I just so happen to have a mild interest in older stereo equipment.  I was just wading through Craigslist in my area and found a nice old Sanyo KCX-2400K for 75 bucks I'm planning on buying, already been emailing with the seller.  It's said to have had all its potentiometers gone through and the dial lamps replaced, and "sounds great", which is a start. 

I've wanted a vintage tuner/amplifier for many years now, so here is a start.  Ideally I'm also looking for a Sansui 2000-A but who knows if I'll find one.  Someday I really hope to find a vacuum tube receiver that's new enough to also have FM, in stereo.  I also saw on Craigslist there's a record store around here, I'll be looking for tuners there as well.

My godparents also have a more or less complete JCV system from about 1978 that they don't use that needs some work I think, I'd like to eventually become its new owner.  I did mess with the tuner a few years ago just once on FM and as I recall it was pretty quiet, had pretty scratchy controls, and only picked up a few extremely strong/local stations, in an area with just short of 50 FM stations.  Older tuners generally seem to have better reception anyway, on comparable antennas.  Where I presently live (Fairbanks, AK), and not far from the transmitters for many of the FM stations here), the dial is almost overloaded with interference and off-channel "garbage" from only about 20 FMs.  (which is a relatively empty FM dial compared to many places, though I lived in an area for about 7 years with all of TWO FM signals, and one of them scratchy and weak and distant at that!

On a side note, who else has been somewhere where the FM dial is completely BLANK?  Spent a lot of time in places like that myself.  First time you experience it, it's definitely kind of funny and weird, particularly on analog-tuned radios. 

I share your interest of vintage electronics. I also like to learn about and try to repair some electronics.

I have had a Fisher 170 that i have had for quite a few years and I really like that receiver. It has a fairly sensitive tuner which I think is important unless you live in an area with a variety of stations very close by. That particular receiver isn't overly powerful, I think is about 14w/channel @ 8ohms, but with an efficient set of speakers you don't need alot of power.

One thing about the older gear is that the more powerful amps tend to bring alot more money than smaller ones. I looked into commercial stuff and got a AB precedent 400 when I felt the need for more power, it's about 100w/channel @ 8ohms probably made in the 90's and it's all discrete components. The commercial stuff still had good build quality and power can be had pretty cheap. I think by the mid to late 70's some of the consumer gear started being built cheaper.

I hope you can get one of the receivers your looking at. I'm sure you'll really enjoy whatever you find.

Hi Bert!

I picked up that Sanyo JCX-2400K I was looking at on my local Craigslist. Love it, sounds great.  You can really tell how the radio stations here process their audio, one active rock station I frequently listen to has great, full sound but a local independent, non-commercial college station (actually the same university I'm going to) really has not enough bass and too much treble IMHO.  It's nice to be able to adjust the controls for optimum listening experiences on a given station.

Radio (at least FM) in my area  is unique in that it's sort of a geographically isolated area (Fairbanks, AK).  While there are 20 FM stations audible from my location, there's really nothing outside of that that's audible here.  So although I have a lot of excellent local stations with good variety and good programming and music and formats I very much like, there's none of those distant, rim-shot stations to try to get here.  (Although I've lived in other places where that was the case; with lots of good local stations plus rim shots the FM dial was all but full. 

Despite having "only" about 20 FM signals in my area, I live near the transmitters for most of them, so on cheap clock radios, etc. the dial "overloads" with "garbage" and it's really hard to tune in some stations, there's "garbage" filling the space between stations.

Now, has anyone else here ever experienced a COMPLETELY BLANK FM dial, on an analog-tuned radio?  (So it's not just a few stations to week to stop the seek on a car radio, for instance).  Or who else has driven, say, at least half an hour with the radio just on seek the whole time, picking up nothing?

Yeah, I have a cheep clock radio I use for my alarm, and it barely picke up good station, Just annoying country. I have a nice ye olde Emerson turntable/radio from the 70s, but it's a bit hard to pick up distant stations which are otherwise picked up well by the cars. It needs a loop antenna, and prolly new electrolytic caps, since tuning seems to be off a little bit.

Could be.  Believe it or not, the local Fred Meyer doesn't sell flatware FM dipoles anymore!

Zero interest in old stereo equipment. I much prefer new modern stuff..the more digital, the better.

I have been places with very few stations, but never totally blank

I've been many places with an utterly blank FM dial. 

Must be pretty weird to get nothing but static on all stations?

Probably nowhere like that in CO...unless you when somewhere where the signals are blocked...you really can't get *that* far from civilization here.

I'm surprised I never replied to this thread. Anyway, I love old stereo equipment! I have a few vintage amps and receivers (the oldest being a Fisher 210-T from around 1970), a R2R tape player, a turntable (plus a couple others I'm supposed to be fixing for a friend), an 8-track player, several pairs of speakers, a kit-built tube amp, and a few other things. I have a decent vinyl collection too but I don't listen to it very often...most of my listening is done using Spotify Premium. Believe it or not, I think that older stereo equipment often sounds better playing music than modern surround-sound systems, even when that music is being streamed over the Internet.

It seems I'm getting somewhat old: "Stereo" equipment I consider as rather modern stuff. :-)
But I know, "vintage" is usually defined as "older than 30 years" and that means the Stereo was few decades already there...

I have a Dual 621 turntable NOS with everything original, great sounding turntable now I only need to get a tube amp. I sometimes use my B&O BeoPlay H6 for audio listening. I can't exactly recall the name of my Bose speakers used to the amplifier but they put out a great smooth sound.

an 8-track player,

Nice.
Somewhere I've got an old 8-track player/recorder too.
Doesn't work right though, I think I determined it needs a belt or something.

Nick, oddly enough, even using Pandora as an audio source for that Sanyo JCX2400K it sounds way better!
And yes, I've been many places with NO FM coverage whatsoever, and not just so weak that stations won't stop the seek on a digitally tuned radio; I'm talking nothing on analog tuned radios!