Hitachi FT-920 (1977, $300) search eBay
Our panelist Ray reports: "RFM has obtained an FT-920 to check out and play with... yes, and modify. The first look under the hood of the stock unit found 4 FM gangs and 3 AM gangs. The single-bandwidth FM IF string contains 3 ceramic filters: a 280 out of the mixer, then an HA1211 IC amp followed by 2 more 280s, and then into the HA1137 detector IC. There's a single transistor gain stage between the detector and the HA1156W MPX IC but no low-pass filtering nor notches. The output of the MPX feeds another transistor gain stage, pilot notches and a discreet output amp. Nothing fancy, just good, solid design using the components of the day. Measured de-emphasis time constant was 69.9 µS and frequency response was -0.55 dB to +0.35 dB from 40 Hz to 12 kHz. It was down 0.95 dB at 15 kHz and 2.3 dB at 20 Hz... not bad. Having paid $24.50 for it, RFM finds this tuner to be fine sparrow feed and, with its fully removable bottom panel, it will be easy to upgrade." And indeed, with a couple dozen new caps and a Bill Ammons Filter Adder PCB installed, this particular FT-920 now sits proudly under our panelist Eric's matching HA-610 amp (thanks Ray!). Our contributor Thrassyvoulos adds, "Sonically, the FT-920 is a true bargain, but compared to the FT-5500 MKII it clearly loses in the realms of sensitivity and selectivity, though it's not bad." The FT-920 can sell for anywhere from $24-75 on eBay, with a high of $100 in 12/08.

Hitachi FT-3500 (1981, $170) search eBay
The FT-3500 is a basic slimline FM/AM tuner with "vector tuning system," whatever that means. We wouldn't necessarily go crazy looking for one but our contributor Chris C. seems to like his: "I have a little FT-3500 as my current office tuner. It has 3 gangs on FM, 2 on AM. There are two chips visible: AN217P, which appears to be the AM RF-IF chip, and an HA 12412, which is the FM IF amp/detector/meter amp/etc. chip. Hitachi makes its data sheet available for that (thank you, Hitachi). But I didn't see an IC for the MPX. Discrete components in the Hitachi tuners? This little low-end tuner seems surprisingly sensitive in my poor-signal office environment. It does at least as well as its predecessors, the Sansui TU-317 and an old H-K 430 receiver. It sounds pretty good, too, although it's not a critical listening setup here." The FT-3500 should be findable for $20 or less on eBay.

Hitachi FT-4400 (1980, $250) search eBay
The FT-4400 was third from the top of Hitachi's line, below the FT-8000 and FT-5000. According to our panelist Bob, "It has 4 gangs and .08% distortion, 50 dB separation, so not bottom-of-the-line performance. The audio specs are different from the FT-8000 and FT-5000, which oddly were both slightly worse in distortion. Perhaps they had more narrow single IF filters. The FT-4400 somewhat reminds one of the FT-8000 with the round tuning buttons. Worth checking out. No narrow IF mode, though, so may not be a great unit for weak or adjacent signals." The FT-4400 usually sells for $20-30 on eBay, with lows of $4 in 9/06 and $1.00 in 8/10.

Hitachi FT-5000 (1979, $300, photo) search eBay
Our panelist Ray offers this review: "The FT-5000 was an early fully digital tuner. Its service manual is dated September 1979. Its circuit features and ICs seem pretty typical of the midrange tuners from many manufacturers through the '80s. It has 4 varactor 'gangs' and 3 280 kHz IF filters, and a single dual-gate FET RF amp with AGC and PLL in the MPX section. One giveaway of its vintage is the use of three AA cells for memory backup. The FT-5000 uses the HA1196 for MPX and unbuffered audio out. The de-emphasis, via feedback, seems spot-on at 75 µS and the output is very clean, i.e., no visible pilot signals riding along. Some specs: IHF sensitivity 1.0 µV @ 75 ohm; THD .20% IHF, stereo; S/N ratio 73 dB mono and 68 dB stereo; alternate channel selectivity 70 dB IHF; capture ratio 1.0 dB; stereo separation 48 dB. Subjectively, it sounds quite good and has excellent quieting. One-on-one, it easily bests my similarly equipped HK TU615 in both RF and audio performance. BUT, it ain't no FT-5500MKII! I'd call the FT-5000 a good value at less than $40, IMHO." And as luck would have it, the FT-5000 can indeed be found for $20-30 on eBay.

Hitachi FT-5500 MKII (1984, $350, photo, different face, service manual, Hi-Fi News review, Hi-Fi Answers review, New Hi-Fi Sound review) search eBay
Somewhat scarce in the U.S., our panelist Ray's favorite is a solidly built, low-profile, black digital tuner with some unusual and nice features. In the mid-1980s, the FT-5500 MKII was highly regarded by the European audio press, but received little recognition in the U.S. Its front end consists of 5 varactors (equivalent to 5 gangs) for FM, in a sealed module that isn't represented in detail on the schematic, and 2 for AM. The FT-5500 MKII has a wide/narrow selector that changes the bandwidth for both FM and AM. The IF section in Wide mode has 2 ceramic filters around a group delay circuit and 2 gain stages. In Narrow mode, the group delay circuit is bypassed by 2 more ceramic filters, for a total of 4 filters in Narrow. [More on the filters below.] The FT-5500 MKII's "FCCS" (Field Condition Computer System) appears to be similar to Onkyo's "APR" system. When the FCCS push-button is selected, the tuner auto-scans 2.5 MHz up and down the band from the tuned frequency to assess the potential interference and signal strength, and then selects the optimum RF and IF settings. These can be manually overridden, but the computer seems to always get it right. Stations' FCCS settings can also be stored in each of the 16 memory preset settings. One (not uncommon) shortcoming is that the muting switch and stereo/mono are on the same button, which prevents one from choosing to listen in stereo to stations with signal strength below the muting threshold. The digital signal-strength indicator has exceptional range, 10 to 80 dB microvolt, which equates to 21 to 91 dBf (add eleven to the display). The FT-5500 MKII also has an auto quieting control (a blend circuit) and recording calibration tone button.

