ebay item: 1359359609

I've been looking for a 2nd tuner on eBay, but the prices have become much too expensive. I continue to be reminded why SB's purchase of empeg wasn't very advantageous to the community, despite all of the reassurances.

Looks like that bad boy is going to go over $700. It is at $685 now with over 8 hours left! I paid nearly $400 for my tuner, and I thought I was nuts!

Last word is that Patrick's tuner kits are only six weeks out for the first batch...

everybody better start selling their tuner's then.

Well, all I can say is "More fool the idiot who buys it" since in about five weeks, Patrick's improved version with more options and improved software support, complete with user-selectable tuner unit is going to ba available at less than one sixth of the price.

What's the point?

And I just had mine installed last week! I think I listened to it for about 5 minutes so far and I thought I would miss having a radio, ha. Maybe I should sell mine.

Hmm sounds like I need to sell my tuners, I don't even use them that much.

Sean

I also paid four hundred for my tuner just so I can hear the trafic report in the morning for ten min.Cant wait to get one for my other empeg.

Ok, that's that, mine's going up. Anyone want to toss me $700 for it right now?

(No, I didn't think so)

I bought 2 tuners on ebay 5 months ago and paid $255 and $285, and I was NOT happy. I feel much better now!

As was noted before, it's ashame they didnt sell the tuners one per person. But thats water under the bridge. The whole point of the empeg was not to need the radio, because radio can beat personal programming.

The radio is great however if you still want to listen to news, or your need AM for specific reasons. It does come in handy.

note: I do not have a tuner. I probably will buy the kit. I keep a portable handheld am radio (battery operated)

Hmm... It seems as though a few members here have decided to profit from the current prices being commanded.. LOL.

can't really blame them
clearly some people would prefer the orignal tuner to Patrick's offering.

I don't blame them, I just find it highly amusing. I'm sure that there's more than a few empeg owners that aren't aware of the impending kit, and even more that wouldn't want to assemble it.

I'm a newbee, can someone fill me in on this tuner?

The empeg does not have a radio tuner built in. There was an add-on option that was offered later. It retailed for about $100, IIRC. Not too long after, the empeg price drops started kicking in, and, all of a sudden, the empeg user base exploded. Many of these new owners wanted tuners, but apparently the run of tuners was not ordered with this increased demand in mind. By the time the tuners ran out, SonicBlue had EOL'd the empeg, and it looked as if there would never be any more tuners, so people started selling them on eBay and prices kept on going up. Some people are making a tidy profit on their tuners. However, it also looks as if there were a number of speculators that purchased large quantities of tuners expecting this to happen, and that was considered not a nice thing to do, as it may have deprived many (more?) legitimate consumers from getting theirs at a reasonable price and being forced to pay through the nose for a tuner, do without one, or work around it in some way.

In recent months, Patrick, one of the designers of the empeg, has designed a new kit so that there will be more tuners available (see his large thread in this forum), and while they will require some assembly (read ``soldering''), and they won't be the original ones, he claims they will have some additional features. They are not yet for sale, and price has not apparently been decided, but it looks like they'll be in the $150 area, IIRC.

So that's the history of empeg tuners. Any questions?

Thansks for the info! Couple of more questions. First, does the tuner have presets and if so, how many? Second, how good (sensitive) will this tuner be?

First, does the tuner have presets and if so, how many?

Three banks of ten presets each. They can be given an ASCII name with the remote, and can be quick-accessed via the number keys on the remote, or selected from the front panel. You can freely mix AM and FM presets together in the same bank, it makes no distinction between the two.

Some have discussed the idea of making it "preset-less". In other words, dump the whole concept of numbered presets and simply make a heirarchical tree of radio stations, in the same way that it handles playlists. I don't think they're planning on actually doing this, but it's an interesting idea.

Second, how good (sensitive) will this tuner be?

I've found it to be comparable to most other aftermarket radios. It's pretty good, and pulls in certain weak stations better than my previous CD player did.

Provided you wire the antenna properly, that is. For instance, VWs and Audis need a special aftermarket adapter to be able to supply power to the antenna amplifier. And some cars have diversity antennas, so you have to choose one of them and wire only that one to the empeg tuner.

Thanks for the info!