McIntosh tuner / pan adapter question

Greetings all,

I'm looking for a Pan adapter type device for my vintage MR 80, preferably something with a larger CRT. A vintage device would be just fine, even preferable.

I understand I don't "need" something like this to actually tune frequencies, but I'd like to see what's going on in the spectrum near the stations I like to have tuned.

From what I've been reading, many of the existing pan adapters are for use with IF and are geared more for the HAM community.

Any thoughts?

What about something like this? RTL-SDR

A Mac MPI-4 scope would be contemporary with your tuner. However, the tuning display on that just shows the strength, centering and multipath on the station you're receiving, very similar to what a Marantz 10B's scope shows. It is a good tuning aid, although overkill in view of what they run these days.

But if you're looking for something that will show what other stations are active near the tuned frequency, the only audio specific one I've ever seen was the one built into the original Day Sequerra tuner.

Interesting thread. Just to clarify, Sequerra referred to the device you describe as a "Panalyzer", meaning the scope can be used to look at many aspects of the broadcast such as multipath, tuning and signals near the tuned frequency. I think this last one was unique to the Sequerra among consumer tuners. Many better tuners, especially from the 1970s, have scope outputs.

Sequerra is offering an updated (non-CRT) display for their old Reference tuners but it's expensive.

I would love to have such a device myself. I suspect a PC-based or Mac-based oscilloscope application would do the trick but you would have to do a lot of homework.

I would love to have an MPI-4 but on Ebay they are going from $800 on up. I have a garage-sale scope but who wants that in the living room? An MI-3 (the earlier tubed unit) would do the trick but they are also rare and expensive.

Please keep us posted if you find something!

When I first saw the thread title I thought it was about the Panloc hardware.

Software for Macintosh from the people who make Pure Vinyl software:

http://www.channld.com/macthescope/

Up to $500 depending on options.

You need an RF spectrum analyzer that covers 88 mHz to 108 mHz. This will show frequency on the X axis and RF amplitude on the Y axis.

Yes, a RF spectrum analyzer would be best here. Which you need to see what you are looking for. If it covers the FM frequencies, you'd be fine. HP or Tektronix recommended ones. Agree with John here.