This is an interesting topic, really, because I've been doing quite a few modifications to tuners recently. Nothing terribly substantial really, but tuners are nice to do because the mods and alignment are both audible AND measurable in a very significant manner. As to manufacturers intentionally designing bad products: I have to wonder if this is true. I'll relate a case in point:
I just did a modification to a Magnum Dynalab FT-101A which was possibly three or four years old. The first thing I noticed was that the ceramic IF filters were types completely unsuited to high fidelity. A simple swap dropped THD from .2% to .03%, which is just a shocking amount without even a real circuit change. Even better, IM distortion dropped 20dB! This was also the only tuner I have ever seen without a channel separation adjustment, and as a result, the separation is over 20dB worse than most other tuners. So you have to wonder just how bad the engineering here is. Using different filters would cost the factory basically nothing.
They also used cheap electrolytic caps on the outputs (although there are spots on the board for the film caps used in the Etude, for which they charged an extra $500), which the customer wanted replaced with Black Gates. When I pulled the circuit board to replace them, I noticed bare traces on the board in a number of spots, a lot of white powdery oxidation, and some traces that had fallen right off the board, primarily in the ground plane. This unit looked pretty pristine, so I really can't explain that either.
So, there's one more example of poor engineering and construction to tack to the list, I suppose. Interesting topic. Has anyone else pulled an audiophile component apart and found things that just shouldn't be there?
I just did a modification to a Magnum Dynalab FT-101A which was possibly three or four years old. The first thing I noticed was that the ceramic IF filters were types completely unsuited to high fidelity. A simple swap dropped THD from .2% to .03%, which is just a shocking amount without even a real circuit change. Even better, IM distortion dropped 20dB! This was also the only tuner I have ever seen without a channel separation adjustment, and as a result, the separation is over 20dB worse than most other tuners. So you have to wonder just how bad the engineering here is. Using different filters would cost the factory basically nothing.
They also used cheap electrolytic caps on the outputs (although there are spots on the board for the film caps used in the Etude, for which they charged an extra $500), which the customer wanted replaced with Black Gates. When I pulled the circuit board to replace them, I noticed bare traces on the board in a number of spots, a lot of white powdery oxidation, and some traces that had fallen right off the board, primarily in the ground plane. This unit looked pretty pristine, so I really can't explain that either.
So, there's one more example of poor engineering and construction to tack to the list, I suppose. Interesting topic. Has anyone else pulled an audiophile component apart and found things that just shouldn't be there?