1. Home
  2. vintage
  3. 195907-199203

FM Radio, anyone?

I was a kid in the 70s. I remember listening to Detroit Tiger baseball on WJR AM 760 on summer evenings - the voice was Ernie Harwell. And I remember listening to music on our local FM stations, and FM sounded so much better than AM (well, of course it did!). 
I remember the glow of the dial on higher end FM tuners, or on receivers. We had a Pioneer that was nice. But a neighbor had a beautiful Marantz with the heavy horizontal tuning dial. Today I own a Model 19 and a 2215b.

So, today I also own a McIntosh MR87 and I plan to showcase it in a whole house audio rack, with a rooftop antenna for the best possible reception. I also have a Magnum Dynalab MD-108 and I’m not sure where to put it, but it sure is pretty! 
Yeah, I know, the SQ is crap compared to just about anything else these days. And radio stations just aren’t as good as they used to be, or as I choose to remember them (the exception being WXRT in Chicago). But I cannot let go! Anyone else?

mattsca
durkn
109 posts
 

I have an MD-102 & an ST-2 outdoor antenna.

The sound quality is excellent with the right stations.

We have a local classical station & a college station (KTUH) that both have great sound quality. KTUH has a wide variety of music, dependent on the DJ. There is some great obscure music played that I haven’t heard on the radio for decades.

 

We bought a house that was a former radio station - 50,000 watts.

I still stream 91X, a San Diego station I’ve listened to since I was young, 8Radio Ireland & Radio Hauraki NZ.

There is some excellent radio out there that shouldn’t be missed.

 

ltmandella's avatar
ltmandella
188 posts
 

There is a pretty good all Classical NPR station in my city, and I have listened a lot in the past 5 years.  Using both old school tube tuner (Dynaco FM-3, old school analog solid state (kenwood), SONY highly modded XDR-F1HD, and even a Crane pocket FM on occasion.

The Dynaco FM-3 sounds the best by far, totally "musical", I can listen for hours.  I did do some re-soldering and one small mod to improve grounding to keep the hum low.

The Kenwood is next best sounding but not close to the FM-3.

The Sony is flat, boring sounding, does not sound like music.

The Crane is junk, there is a known problem with the volume control for that model, and they won’t fix it.  Will never buy another Crane.

The FM-3 does require a 6 element YAGI and I have line of sight to the station’s tower, the others can use a Crane T antenna indoors.

By the way I did own an MR-87 for years.  And had it aligned and tuned up.  But the FM-3 sounds better...

 

scooterbug
14 posts
 

I was blown away listening to a Marantz 10B back in the late 70's.  I wonder how it stacks up against some of today's best?

 

jimbennet
199 posts
 

FM today is close to 1960s and 1970s sound quality on most stations. What you were hearing was vinyl vs CD and tube audio vs solid state now. Plus you used tube tuners that sound great. The problem is the solid state FM tuner. fmtunrtinfo.com performed shootouts on 84 tunes. The top 14 are good and higher rated introduce too high distortion  A top 5 tuner that is inexpensive is the Hitachi FT-8000.

yyzsantabarbara
5,564 posts
 

@pdspiegel 

The tuner with my main system is a little Sony XDR-F1HD which is OK.  The additional HD channels offer some interesting programming which is often commercial free.

Use the best RCA cables you can afford on the Sony. It made a big difference to my ears. I had a modded unit from the

Repairs, upgrades, and sales of Sony XDR-F1HD HD Tuner

More to discover