Trio / Kenwood KT-815 AM/FM Stereo Tuner

Second from top of Trio's 1979 range and one of the company's last "analogue" tuners before switching to "digital synthesizer" designs. The stylish Trio KT-815 (known as the Kenwood KT-815 outside the UK and Japan) was the next model down from the outstanding KT-917 (one of the best tuners ever made) and in my opinion is ever better looking than it's illustrious big brother. All the pictures are of a tuner sourced in Germany so it is a Kenwood rather than a Trio.

The KT-815 has excellent specs and has a 5 gang tuning capacitor. It also used Trio's "Pulse Count Detector" circuitry as in other high end Trio tuners from the mid to late 1970's. The KT-815 is capable of excellent RF performance but it's sound quality has been criticised for being "thin" and too dry. In my experience, it does sound quite good but it is best partnered with a warm, full-sounding amplifier/speaker combination. It's sound quality, however, does fall well short of the KT-917 but at the prices they currently sell for on eBay it is well worth considering as it is still a very good tuner.

It has servo lock tuning for drift-free RF performance. The servo lock circuit is linked to a touch-sensitive tuning knob which causes the servo-lock to kick-in once the tuning knob is released for hassle-free tuning - nice!