Ray found that his stock sample, in a side-by-side comparison to a stock Kenwood KT-7550, was better at quieting weak signals and sounded much better. The FT-5500 MKII also outperformed the KT-7550 on AM. Ray says that he has had several other tuners, including a Pioneer TX-9800, and prefers the Hitachi overall. Ray did some mods to his FT-5500 MKII as can be seen here. He changed where the the de-emphasis is done. Stock, it was in the feedback loop of the op-amp (built into the MPX chip). He added a new op-amp output stage, and added the RC components to implement the de-emphasis in a passive filter. See the Modified Tuner Report for our panelist Jim's reviews of Ray's two mod attempts, and see Ray's report on a shootout between his modded FT-5500 MKII and a stock Hitachi FT-007 in the above writeup for the latter tuner. Ray's comparison of his FT-5500 MKII to a Carver TX-11b can be found in the Carver writeup, and Ray and our panelist JohnC briefly compare their respective modded 5500s to the Sony ST-J75 and Denon TU-660 in our writeup of the latter tuner. Read our panelist Bob's impressions of Ray's tuner, post-mods, in our FMtuners group.

Our panelist Eric found that Ray's FT-5500 MKII had excellent selectivity in Narrow mode, with good quieting on weak stations adjacent to stronger locals. Our contributors Tim and Ann chime in: "We've been putting our recently acquired FT-5500 MKII through its paces and Ray is on to something, IOHO. It's a damn fine tuner. It's closer to having that McIntosh 'house' sound than any non-McIntosh tuner we've listened to here. It does not have as much 3-D depth as some tuners we've listened to, but it does have a very, very good midrange, the bass is phenomenal, and the highs are good as well. And the built-in digital signal strength meter calibrated in dBs is just as accurate, we've found, as using a scope to help aim our antenna, and it's a whole lot better than trying to use a standard signal strength meter like so many tuners use. It is the most sensitive tuner and best DXer we've tried here." And after an extensive listening test involving their stock FT-5500 MKII, Ray's modded one, and a McIntosh MR 74, Tim says he "wouldn't kick the Hitachi out of bed for eating crackers!"

Our contributor Mike M. analyzed the mysterious Murata SFD10.7A filter used in the FT-5500 MKII [thanks to our contributor Ed K. for the catalog clip]: "The SFD10.7A filter is a discriminator for use with the FM detector, for this part the CA3089A quadrature detector. It is used as the second IF filter in the Wide mode or the fourth IF filter in Narrow mode. The Hitachi engineers appear to have put a lot of thought into obtaining the flattest G.D.T. with this tuner in both circuit design and filter selection. For Wide, they strung together a SFE10.7ML filter (chosen for flat GDT, 280 kHz), a GDT compensation circuit to 'reverse' the GDT curve of the first filter, described in the service manual, and the above-mentioned SFD10.7A discriminator which acts like a very wide filter with extremely flat GDT. For Narrow (switched in place of the GDT compensation circuit), they used a SFE10.7MZa filter (blue body, flat GDT, low distortion, 180 kHz) and a SFE10.7MS 3 filter (tan body, 180 kHz). The clever thing about the combination of filters in the narrow circuit is that the shapes of the GDT delay curves offset each other. The MS filter curves upward and the MZ curves downward over frequency, which results in a flattening effect of GDT rather than the reverse. Strange usage of a discriminator as an IF filter, or perhaps inspired. Can't argue with the tuner's distortion performance without having to resort to fancy distortion cancellation circuitry."

But wait, here's more from Mike: "Changing filters in the Hitachi FT-5500MkII this month really showed me how important the filter GDT curves are to tuner THD. The tuner has 4 IF filters and each of them is a different series, including the last which I believe it a discriminator, not a filter. Even changing the first filter from a type ML to MX produced a large reduction in distortion in Wide (from 0.048% to 0.027%) with only about a dB loss in Mono Usable Sensitivity. At 50 dB quieting sensitivity levels, there was no change in performance."

The FT-5500 MKII usually sells for $70-125 on eBay, while the more common FT-5500 (1981, $350, photo, usually just $15-50 on eBay, is believed to be somewhat similar. Ray says, "The FT-5500 was the ground-breaker with the initial release of the FCCS technology. The MKII has different pilot tone cancellation to reduce HF audio garbage. Also, the MKII's memory presets include the FCCS RF and IF settings, and the front end was revised to include use of GaAs FETs. The MKII has improved pilot filtering and is more resistant to out-of-band RF noise."