My Pimped up tuner

[PinkFloyd]

I have to agree Mike where else can you listen to a program like this a real classic.

Nowhere. Which is why I am so against these smart arses who want to fill the airwaves with "same old" but in a different presentation package (ie: smart arse presenters) I don't tune in to listen to a certain presenter, I tune in to listen to the music that the presenter is presenting. To dismiss organ music as "boring" or "rubbish" is plain ignorance and if these people get their way they'll be feeding us a diet of pure bland crap before we know it. Why is it that some folk consider anything that has gone before their time "crap"? It's what has gone before that has made the present why try to bury it as if it never existed and feed people a diet of "now" and maybe a little bit of "then" with a sarcastic tone in their voice? All music is worthy of airtime and quality such as that played in "the organist entertains" very worthy IMO... to lose this part of our musical heritage would be criminal.

[Captain]

Mike I had a listen to Russell Brand in the car when driving down to London on Saturday. Have to agree not a bad show, some good tunes and very funny. I always thought he was going to be very irritating, but as you say it it all seems to work. I also listened to Paul Gambaccini, I forgot what a weired taste in music he has. Its like listing to your dad tying to be cool with his music taste. Just dull.

Bob Harris is pretty cool. I love the way he speaks he has a voice made for radio. Harris on tubes is the way to go so lush. I like his Alternative Country show, as over the years have become a real fan of American folk. It is a shame he is now ill and will not be back on the radio until October.

[vpr5]

Hi everyone just came across this thread, humble greetings and respects to all.

I couldn’t resist commenting on the radical Dynaco FM3 tuner at the start. For I also have one of these fine bits of audio history and have owned mine since it was factory built new sometime in 1968...

Actually I have used it almost continuously since then, and while a few newer tuners arrived along with the ’digital revolution’ the good old Dynaco mostly saw them off. Not many know this, but the FM3 was the most expensive FM tuner on sale in the UK at the time (around £60 list). But as it was so obviously vastly overpriced I waited until my local Hi-Fi shop ’knocked it out’ to me for £40, and I carried my Brass / Gold coloured version home under my arm on a 93 bus.

The impressive thing about this vintage wireless was that it always looked rather sophisticated and inscrutable with its minimalist front panel. The frequency calibrations and tuning eye are only visible when it was turned on. It also sounded better than the newer tuners I bought (Sony analogue, much later Sony synthesiser, early Masson Cyrus) - more fool me eh? Most obvious was its great depth and perhaps euphoric coloration (?) of the valves. One comparison sticks in the mind; when a new UK FM station (forgotten which one) was running test transmissions perhaps in the mid 1980’s, they broadcast long periods of woodland sounds, leaves rustling, birds chirping and all that sort of thing. One day I happened to compare the outputs of my first version Mission Cyrus that I was using at the time with the Dynaco, and while the Mission sounded fine, the Dynaco sounded like you were actually in the forest. (This was using some Stax headphones). So the Dynaco went back ‘on active service’ and the Cyrus was shoved on a shelf.

Over the years I also ‘improved’ my Dynaco by replacing many electrolytic caps with more fashionable types and replacing various wire links with Teflon insulated silver plated copper. The advanced for the time thick-film de-emphasis circuits were also replaced with my home made discreet plug-in versions as I was not 100% sure the correct contour had be fitted from the start (it had). I also sprayed the rather nice valve screens with black heat dispersant paint. But my tweaks were nothing as radical as the Captain’s The clever thing about this tuner was that as it was designed (by David Hafler?) as a kit and therefore able to be easily aligned by the home builder with no test equipment.

Having a bit of money to splash about at the end of the last century I thought it was about time I got something better to listen to Radio3 on, and I eventually ended up with a newish Magnum Dynalab FT101A. Well, the new tuner was indeed audibly better (which was good as several hundred pounds had changed hands) and had a much extended HF, more precise imaging, no sibilants on voice, almost as good depth and was much quieter. So my Dynaco was at last was given an honourable retirement and now lives in my humble ’museum’ of old but once precious things.

A couple of years later I upgraded again, but also to something fairly ancient (but my audio system and I am inclined to be ancient) and now I have a Yamaha CT7000 to listen to Radio 3 on.

Sorry to go on so, did I mention I listen to Radio 3?

[mrarroyo]

Nice post vpr5! What is Radio 3?

[vpr5]

Ah yes, BBC Radio 3 that’s what it is.

While in the UK there are all sorts of radio stations, including the new ‘digital’ (DAB - pah!) stuff. In my very humble opinion most of them seem to specialise in broadcasting incoherent gibberish.

There are however two refuges for us users of wireless sets, that is: BBC Radio 4 which does news and some gibberish (programmes that they think are amusing) and BBC Radio 3 which is for ‘serious’ music. Radio 3 even transmits about 5 minutes of Jazz a week in between the thirty thousand hours of opera, but sadly they like to talk a lot over it.. Jazz though to the BBC mostly seems to be of the ‘fire in zoo’ type as the late George Melly called it.

Actually, having a couple of nice FM tuners (DAB - pah!) continues to be fairly frustrating experience.

[mrarroyo]

vpr5, I listen mostly to jazz. However, in South Florida we have only two station which play jazz. One 88.9 plays "real" jazz while the other 93.9 plays "smooth jazz" and light ballads. As a result I kind of have given up on a good FM receiver. Now I am thinking of satellite radio, however this works by sending out a 128 kbs signal which is not that good. Plus you have to pay about $11 a month.

[rowuk]

The function of radio was never a high fi media, rather programming wherever you happen to be. To get reasonable distance you use AM and for basic quality FM. As music over the internet becomes more popular, the radio stations with an internet presence will get the advertising money and that will determine what will remain as technology. I am not aware of an internet technology that would like radio allow almost unlimited quantity of access at full bandwidth. Each connection over a network eats bandwidth so algorithms are appled to get more customers "on line". We can only hope that a "new" technology becomes available to allow more customers more quality.

I built one of those tuners - yes it was great fun.