Unidirectional outdoor antenna. Only two are available. Older model is 300 ohm on eBay and best in first picture. Other is 75 0um available on Amazon at low cost. Picture two.
Finding a Great Sounding FM Tuner
The site to visit is fmtunersinfo.com It is unbelievable of the info at the site. About 90 tuners were compared for best sound. Trouble is top ten FM tuners cost $500 and more on eBay. Why a FM tuner? Well, the station does all the work playing different records or likely CDs. FM does not sound near as good as a record, but for casual listening ok with the right tuner. Many FM tuners do not sound good and distorts the audio. FM station quality audio is not near what was in the 1960s and 1970s. Competition was fierce and stations had audio engineers. Most FM stations were all tube generated audio too. Opti-Mods were carefully adjusted unlike now too. As stated top ten tuners are $500 to $1K- too high cost IMO for FM. However, a few slipped thru the cracks so to speak. A Merdian 504 is in top 14 and we are splitting hairs here. I bought one for $140 but usually cost $200. They are rare though. Cost was $1350 in 1991. The Mitsubishi DA-F20 is a cheap top 10 tuner but failure rates are high- no good. The sleeper is a Hitachi FT-8000. It was not in the Shootout page but mentioned as better sounding than the stellar Hitachi FT-5500 MKII in Shoutouts 2.0. I owned both Merdian 504 and Hitachi FT-8000 and both are great sounding equal in audio performance. The FT-8000 are not known for failure and cost $150 to $220 on eBay.
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Recommended only SS tuners not Tube type. Why? Although rebuilt tube tuners are actually better sounding the FM stations do not have the quality like in 1960s and 1970s. They do not play superior vinyl. Tube tuners need rebuilding and are not as sensitive receivers like SS tuners You will not hear better quality than top 15 rated SS tuners. |
You are spinnin’ your wheels using those unidirectional types. For clean FM reception you will need a directional FM antenna. I use a directional in my attic. Manufacturers stopped making them years ago. This Steller Labs 4 element is still available and would be a better choice than any omni type!! |
The best antenna really depends on location and it's certainly true that a high-gain, directional antenna often gives the best results. Good FM antennas are still being made and one of the best seems to be this Sky Blue SBFM9. But if neither signal strength nor multipath are issues for you, a simple folded dipole wire antenna may be all you need. |
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