Coolest looking vintage tuner.....

I like my 1973 Kenwood 8005. Big, bold, silver/copper face. To each his own. Listening to it right now.

sansui tx1..one for sale right now...not silver but it has plenty of analogue toys including seperate tuning facilities for am and fm....one of the best

The legendary silver-faced Yamaha CT-7000 tuner.

Pioneer 9500Mk II is a really nice tuner, I'd never part with mine

I have a Pioneer Elite F-93 tuner. Looks and sounds perfect IMHO.

I'd go with the Mitsubishi DA-F20. It looks great and is often considered one of the better sounding tuners ever made. You can usually pick one up used for around $100-200.

H.H. Scott equipment was always thought of as beautiful. I have an old tuner that I built as a kit stowed away in a closet because it is too nice to get rid of. "Good stuff", all of it!

IMHO looks should be secondary but I also like equipment that looks sexy and matches my other components. Take a look at the Accuphase T101 FM only tuners. They have the classic look still maintain there original value and sound great. They only come up occasionly on Gon I would grab one.

The Tuner in the Nakamichi 630 Tuner-Pre-amp is probably the most unique looking tuner with its vernier dial that turns instead of a pointer travelling a scale. Sounds good too!

Phasecorrect,
Altho' it'd be very nice to own one of these vintage tuners & it would be a great attention getter for your guests, what in the world are you going to do with it once it's powered on?? IOW, is there anything worth listening to on FM radio? Each time I put it on all I hear is bloody ads! Nearly every station I found plays the same music over & over & over again until it's gotten so much radio play that I hate that song! :-) There are 10 glorious minutes(in relative terms, of course) of NPR news. Very little else worth tuning into.
Then, there is Magnum Dynalab whose top-of-the-line tune is several thousand $! What a waste!
Some of the internet radio stations are much better. If one can plug the computer audio out into one's main system, one could listen to that over the main speakers. Would sound pretty nice, I imagine.
Anyway, just my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong.....

Check out the Kenwood KD 5500 someone just listed. Same features I like in women - very attractive but inexpensive. Much easier to find this in a tuner ;^)

That should have been KT-5500, not KD 5500. Sorry.

Go to FM Tuner Info site and look at some pictures.

I have never seen one in person but agree with the above vote for the Yamaha CT-7000 and I also like the look of some of the 70's Pioneers...it's all personal.

I'd second HH Scott. Great looking tuners from the golden age of stereo. Tube design. Several models to choose from. For more info go to This Website

Marco

It's black, not silver, but Yamaha T-2 is extremely cool in my opinion.

Also one of the best tuners ever.

For the ultimate cool (IMHO) you need a tuner with an oscilloscope, such as a Marantz 2130. Look at the pics here:
http://www.classic-audio.com/marantz/pics/2130e2.jpg.

- Harald

Here is a bit more info on the Mitsubishi DA-F20:

The DA-F20 is an unusual-looking FM-only tuner whose front panel resembles an automobile dashboard. It has a 5-gang traditional tuning capacitor front end, and crystal referenced tuning with digital LED readout. It also has a discrete output stage and decent ergonomics. The DA-F20 has two wholly independent IF paths, each with its own detector, with linear phase LC filters in the wide path and standard 3-pin ceramic filters in the narrow path. Wide/narrow switching is done by a front panel switch that selects which detector output feeds the stereo MPX circuit. Our panelist Bob was able to easily mod the narrow filter path and install better filters in place of the original Toko filters, which were out of spec. After he replaced the narrow filters, it was necessary to retune the narrow detector. This, along with tweaking the RF front end, brought the tuner to fantastic working condition. Bob reports: “The DA-F20 is one of my top tuners. I like the tight bottom end and clean reproduction of brass and strings, and it's one of my most sensitive and quiet units in stereo mode with no blend or MPX filter applied. One of the things I like best about the DA-F20 is the ease of tuning, especially for an analog front end, digital LED readout unit. There is no complicated mechanism, simply 3 LEDS that let you glide through a station, and a lock indicator to let you know when it is dead-on. With numeric counter type readout, wide-narrow filters, and separate mono-stereo and muting switches, this is a tuner that gets it right for usability.” Our contributor Hank calls his DA-F20 “one of the most sensitive tuners I have. It can be bought and modded so inexpensively and made so good, it is virtually self-recommending. When the internal balun is removed, matched filters installed (or, even better, a Bill Ammons' Filter-Adder board or two), improved capacitors in the audio circuits added, and (it goes with saying) a good alignment, this tuner becomes a great tuner.” Our contributor Thomas says, "The DA-F20 stock is one of the best I've ever heard. The parts are of very good quality compared to its time companions (class of '78). The detector (wide) is discrete, as is the audio stage. The PSU is not bad at all. If you want to replace the coupling caps of the audio stage (which I recommend as a first modification), there will be enough space under the PCB.” See how one DA-F20 sounded compared to other top tuners on our Shootouts page. The DA-F20 usually sells for $150-200 or so on eBay, but a mint one went for a surprising $350 in 3/03.

BTW, there is one on e-bay now.