I was going to pass on this thread but since none Pioneer suggestions are being made, I'll provide my penny's worth.
As some may know, I spent years with a number of pretty decent tuner with my main permanent being a McIntosh MR77. In several threads I have mentioned the old tube wide band am-fm stereo tuners if you want some of the better am sound as the engineers tried to get the am sound competitive with the mono fm. Back then before FCC limits set with the mpx mandate fm tuners were wideband, that is high end went to 20,000 hz. With the intro of the mpx system upper stereo limit was 15,000hz. During the early mpx days of tube designs, the mono was still out to 20,000hz with many designs such as Scott. With the transistion to ss, the designers no longer had to try to go beyond 15,000hz with the tuner, even in mono. So, most ss designs had a goal to go to a max.of 15,000hz. The min issue was whether you designed the limitation via a rolloff or a brick. Bother were used. The brick generally gave a tighter +/- spec while the rolloff depended on how it was executed.
Over the years I have seen enough tuner specs to just gloss over the frequency response spec as it was always 20-15,000. The deviation could help in determining the type of high freq control, but as more gangs and if stages were added to high end, the filters generally were brick. A brick allows a flat response to the limit and then radically chops everything above it. As a design, I usually preferred a rolloff and fewer gangs and if stages as it seemed, if the tuner was well designed to sound very good.
Most recently, I have sold off most of my tuners including all my high end, read expensive units. I was surprised I did not miss them and even enjoyed my new main tuner as much and better. A few days ago, I may have discovered why. The tuner is the Sherwood S3300. It is a ss rebuild of the S3000 tube series. It would seem something just so-so from its looks and its specs are at first not anything great. A typical simple Sherwood approach that looks too simple. It may be part of the reason it sounds so good. It is, heck, only a 3-gang tuner with 3 if stages and no fancy filters.
If someone handed it to me along with the specs, I would yawn. But having Sherwoods, I learned not to underestimate the engineers. The tuner had 4 basic interations: 1) all silicon transistors, 2) silicon and fet transistor, 3) silicon, fet and microcircuits, and 4) the SEL300 that was a soup up S3000 type 3 with new if, principally introducing new type of filter. The SEL200 receiver uses a slightly SEL300 variant.
I have the silicon and fet version and the silicon, fet and microcircuit version. Subjectively there is NO difference between them. I am using the silicon and fet version in my system.
I got the tuners some years ago and each was checked out and aligned by the same person. It took some time as it did with my tube S3000IV that the tuners actually were competitive with my big stuff. I think I may have found a key. I had not noticed the frequency response, as I said. In reading the service manuals, I realized the mono frequency response is 20-20,000 hz +/- 1/2 db and in stereo 20-15,000 +/- 1/2db. These are the specs of an excellent tube wide band fm mono tuner. Maybe this coupled with the fewer if stages that generally means less frequency cutoff and the design around the Sherwood if cans recognized back then as good as it got over the Miller coils most used. Add mono and stereo distortion of .25% that by any measure is low, especially for stereo. To compare it, the Yamaha CT610II is .8% for stereo and freq response is 50-15,000 -3db. The S3300 sells for about 1/4th of a S3300.
I am not sure how prevalent side band fm ss tuners are. As I said, it has been something I have glossed over for years. It may have some thing to do with why it now sits in the top slot and all but the Yamaha CA610II have left the house with no regrets. If you do not need a dx'er, try a S3300. Being simpler and used as broadcast monitors means they tend tl be more robust. When I bought a 10b from a radio station years ago, it was being replaced with a S3300. The station also used a number of S3000 both mono and stereo throughout the station.
I will be getting rid of the Yamaha and mating the other S3300 with the CA610II amp. You may want to try one yourself as they sell for peanuts, for now. Sorry for the long reply.
