General:

Lower priced audio tuner from the 1960's with nice specs, good design and very good sound.

This tuner forms a great couple with the Monarch SA-600 amplifier.
Reception on FM is excellent. Sound on FM is perfect for this kind of design, AM reception is acceptable.
 

scale^

 

Special futures:

This tuner has a very nice and good design, has a good look and is well constructed.
The pcb's are well designed. Although the electronic design was at the time not the most modern, it is well designed.
It was cheaper at the time but certainly as good as the more expensive competitors of exclusive brands
like the Luxman, Sansui, Akai, Kenwood and many more.
The FM front-end has a 3 gang var.capacitor and has a Fet as first amp. The MF is a 4 stage 10.7 Mc traditional LC.
The FM detector is a traditional ratio-type and the stereo-decoder is a traditional LC type stage.
The AM is a traditional ferrit-rod 4 stage receiver as seen in most FM-AM tuners.
The final audio stage is a discrete two transistor traditional amplifier.
All transistors are early silicon Toshiba and still performing very good!
No IC's inside, all discrete traditional transistorized built up sections.
The tuner is selective and offers good stereo image and has a very well performing AFC.
The stereo decoder is very responsive and the channel separation and noise figure are good.
A Muting switch and a stereo/mono switch is available. The scale is in blue colour and very modern again today.
The signal meter is small but well performing. The dial pointer is not actively illuminated by a bulb.
Tuning and finding a station is simple and effective, the tuner locks well into the station received and does not drift.

 

User Manual:

Click here to download the usermanual in PDF format

 

Front view ^

 

The amplifier that can go with the tuner. v

 

 

Schematic:

The schematic diagram of this tuner is very common, like other brands have issued tuners with similar schematic diagram,
the Luxman WL700 is an example and some National Panasonic (Technics) tuners are very similar.
 

Click here to download the schematic diagram in PDF format  (construction)

 

Tuner board not updated ^
 

Tuner board updated ^

 

Modifications:

Updating this tuner is very rewarding: you get a Hi-Quality HiFi FM tuner that will last for many years.
The stereo lamp and the S-meter lamp can be exchanged by leds. The 8V tube lamps can also be exchanged
by ledlamps, although modern 8V tube lamps are longer lasting than before, see picture.

Most Towa electrolytic capacitors are out of specs and should be replaced all over the tuner.
Updating the power supply section is a must as this section is not up to modern standards anymore.
Use modern value capacitors in the power supply and check grounding, it will improve performance on FM.
Some kind of PS noise suppression is also a good addition.

The very bad DIN socket is obsolete and to be removed: two gold plated Cinch sockets I have installed.
The antenna connection is by screw and offers 75 and the old 300 Ohms balanced connection. AM is also present.
The ferrit rod AM antenna is on the back and can be pulled for better reception.

Set the power transformer to 240 V line voltage when you are in Europe, the used power transformer
will break down as its not designed for Europe's todays detrimental 230+ Voltage in the standard selected 220V position.

The bottom view with the discrete separate audio final amp ^

 

                           

Ledlamps can replace the 8 Volt tube lamps. Be aware of the fact that the led lamps shine to only one side: approx. 180°  ^

 

Sound:

The sound is very good after the upgrade, up to modern standards.
Set the deėmphasis-compensation to 75 µS in USA and 50 µS in Europe.
In most models there is, but this specific model there is no deėmphasis-switch, so I had to exchange some parts.
If you fail to set the deėmphasis-switch to the right position of your local standard, the tuner can sound strange.
This tuner will perform up to some Luxman tuners as the WL700 and like the more recent T33, T100, T111, T1.
This vintage FM - AM tuner outperforms many cheap modern "digital" RDS tuners and also DAB+ radios!

 

wooden case ^

Rear view: The DIN socket version for the German and EU markets, the very bad standard DIN socket is worn-out
and obsolete it must be replaced or exchanged by cinch:  2 Cinch sockets should be installed as below.
This tuner is also issued with standard cinch connectors for USA, UK and Japan markets.

 

The new cinch sockets ^

 

This tuner was also sold as PrinzSound T2200. V

As you can see on the above picture the output terminals of the PrinzSound UK model tuner is standard with cinch sockets.

 

 

The Vintage Luxman Website: