by Andy

We’re Stereo Exchange, located in New York City. We've been in business since the 1970s and are a major high-end dealer. We have all the current top brands on display in our huge showroom including McIntosh. Here we have the perfect tuner for your dream McIntosh system. Up for auction is a McIntosh MR80 FM tuner. This tuner has a superior combination of great sound, great reception even under tough conditions, flexibility, features that are truly useful, as well as long life. This is NOT a digital tuner, in the usual way. It does have digital readout, so you always know exactly where on the dial you are. It also allows you to set FOUR stations in memory, and recall them at the touch of a button (literally…a touch…the buttons are touch sensitive!) like a digital tuner. It is, however, an analog tuner. This means that you can fine-tune the tuner to the center of a station, or slightly away to avoid interference. That makes it the best of both worlds. There are three things that make this the king of tuners… #1) LOWER DISTORTION: FM tuners may have low distortion specs, but almost always the quoted distortion is only a 1000Hz. At high frequencies, distortion rises dramatically. Many tuners measure over 12% distortion at 15,000Hz. The MR80 has a maximum guaranteed distortion rating of .2% in STEREO from 20-15,000Hz. Nothing compares to that. #2) RESISTANCE TO OVERLOAD. Most tuners are designed for maximum sensitivity, The flip side is that in strong-station areas, they overload. Distortion climbs and stations ‘bleed” onto other stations, often at multiple points on the dial. Some tuners have a LOCAL/DISTANCE switch to helps avoid this, but that’s usually just a resistor that blocks 50% of your antenna signal. With the switch on, resistance to overload is better, but sensitivity turns to CX#%! The MR80 is different. There is a switch on its top apron. It’s called PRESELECT. In one position the tuner has very good immunity to overload and super high sensitivity. In the PRESELECT position, an additional RF tuned circuit is inserted. Sensitivity drops a TINY BIT but now the tuner can handle over EIGHT VOLTS down the antenna with no increase in distortion! Most tuners overload with well under one volt! #3) SELECTIVITY. 99% of tuner manufacturers quote only ALTERNATE CHANNEL SELECTIVITY. That means, say, if you’re tuned to 96.3 FM, it’s the ability of the tuner to reject interference from the station TWO STATION STEPS OVER at 96.7. The idea is that each city has stations at alternate frequencies (.4 apart). New York has 96.3 and 96.7. Harford uses the in- between frequencies, 96.5 and 96.9. The problem is if you live BETWEEN cities and are able to pick up from both cities. Now you have ADJACENT channels at 96.3, 96.5, 96.7, and 96.9. So what is the ADJACENT CHANNEL SELECTIVITY of your tuner? Most tuners run about 7dB. A few high-end models have 11dB. The most exotic designs ever made have as much as 14dB. That’s not enough for clear reception of adjacent channels without interference. The problem with building for higher ADJACENT CHANNEL selectivity is an increase in harmonic distortion. But I’d rather have a little more harmonic distortion and be able to pick up certain adjacent stations…sometimes….when I need to. The MR80 solves this problem COMPLETELY. It has two selectivity positions (far left knob on faceplate). In NARROW, you get the world’s lowest distortion and Alternate Channel Selectivity of 90dB with an Adjacent Channel Selectivity of 7dB. In SUPER NARROW, distortion increases slightly (still lower than other tuners) but the Alternate Channel Selectivity rises to 110dB and Adjacent Channel Selectivity climbs to 60dB. No other tuner can come close to that. #3 TUNING ACCURACY: The MR80 has no tuning meter. It fine-tunes itself with incredible accuracy. You can touch the tuning knob, tune to a station, and then let go of the knob. The tuner will instantly pull itself to the center of the station and stay there, even if the station were to drift 20% of the way across the dial! In the previous models, like the MR78, you needed to VERY precisely tune the tuner for the lowest distortion. In the MR80, you always have perfect tuning and lowest distortion. There’s a row of LEDS on the right side of the dial area. It shows the strength of the station. Even the weakest stations register, but very strong stations will not “peg” the meter. Even