sherwood s2100 tuner

[Bill K]

Now that you mention it I have read elsewhere as well that the 77 was supposed to have better sound quality. Due to their short run I almost never see a 77 for sale though.
I also agree about the 74's soundstage being rather flat in stock form. That's what started me off on all this. Up until 2 weeks ago the MR74 in stock form was the best I had heard in my main system. It's only the 4th I've had in my main system since I first started a system back in high school. My original tuner was the Royal bought about 1975. I replaced it with the NAD tuner bought new in the mid 80s. Sold the NAD and bought the late 70s Pioneer tuner which sounded much better than the NAD and was much more sensitive. I bought the MR74 about 10 years ago and moved the Pioneer to the bedroom. The 74 was again an improvement in sound quality and pulled in stations better than anything I had tried to date. For 10 years I was happy until I tried the Scott 310E and realized what I was missing.
It is amazing though how much better the McIntosh is in both dynamics and sounstage since the capacitor upgrades. I would love to hear what a fully Modafferi modified unit would sound like but don’t want to part with about $700 at this time and want to explore what I can wring out of all my tuners working on them myself. Besides there are only about 3 stations with a decent sounding signal in the Chicago area that I listen to but fortunately it gives me a good variety. WDCB jazz, WFMT classical and WXRT rock.
Restoring and hotrodding old equipment is almost as much fun as sitting back and listening to it and I’m often doing both at the same time!

 

[Brian]

When the 74, 77 and 78 were new - yeah, I'm that old, the 78 was for pulling and the 77 for listening. The 77 bettered the 78 soundwise. Thet said, probably 80+ of listeners could not hear the difference. The 74 and 77 were closer, the 74 has less od a cutoff slope b/c of the filters and there was a split of opinion at the time which did better. It almost got to a point where it depended more on the 2 particular tuners being compared than the design. A hot 74 was better than a 77 meeting the lower end of its spec, etc.

As for the tuners being 2-dimensional, I'd suggest that while they may not have the soundstage of some of the later tuners if worling within spec they are far from being 2-dimensional in my experience.

I'm not sure if a RM modded 78 would better an in-spec 77. I'd leave that to RM's opinion. My limited experieince with him involved a MX110 I bought from Audio Classics and he had worked on it to make sure it was in spec. At the time we spoke, I asked about the mods and he told me he could do it but in the case of the unit I was buying there would be no sonic improvement as it was an excellent unit. Anyone telling a customer not to spend some $700 in the late '80s gets my respect.

It would hard to imagine, though that in all the years since the design of the 77 and 78, he's not learned a trick or 2 to kick up the 78 a notch but it still would be limited by the # of filters. I seem to remember the wide setting on the is narrower than the 77.

The Mc tuner, like their preamps and amps, at least the older designs, do not follow the average sonic signature of their SS competition. The company was consistent in desiging to the Mc voicing of its tube units rather than the voicing of transistor based designs. Like any Mc unit some will like them and some will not.