Dynaco FM-3A (1963)
Little is documented about the Dynaco FM-3A as a distinct model — the record is thin and, frankly, muddled. The FM-3A appears in the pages of HiFi-Stereo (February 1963, p.58) as one of five stereo FM tuners tested by Julian D. Hirsch and Gladden Houck Jr., grouped with the Heath AJW-41, Pilot 780, Scott 350B, and Fisher FM-100-B. That review is the firmest contemporary evidence of the model. Beyond that, the "FM-3A" name is hard to separate from Dynaco's far better-known FM-3 tuner, and much of what circulates is really FM-3 material.
What the period record does show is the FM-3's place in the Dynakit line: Dynaco's own advertising in HiFi-Stereo (October 1967, p.133) and High Fidelity (March 1967, p.31) listed the FM-3 tuner at $99.95 in kit form and $154.95 assembled, sold alongside the PAS-3X preamp and Stereo 120 amplifier as a matched combination. Whether the FM-3A carried the same price or represented a revision is not established in the sources at hand.
A caution for anyone researching this model: several catalog excerpts indexed under "FM-3A" are in fact Heathkit copy for the Heathkit FM-3A tuner kit ($25.95 with cabinet, 88–108 mc coverage, prealigned, edge-lighted slide-rule dial). Those describe a Heathkit product, not the Dynaco, and should not be applied here. The Dynaco FM-3A remains, for now, a model known mainly by its appearance in a single 1963 tuner comparison — an honest gap in the archive rather than a documented history.
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