Studer A726 Professional Tuner Monitor

[Steve]

I recently took delivery of a MINT and rare Studer A726 Professional tuner monitor. This is a fully balanced analogue tuner, circa 1983.

Purchased fully serviced and aligned from a Studer service centre in Switzerland.

This is unit is very special, not only voltage selectable to 240v, it has 12.5Khz microprocessor based manual stepping so station lock and gain can be finely adjusted. It has stereo and signal threshold filtering adjustment to facilitate station pickup and lockout. From what I have discovered, many local stations can be optimised off signal centre by as much as 5mhz and this tuner can take advantage of that.

It will only pickup with an external FM antenna and I am pleased it does not have an internal T antenna which would have had the potential to cause RF interference with other components.

So I had some time to rack this pristine looking piece this weekend. Even the front smokey tinted Perspex cover was near perfect after so many years.

I have terminated an RG6 75ohm quad shield Beldin 1189AS Coaxial cable with F-connector compression plugs and patched it to the same feed line to the outside aerial. Strong signal!

We were both blown away by the performance and capability of this 30 something year old pro-level analogue tuner and both of us agreed that it sounds better than any digital or internet radio we have listened to on this system. Indeed, it focus and soundstage really draws you in. It is as good as the best CD playback on our favourite local stations. What is also exciting, is its capacity to pickup and amplifiy weaker regional stations as if they were nearby. Yes, analogue still rules!

I did notice that on a couple of channels in the lower MHz range that there was a low frequency pulse below 30hz which was evident at very high volume levels. I'm thinking that it possibly may be some sort of reflection, 4G LTE or WiFi related interference. May have to experiment with some inline aerial filters.

I said to The Lady that this component is deserved of the Wireworld Platinum Eclipse XLRs. She concurred and said "well if you decide to repurpose those you will just have to replace them with yet another pair of Siltech Princess XLRs". So it looks like the WWPE will be re-purposed for this tuner!

Here is a photo of the Studer A726 racked directly above a McIntosh MC2301.

[mep]

That's a cool looking tuner. I'm glad you are enjoying it.