got away with it! (hehe)...:banana:

Michael. I agree with you about St Loius having good diversity in radio. I am originally from that area and remember K-SHE back in the days in Crestwood. I have been all over the U.S. and have yet to find a better station than K-SHE95. I listen to the live stream with my laptop connected to either my Kenwood Eleven III or Pioner SX-1250. Love the Klassics show!! As far as the U-Man, none better. I live in south Mississippi now and can get KMOX at night pretty well (<625 miles!).
 
One reason I love FM

Radio still exposes me to music I don't have and often wouldn't hear anywhere else. I get tuned in to new and old music that I've never come across before.

Music services such as Rhapsody do something similar but the design of those services, as with Google searches, is to push one towards things that you have already expressed a preference for. That has it's uses, to be sure, but it doesn't expand your horizons. Instead it directs you more narrowly in the direction it thinks you want to go.

When I was a kid, I learned about new music either a) from my friends; b) from the radio; and c) from perusing music stores. The latter have largely disappeared, and I can't afford to buy an album just to see if I like it. As I've gotten older I don't spend time listening to music with friends so much (almost not at all :sigh:. Radio is more or less all I have left.
 
Down here in SW Florida we have one Public Radio station, WGCU. Used to play a mix of Jazz and Classical with news on the hour. Now its mostly talk. They put their music on the HD band. Both sides of WGCU are flanked by religious crap. We have a few "classic rock" stations which are the Clear Channel automats. Rushbo, Hannity and a few of the other right wing are found 24/7 on what used to be music stations.

AM here is a mess of pirate stuff in Spanish and Creole along with atmospheric bounce and drift from who knows where.

Other than a Scott 350D still loaded with its original Tellys, the tuna collection has all gone to the auction site. I hate to think of having an audio rig and not having a tuner in the house.

Listening now to internet stream. Found a good techno rock station from what appears to be a public university in Latvia. We do have high throughput cable service so digital streaming works really well.
 
I live in a college town with a great NPR station, a great college station, and a commercial indie rock station. I am starting to get back into FM. I must say though XM has a much wider variety to choose from.
 
I live in a college town with a great NPR station, a great college station, and a commercial indie rock station. I am starting to get back into FM. I must say though XM has a much wider variety to choose from.

How does the XM sound in comparison to the FM?
 
Update to my post over a year ago:

I mentioned in post #36 that I use a Ramsey FM Transmitter (around $300) to broadcast to the various tuners and radios I have around the house.

I used to have a Polk XM tuner hooked up to the FMT so XM/Sirius was now one extra station I could pick up on the dial. For the last 6 months my "new" station is an iPod touch. I have it sitting on a dock that extracts the pure digital, sends that to a nice DAC which is now hooked up to my FMT. With Wifi, whatever I receive on the iTouch is now broadcast to whatever vintage tuner I have on dialed to "my own" FM station.

For the most part, it's Pandora and its own stations that my wife and I have created. My wife has built up her iTunes library and we'll play that sometimes.

If you like tuners and especially vintage ones, this is a pretty easy way to guarantee you will always have something to listen to on them.
 
How many last straws can I stand?

___Up to 10% of an analog station's signal is polluted with the 'new' digital carrier.

___Homogenized conglomerates feeding chip-beef-on-toast.

___USA: Fewer than 20? 15? remaining local, independent, or student-run, university radio stations with a commitment to varied, fresh programming instead of push-button Clear-Channel clones.

That is exactly why I don't listen to the radio any more. Also, does anyone living in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia know of any good jazz stations?
 
How does the XM sound in comparison to the FM?

Not as good to my analog ears. But, I have not found an FM station who will broadcast a complete live performance of Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" that was recorded in 2006. It was amazing.
 
How does the XM sound in comparison to the FM?
Quality is over the board IMO with XM. Some stations I listen to sound, at best, good. You can tell the streams are compressed a little. Other stations the compression is off the board and sounds like a very low bit-rate mp3. Since I got XM I spend a great deal of time listening to it, but mainly because of the variety available vs FM. Is the quality of the signal as good as FM? No. Is the quality of programming better? To me, yes.
 
How many last straws can I stand?

What good are my TU-X1 and KR-8300 if:

___Up to 10% of an analog station's signal is polluted with the 'new' digital carrier.

___Homogenized conglomerates feeding chip-beef-on-toast.

___USA: Fewer than 20? 15? remaining local, independent, or student-run, university radio stations with a commitment to varied, fresh programming instead of push-button Clear-Channel clones.

KTRU's sale to corporate cronies may be a last gasp of the archetype.

Had hoped that KMHD's sale to OPB/PBS would take longer to degrade into mediocrity. Although content is still good for the moment--occasionally even outstanding--it's begun to repeat more. Heard the same playlist 5 times already. That does not bode well. Corners are being cut; soon DJs, libraries, then staff get the ax and it goes to a fully automated feed like the others.

Apologize if it sounds like sour grapes if your tuner is closer to Lubbock or Texarkana* than Austin. I realize in many parts of the country FM already passed through the toothless Jell-O stages from vestigial wonders, historical curiosity, to the final abyss of total irrelevancy.

Thought the origin of alternative PacNW stood a fighting chance. Nope, it got Howard Sterned.


end rant. Or not.

*if you live there I apologize...perhaps they have better FM than they used to.


Clear Channel can go where the sun don't shine.
Satellite bragged about no ads but then... you get ads... so I am told.
Echos of cable tv doin' likewise too.

Time to rebel is way past due.
Support your annonymous crew.
 
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