better, the sensitivity of the signal strength “meter” is adjustable with a knob on the top of the tuner, in case ALL you stations in your area are weak or strong. Weak stations can be switched to MONO with the front-panel switch. Signals must be much stronger to be received noise-free in STEREO than in MONO. But who want to listen in MONO? The MR80 has a trick, though. It has a VERY special FILTER. This is NOT a filter that removes all the “highs” from the music. Instead, it turns the highs into partial mono to cancel noise, but keeps most of the STEREO effect. You can turn it on or off with a front-panel knob, but the MR80 goes one step further. It automatically senses when the signal is getting noisy, and turns the filter on and off automatically! How cool is that? Most tuners have MUTING to remove noise between stations. The MR80 has VARIABLE (with a front panel knob) muting. You can set it to let through almost all stations, only the strongest ones, or anything in between. There are two touch-buttons that make the tuner scan up or down the dial and automatically lock onto the center of the station. You can change the speed with which the tuner scans the dial with a front-panel knob. By the way, this is an FM-ONLY tuner. If you want to hear the news, turn on your Wave Radio. AM sounds better through more limited-bandwidth speakers, anyway! A VERY COOL FEATURE: There are two FM antenna connections. You can connect TWO antennas, even two “folded dipoles” , face them two different directions, and switch between them with a pushbutton on the top apron. In many situations, this can be a real life-saver. This is especially true when MOST stations in your area are from one direction, but you also like a college station in another direction. Now you won’t have to keep moving your antenna! The switching is done electronically, right at the antenna jacks, inside a shielded box, using PIN diodes. There are TWO SETS of outputs. One set is FIXED in level and the other set is FRONT PANEL CONTROLLED so you can match the level of your radio to your other sources. Very convenient! You could also use the VARIABLE outputs to run directly into a power amp or powered speakers in an FM-ONLY system, for, say, an office. There is a headphone jack on the front panel, powered by its own very high quality headphone amplifier. The volume can be adjusted with the front-panel level control. If you have never experienced radio from a McIntosh tuner you will be in for a treat. The following may sound crazy now, but just ask any McIntosh tuner owner and they will confirm it; GIVEN A GREAT BROADCAST, FM THROUGH A MCINTOSH TUNER CAN SOUND BETTER THAN ALMOST ANY OTHER SOURCE. There is a smoothness and depth-of-field to the sound that is hard to believe. Visual Condition: This tuner is in nice shape. I have cleaned the controls and switches. I also replaced the one burned out lamp. I have checked all functions and I cannot report any problems. All the knobs have been removed, and scrubbed. All the touch buttons work well. Visually, it has SLIGHT bubbling of the paint behind the glass around the pushbuttons and around the headphone jack. Other than that, it’s the nicest condition MR80 I have seen in many years. If you replaced the glass, it would be as close to MINT as you could ask for. We will include a copy of the owner’s manual. We do not have the original box, but we have a box for another older 5” high McIntosh tuner that will work perfectly. It is a box within a box. We know how to pack McIntosh, so have no fear. PRICING: When new, in the early 1980s, this tuner sold for about $2000. To build it today, it would need to sell for at least three times that much. We are setting the RESERVE at only $747.00. Things to know… This item is a final sale, with no warranty, refunds, or exchanges. The tuner has been tested. We accept PAYPAL or all major credit cards for sales in the US. We accept PAYPAL ONLY for sales to Canada. We CANNOT SHIP THIS UNIT ANYWHERE OTHER THAN THE US OR CANADA. If you do not live in the US or Canada, DO NOT BID. If you live in the New York area, you could pick it up and save on shipping, but we MUST charge sales tax. Items sold to / shipped to within New York State will be charged sales tax. The above words are the property of KZ Consulting and are NOT to be copied.

Source: McIntosh MR80 Digital / Analog FM Tuner w/Low Reserve | Vintage Tuners