September 2005

FM At The Pawnshop
The Ecumenical Audiophile's Cheap Tweak of the Day
Article By Jeff Rabin
The
cheapest tweak of all is of course the one that costs nothing. Such tweaks range
from pulling your speakers away from the wall and toeing them in slightly or my
all time favorite cost-is-an-object tweak, taking your Hi-Fi to bits and putting
it all back together with the help of the King’s men.
There is even good science behind these tweaks, by unplugging and plugging
back in the cables you clean all the contacts that the signal path travels along
and speakers are rarely optimally sited. I don’t have a free tweak today, or I
do if you count the first two, but I have a very inexpensive one: if you do not
already have a tuner, get one!
In the golden age of Hi-Fi when such names as Dynaco, Marantz, Leak, Quad,
Harmon Kardon, Radford, Pye and Mcintosh ruled the Hi-Fi roost and the idea of
‘new old stock’ made about as much sense as army intelligence, a tuner not
only was an essential component of any self-respecting Hi-Fi, but was indeed one
of the highest fidelity sources available to the average listener. Moreover,
then as today, radio was able to offer something that no other Hi-Fi component
can, live music in the home.
Of course spec-wise, signal to noise ratio, separation, frequency range,
distortion and just about everything else that can or can’t be measured —
even the best tuner is far inferior to that of the lousiest CD player, but to me
there is something still indescribably pleasurable and intimate about listening
to a good live broadcast through a decent tuner that no other source component,
for me anyway, can deliver. Manufacturers used to put a lot of care into
building the best tuners they could resulting in tuners with great ergonomics
and sound and they charged accordingly. But their great efforts, I believe, have
not properly been recognized in the secondhand market as whatever pawn shop I
visit these days has good used tuners going for a song. The humble tuner, it
would seem, has been humbled.
Of course, Clear Channel has homogenized radio across the nation, you may not
need no money down do not pay a cent event furniture, and that many stations
regularly employ the most egregious compression and sound processing imaginable
to give their signal enough bite to grab commuters attention during the rush
hour, but to tar the whole band with this brush is a mistake.
Among the dross where I live, and, I suspect if you look hard enough where
you live to, there’s still wonderful listening to be had that is not even that
hard to find. For it seems that whatever your tastes, you are all but guaranteed
to find something worth listening to on National Public Radio, your local
‘Classic Rock Station,’ or those stations farthest left on the dial, college
radio.
Is Anyone Listening? BBC Aerial, Ridge Hill
Here
in Toronto we have weekly live concerts on English CBC 94.1, French CBC at 90.3,
and NPR’s classical music station WNED 94.5 out of Buffalo. Danny Marks hosts
a great Blues evening every Saturday on Jazz FM on 91.1. And The University of
Toronto’s radio station CIUT at 89.5 as well as Ryerson Polytechnics at 88.1
both have great programs of music, featuring such disparate genres as Hot Jazz,
Acoustic Blues, Reggae, Hip Hop and Electronica that I would never in a million
years come across on my own.
Don’t
have a tuner? No problem. The pawn and thrift shops in my town seem to be chocka-block
with them, many priced less than the cables you are likely to hook them up with.
Last week I picked up a lovely hybrid solid-state valve tuner from Trio (now
Kenwood) that has a tone reminiscent of a Leak Troughline, but in stereo! A few
months before, at the same shop I picked up a lovely 70s Pioneer for even less
which even sports decent sounding AM. Yes Virginia, there is such a thing. And
if I didn’t already have a half dozen tuners, I would happily have brought
home more, for most seem to be priced between $20 and $50 Canadian. Perhaps
sometime I will trade them all in for a Magnum-Dynalab, but not today.
Neither of the recently acquired bargains have the sensitivity or selectivity
of my Revox, or the monophonic glory of my Leak Troughline II, but they cost
peanuts, sound lovely and are above all fun. And somehow I can always find a
place for them, whether it’s under my computer monitor or in my son’s room.
Once you have secured your thrift store special — I like the ones with
backlit analog displays and heavily weighted flywheels — popping the hood and
applying a little WD40 to the pulleys and a little Caig Laboratories Dexoit to
the switches is likely to extinguish any snap and crackle. A bit of pledge on
the wood looks good too. If you should particularly like a new found tuner, an
alignment at your local Hi-Fi repair shop is probably well worth it, but will
cost you more than you paid for the tuner in the first place. If you’re really
keen, a roof top aerial can make an astonishing difference but you would be
surprised about how well an old pair of TV rabbit ears will do.
I am not sure how great an investment these old tuners are – indeed, I
suspect that you would be hard pressed even on eBay to get more for them than
what you paid — but nonetheless, I do think, they represent superb value.
What’s the price of a couple of CDs if you can spend a glorious weekend
afternoon listening to Opera at the Met? Free music can be legal and
that’s why I believe secondhand analog tuners have to be the about the best
bargain and cheapest tweak going in Hi-Fi today. And if you should be so lucky
to be in radio-shot of BBC 3, damn you too!