Jimmy, i've had a TX-9500 for as long as i can remember. It is a very sensitive tuner and if properly aligned, capable of pulling in stations that other tuners just dream about. I've been able to hear stations with very reasonable stereo seperation that were not audible on other tuners in mono. However, the sonics are somewhat "tin can" sounding to me i.e. 1970's "transistor sounding".
While i'm sure that a lot of the "signature SS sound" can be cured via upgrading of parts with slight value changes, you might not notice or mind this. Whether or not this is a problem will depend on the quality of FM broadcasts in your area. For $80 though, i would not hesitate to jump on it. So long as you can feed it a decent signal via a reasonable antenna, it should give you hours upon hours upon hours of listening enjoyment.
If you want to see how this tuner stacks up against quite a few other tuners, check out the website below. If some of the comments about the 9500 on that site look similar to what i stated here, it could be that i contributed some of them : ) Sean
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http://www.geocities.com/tunerinfo/
