well, all it takes for me is one high-quality station w/programming i like, to make fm my preferred source for >75% of my listening. and no, i am not talking about yust background music. a quality tuna easily competes w/my digital & winyl sources on a revealing system.
and, no, you don't need to drop $2500 on something like the modded sansui tu-x1 that i yust seem to have sold.

$500 or less (sometimes way less, if you're a prudent shopper, &/or can weild a soldering iron & read schematic), will get you so close to something like a tu-x1 that you won't sweat the differences - even in direct a-b comparison. in fact, one tuna i own - a stock jvx fx1100bk - i picked up for $10 on a local craigslist, & i could live w/it happily ever after. and, mods & alignment will only make it better. it's easily the equal of two tandberg 3001a's i owned. & i would put it up against any m-d tuna. other reasonably priced suspects include hitachi ft8000, mitsubishi da-f20, sherwood s3000, series lll & up, nikko gamma 1, sansui tu517/717/719, harman kardon citation 14/15/18, sony st-a6b, to name a few off the top of my head...
happy listening & holly hippodaze,
doug s.