Sparrow feed best sensitivity tuner?

Going to try one more time with a tuner. Live between two military bases and reception sucks here. Put an antenna in the attic and while there was some change it wasn't much. So, can anyone recommend a tube or SS tuner with great sensitivity for small $? Not worried about sound quality

thanks!

Most of the better tuners cost expensive prices. Especially when properly restored. Antenna critical. Is the station you want to get low powered? Is it near a stronger nearby signal? How far is the nearest medium to large city?

Hi,
You are probably going to want to avoid tube tuners, especially lower priced ones since sensitivity is not their strong point.

I have dozens of tuners, but for price/sensitivity/sound quality this pair from JVC are very, very nice:

FX-1010TN
FX-1100BK

Circuit wise, these two tuners are virtually if not exactly identical. I have both and they are very solid performers. Can be had for <$100 with careful shopping.

Nikko-Gamma I is another very nice tuner. Finally, another sleeper in my opinion is the Sanyo Plus T-35. It's sibling the T-55 is also good, but I don't give it the raves some do.

Finally, for a few bucks more (@$100 - $150) is the excellent Sony ST-J75. Good sensitivity, great sound.

I have all the above tuners so I speak as one who has actually listened to them on an extended basis. Check out the FMTUNERINFO.com website if you haven't already. This site has a wealth of information on all above tuners plus many more.

fanghorn said:

Going to try one more time with a tuner. Live between two military bases and reception sucks here. Put an antenna in the attic and while there was some change it wasn't much. So, can anyone recommend a tube or SS tuner with great sensitivity for small $? Not worried about sound quality

thanks!

Click to expand...

You do not give use a lot of information to go on.

What type of antenna did you place in the attic?

What type of feed line are you using and how long is it?

Are there any balun transformers in line? The signal loss presented by a balun transformer may vary from only 0.5 dB to over 2 dB and I just looked back at my data from some that I measured and I found some that were some that had over 3 dB loss at FM broadcast band frequencies.

Is the antenna correctly aimed for the station(s) of interest?

Does your antenna have a clear view of the path the the station(s) of
interest, or are there obstructions, trees, buildings or hills in the way?

It your issue just weak signals?
Is your issue interference?
Or both?

How well can you receive your station(s) of interest on your car radio?

Keep in mind that with RF signal reception it is location, location, location, so it is possible for you to have good reception in a particular location and not another just a few feet away.

FM FOOL will give you an estimate of FM broadcast band signals for your location.

In general, stations that are not listed as LOS (line of sight) are going to be more difficult to receive, such as the ones listed as 1st edge and 2nd edge.

Depending on construction material, the signal loss encountered by an attic mounted antenna will vary from not making a lot of difference to being a issue.

Remember RF signal reception is location, location, location, so what works well for one person may or may not work the same way for another person.

BTW, what is your current tuner?

The Onkyo T-4087 is very sensitive with excellent noise rejection and you can pick them up relatively cheap. The Sony ST-J75 is another wonderful tuner you can pick up cheap, but they are hard to find. The Kenwood TX-7500 is a great analog tuner that won't run you a lot of money.

As pointed out earlier, if you can receive the stations you wish in your car or truck, you have a chance of reception in the house.

Depending upon location the difference of a few feet in antenna placement can be the difference between success and failure. Experimentation definitely can pay off.

What kind of antenna?, directional or omni-directional, they make a BIG difference.
Of course the directional is the best but you need a rotor if you want to select stations that are around you, coming from different directions. If you have stations in only one direction, just have to point the directional antenna for the best signal, line of sight.

The original Scott 312 had a nuvistor front end which I found to be quite sensitive. And those are pretty inexpensive.

I have a couple of Akai At-V04 that perform really well for very little $$. Tuner Info has nice things to say about them:

"The 4-gang AT-V04 is a fairly common FM/AM digital tuner that was considered close to state-of-the-art for FM DXers in the early 1980s if one excludes the Mac MR 78...the AT-V04 tunes in 0.05 MHz increments for FM and 1 kHz increments for AM (highly unusual and great for AM DXers)."

I swap them out every once in a while, but they always sneak back in.