My first Tuner was a Creek T40 in the ninetees. It was a gem, albeit a bit fiddly to operate.The stations drifted sometimes, so I packed it away and forgot the little thing.

A couple of years later i rediscovered the sound quality of the T40 (but as well the little inconvieniences in operating).

Then I picked up a Creek T43 at ebay for about 100 Euros. The T43 has the same kind of presentation as the T40 but ist much more comfortible and sounds even better. It “packs” the stations and keeps them firmly, much more than its older brother. Connected via a DNM solid core rca-din interconnect into a Naim entry level pre-power amp (Nac 122x + Nap 150x) it shows its qualitys.

It gives a very good level of details, a bit less than the Revox B760 but is as enjoyable. The music comes as a whole “thing”, is spacious and “real” without artificialty.

You can listen to heavily compressed stations. Their lesser quality is clearly shown but not too much. The uncompressed radio stations are a lot better, with much more details, spaciousness and openness.

It suits even more upmarked systems without burning a hole in your pocket. If you are in for a fine little tuner, the Creek T43 is worth to look after.

Price and great sound quality.

Looks cheapand nasty, the money is spent where it counts, inside

I agree with everybody, it looks very aerage, small very light and cheap looking. Who cares, for the price and a lot more,everything is there. Great stereo imaging and tonality,detail .It sounds detailed but smooth. In fact an analogue sound, which is why we listen to th radio rather than CD

Similar Products Used:

Nad Sony and Pioneer units

easy to use, "locks in" stations nicely, very good sound

a lot of money to pay for a tuner if you aren't seriously interested in radio (but many tuners cost much more)

I bought the Creek T43 tuner (together with the Creek 4330 integrated amplifier) to replace the Nakamichi TA-2A receiver in my main system. The tuner section of the Nakamichi (and the amplifier section too) always performed reasonably well for the money, $500 retail in 1989 when I bought it, and had a good remote control, but manual operation of the tuner section was accomplished through a series of buttons and was very cumbersome. This Creek tuner has a large knob that can be turned to scroll through preset stations or all frequencies much like an analogue tuner, though it is digital. The station read-out is large and clear. Stations come in clearly with no background hiss even from powerful stations on nearby frequencies. The sound quality is first rate. That being said, this tuner retails for $695 and if you aren't a big fan of radio listening like me, you may not need to spend this much.

Similar Products Used:

Nakamichi TA-2A

clarity

for long i followed main street beliefs that the mr78 must be the best tuner available. well, its good, maybe very good. but what i experienced revealed that it is a question of system. in an average to good high-end system the mr78 sounds really great. when tested in my dnm/reson/rehdeko set up, that can be characterised as very open, forward and detailed (109.5 db/mw) the mr78 sounded slow and tired (not to mention the problems with the expensive fanfare 101), the creek T43 in contrast sounded up to the job, open, musical, agile and detailed, i rate it's performance close to cd sound.- which isn't great once you got used to 96hz or lp - the creek's performance was highly unexpected, and against my sense for aesthetics i do admit its a great product in a cheap looking box - who cares the sound is brilliant. will not give this one away. great tuner.

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varoius

As a follow up to my previous post, I found the problem with the warming up period. It was a dry solder joint on a resistor on the PCB. It's quite an old tuner so things like this do turn up. After re-soldering the joint in question the tuner sounds even better now, it's more focussed, more detailed and has even more weight and impact. Reception also seems slightly better.

Definitely the best tuner I've ever heard!

I'd give it 6 stars for value and overall, if there was an option!

When i first got the T43 Creek Tuner i have to admit i was preparing myself to write a negative review, based on the fact how could such a small, cheap looking Tuner sound good.

I set it up and was blown away! I remarked to myself, "wow, this little guy sounds great, how could that be?"

I have owned several decent tuners, MD Etude, Linn Kudos, and even the well reviewed Rotel RHT-10 all i might add are 2 to 3 times the price of the Creek, but the Creek stood toe to toe with them all and actually does a better job in the low end.

If your looking for a great sounding tuner and dont mind that is not up to par cosmetically as perhaps the Magnums and dont want to pay a fortune you owe it to yourself to listen to the Creek T43. You wont be dispointed.
By the way i am using a MD ST2 antenna mounted indoors.
also a great product! and i think ill add a MD signal sleuth for fun and see how that improves it.

Similar Products Used:

Rotel, Linn

dynamic, clear and very easy on the ear

noticeable mechanical hum coming from transformer, and 15 minute warm up needed

I'm actually using a T40, which was the previous design. Unlike the T43, it only comes with a tuning knob and no pre-sets.

This is an unbeleivably dynamic sounding tuner. In fact it manages to sound very relaxed and dynamic at the same time, which is a neat trick, and probably accounts for the non-existent listening fatigue. It has a very solid bass and beautifully clear melodic midrange. All the strands of the music seem to have a totally independant existance, so you never have to strain your ears to hear something.

Now for £75 GBP I'm really happy with this tuner, but it does have a noticable mechanical hum coming from the transformer. I found that slightly loosening the lid helped here, so I can put up with it. I might experiment with rubber washers under the transformer, but I can live with it for the time being. The only other problem is the warm up time. It takes at least 15/20 minutes to start sounding good and I suspect that being over 12 years old, the smoothing capacitor might just be on its way out. If I get the time I might replace it with an Elna Ros cap and see if it clears the problem up.

This tuner will definitely keep me going until I eventually consider going over to digital radio.

great soundstage and presence

colouration?

I actually picked up an older Creek 4030 tuner. A friend was interested in selling it from storage. He wanted me to try it before agreeing to the sale. I plugged it in and handed over a check in less than 1 minute. It's that good of a deal. I actually was haggling to pay him more. This isn't the world's best tuner, but the detail and soundstage are still incredible. Immensly better than the Magnum FT-11 I used to have. The bass and clarity are very good. This is a tuner you can listen to seriously or in the background (pop, jazz or classical). Something my old FT-11 wasn't good at (background). The FT-11 was clear sounding, but it had no presence or weight. The sound was very thin in comparison. I have no clue what the price should be for one of these. I hear that they were made in the 80's to early 90's. I got the tuner for a very reasonable price (if anyone knows the real price - I would love to know) and it's something worth keeping. I had sold my FT-11 not because it wasn't good, I just found that I could make a couple hundred off ebay : ) It took me one year to find another tuner I liked. For the money it's a five!

Similar Products Used:

Magnum FT-11, cheap built in from Yamaha receiver