Tandberg 3001A Tuner -- Best tuner ever?

Here is one of the top dogs from the tuner wars back in the 1970's. It certainly is in most enthusiast's top 10 list of best tuners. Everyone was trying to be the quietest, best range, and best sounding tuner, and the best were astounding. The Tandberg 3001A was considered by many to be the best. It has become a classic based on its fantastic performance and super sound quality. I desperately wanted one back in the day, and 10 years ago I bought this one. It has been in constant use (every weekend) since then. A few years ago, I took it to a Tandberg specialist (Approved Audio Services in CT) for alignment and a general checkover. He cleaned contacts, looked it over and gave it a clean bill of health. Mine has always been totally reliable, without any performance issues.

The build quality is sensational, and it still pulls in stations right on the money for every dial location. The presets work, as do all the meters. It has selectable wide/normal/narrow IF bandwidth selectability and an amazing 8-gang tuning element. I appreciated the multipath output which let me hook up an audio oscilloscope to align my antenna for minimum multipath distortion. The amazing selectivity allows hearing weak stations that are right next door to stronger stations on the dial, which is often a problem for me in my poor reception environment. The controls work smoothly, and the main tuning dial is silky (or you can use the preset buttons). It has various solutions for listening to less-good signals too, including a noise filter, variable muting levels, servo lock, etc. -- all the good stuff of the very best tuners ever made.

Sound quality is very good, better than the McIntosh MR74 that it replaced in my system. For one thing it is quieter, and many stations that were only listenable in mono on the Mac are quiet in stereo on the Tandberg. Music has body and depth to it (assuming your local stations care about broadcast quality). It really is nice once in a while to own gear that is at the top of the heap!

I'm only selling it in anticipation of an upcoming move. I expect it will give the next owner the great quality of service that it gave me. It truly is a classic piece!