CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

CIR Engineering · Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2014 5:20 am Post subject: FM Tuners (I'm out of control)

So I hope I don't lose control of myself and essentially wast tons of money buying old FM tuners. But I have to say that I have recently developed an interest in vintage solid state FM tuners and I'm not afraid to admit it's mostly because of how cool they look.

It all started because I cut the cord from cable mostly so that I would be forced to stop listening to the stupid 24 hour news cycle (and to save money). I wanted an FM tuner to listen to the radio during the day when I am home and I wanted one that would look cool next to my turntable in the living room. I decided that I would be willing to spend around $50 on a tuner and found a nice Pioneer TX-6500 that fit the bill. It needed just a little TLC and a few bulbs replaced, but I had fun messing around with it...

Pioneer TX-6500

Then I unfortunately had enough fun to start looking at other tuners and $400 later I got a Marantz 2110 scope tuner.

Marantz 2110 Tuner

I think just about anyone into CRT has to admit that a scope tuner is pretty darn cool. I really don't want to get sucked into this as a hobby, but I feel the pull strongly. Hopefully I can control myself and not let this get out of hand. The last thing I need is a time sink right now so I just can't let this happen Wink

Oh well, I guess I will have to roll with it.

craigr

CIR Engineering · Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2014 5:27 am Post subject:

...oh yeah, and this is after I burned about $2k over the last six weeks on vinyl. I may as well just throw in the towel as I obviously have a soft spot for this stuff.

craigr

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2014 5:45 am Post subject:

Hmmm I just passed on a Toshiba for $30...

Not nearly as nice as your Marantz. Ohh and I hear ya on the vinyl. I collected/traded for lots of years. Had to stop no more space. Laughing

km987654 · Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2014 4:52 am Post subject:

Tom.W · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 6635

The model 2110 is seriously cool how did they implement the Blue display Craig ?

Jeremy112 · Joined: 28 Sep 2006 Posts: 2649 Location: Fond du Lac, WI

The Marantz scope tuner is pretty nifty Craig, I've been thinking about picking up a Marantz 2500 or 2600 every now and then, they are beautiful beasts that have sound quality to match their looks!

The scope is one reason I refuse to sell my McIntosh MI-3 Oscilloscope, its just neat and fun to play around with and watch! Smile

Enjoy the hobby, but be careful, those FM tuners can get costly pretty quick, and its easy to get sucked into them. I had a hard time letting a mint Pioneer TX-9100 go, but I really don't need another FM tuner around here with all the other stereo equipment around this entire house

...It's a hobby that can lead you on as badly as home theater! Very Happy

CIR Engineering · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 2:11 am Post subject:

CIR Engineering · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 2:15 am Post subject:

CIR Engineering · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 2:25 am Post subject:

CIR Engineering · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 2:27 am Post subject:

CIR Engineering · Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 9:06 pm Post subject:

Here's a video of the scope in action on some nice jazz last night.

http://www.cir-engineering.com/bin/tun/2110/scope.MOV

It's so cool. I think I am going to hook the scope inputs on the tuner to the TAPE output on my preamp so that I can watch the scope whenever I feel like it with any source.

FUN!!!

Happy new year everyone,
craigr

CIR Engineering · Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 10:13 pm Post subject:

So I have to admit that the scope is actually really quite useful. It is wonderful for tuning and seeing what is wrong with a statin signal. You can see right there the strength of the signal, when it is best tuned, if there is multipath, and a lot more.

The scope inputs are really nice too. I have them hooked to the tape output on my preamp. The scope has been wonderful for doing touch up work on the turntable. I don't have to dig out a stand alone scope for this anymore because there is a sufficient one always hooked up to the stereo system.

It's wonderful... and fun Cool

craigr

jask · Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 10187 Location: kamloops BC

Very nice! I really like the signal/tune/ multipath on old Marantz gear, it tunes and holds really well, but often can use an alignment and it is worth going through to inspect the caps. I am sitting here streaming to a 2285B and it is the tuner that get most of the use for FM listening at our house, I keep offering to move the TT and vinyl down to the living room to join it but no joy so far Smile

CIR Engineering · Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 10:35 pm Post subject:

Thanks.

One of the reasons I bought this unit is because it was just aligned by Mike Zucarro in San Francisco. He's one of the best out there, or so I am told through other forums. Not only did he align the tuner, but he also replaced most caps on the tuner board and fully cleaned the tuner cap. That side of things looks good.

Last week I noticed when I first would turn on the tuner there were sometimes loud clicking sounds from inside the tuner. I immediately thought high voltage from the CRT circuitry. I sat there staring at the tuner opened up in the dark but could not spot an arch. After a bunch of other trouble shooting I pulled all fuses and applied power... no clicking. I put the fuses back in one by one and it wound up coming from the 600 volt section. Putting the fuses in and out also resulted in more clicking and I was able to narrow it down to one spot on the power board. Leaky cap had dumped just a little fluid and it was arching between the cap and PCB. Got that fixed and recapped the entire board. Put my ESR meter on all the caps I pulled and no others were bad. In fact, the ESR was so low on all the rest and the capacitance was still above the rated value. Amazing how well caps were built back in the day.

I bet the new caps I put in with better specs won't last as long as the originals... almost 40 years.

craigr