Wow. There is certainly a lot of bad information floating around on Audiogon. Suffice to say that most of the Magnums are garbage. The MD-90 is nothing short of a joke that any informed consumer would laugh off the showroom floor. I'd love to post a diatribe here regarding which tuner is best for which purpose, but that discussion has already been done. Stop over at the FMTuners Yahoo Group for much of that. Here I'll just provide a brief laundry list.
In short, Almost none of the usual audiophile approved brands are going to be any good in the area of tuners, apart from the audio section. FM design is something which baffles most of them, and is not their area of expertise. So, even if you feed the best audio section in the world with junk, you still get junk. The GIGO principle at work.
Vintage analog tuners can potentially be good, but their primary strength is limited to RF performance, where some were truly excellent, although that number is still quite small. All other areas, such as the FM detector and the stereo decoder have been surpassed by leaps and bounds by modern units which are available for less money. At one point, I was also firmly on the analog tuner bandwagon which many still advocate. I'm now firmly off it after more experience with new tuners. Unfortunately, the desirable ones, while remaining inexpensive, are often difficult to find. Many modern tuners are junk compared to vintage analog units.
Here is a short list: Onkyo T-9090II if selectivity is your thing. Also pretty good all around. Denon TU-800, which was a genuinely good all around tuner. Yamaha TX-1000, T-85, T-950, T-930, T-900 are all decent tuners with various strengths. None is really head and shoulders above the others. Tandberg 3001 was perhaps the best tuner when it came out, and remained so throughout its 20 year production history. This was a $4000 tuner by the time it was discontinued in the late 90s. Kenwood had the L-1000T and the KT-3300D, both of which were apparently quite similar and arguably among the very best tuners ever designed from a technical standpoint. Pioneer had the F-90 and F-99X, which are identical, and are out there for about $100 or less used, which is a steal. Stereo separation and distortion on these units are actually BETTER than the Accuphase T-109, which is strong evidence of remarkably good engineering and design choices. Sony had a number of good tuners in the ES line, the ST-S730ES, ST-S707ES, and ST-SA5ES, although the ST-S730 was probably the best of the bunch. Audiolab had the 8000T, which was somewhat decent, and Sumo the Charlie. Harmon Kardon had the Citation 23, which was a decent tuner. Sansui had the TU-D99X, X701 and X711, and Hitachi the FT-5500. Finally, we have Rotel with the RT-990BX and RHT-10, which might just make the $1000 mark if you find one. This is your under $1000 and decent digital list and is fairly complete.
In the vintage tuner arena, there are many opinions, with many tuners of various qualities. The Macs were never respected for particularly good sound, but a Rich Modafferi upgrade should take care of a lot of thisl. Kenwood had the KT-917, which isn't cheap, but is very very good if overload is a problem. Pioneer had the F-28 and F-26, which were their best models. Sansui had the TU-919 which might be decent, and the relatively good TU-X1. I personally think vintage Sansuis are sickeningly overpriced. Mitsubishi had the DA-F20, Nikko the Gamma I and Gamma V, Yamaha the T-2 and CT-7000, Sherwood the Micro/CPU 100, with a few decent offerings from other manufacturers which I've left out.
If sound quality is the name of the game, a top modern tuner is probably the way to go. In an urban environment, overload may or may not be a problem, depending on what the strongest signal in the area is. If overload is a huge problem, nothing tops the Technics ST-9030. Selectivity is always a battle, but it also usually wreaks havoc on sound quality. Around New York, switchable IF bandwidths are a MUST. If you're willing to go to $1000, any of the above would serve as a top notch tuner. As always, the best recommendation is to save a little on the tuner, and spend what you saved on a roof mounted antenna with a rotator.
