Eico ST-96
Two tuners, one chassis, and a pair of tuning eyes that snap into an exclamation mark when you land on a station.
Overview
The ST-96 is an AM-FM stereo tuner, not a receiver. It puts out audio, not wattage, and expects an amplifier downstream. The interesting part is the layout. Eico mounted two completely independent tuners on one compact chassis, each with its own tuning dial, level control, and "eye-tronic" traveling tuning indicator. The indicators contract into an exclamation point at the exact center of each broadcast channel, so you tune by eye as much as by ear.
Eico's own literature sold the ST-96 as a kit-builder's tuner. The RF and IF sections for both bands came prewired and prealigned, and that was the reason it worked. Alignment is the part of tuner construction that humbles hobbyists, and Eico shipped those critical assemblies already done. The period press praised the construction manual. Audio (September 1961, p.64) noted the ST96 assembled more quickly than the ST40 amplifier kit the reviewer had built some months earlier, and singled out the clear pictorial views in the instructions. That same review called the tuner a surprisingly good performer for a very modestly priced unit. It measured FM sensitivity at 3.6 µV by IHFM standards and reported that the tuner pulled in every station within a 30-mile radius with very little distortion.
On paper, Eico rated the FM section at 1.5 µV for 20 dB quieting, with response of 20-15,000 cps ±1 dB. The AM side is more thoughtful than most tuners of its day. It has a switched wide/narrow bandpass. "Wide" reaches to 9,000 cps for the best AM fidelity available, and "narrow" tightens to 4,500 cps for pulling weak or distant stations out of interference. A high-Q filter kills the 10 kc whistle that plagues AM reception near strong adjacent signals. A built-in ferrite loop antenna and a tuned RF stage round out the AM front end.
The FM tuner carries switched AFC, AGC, and a broadband ratio detector. Eico claimed the detector improved capture ratio and made tuning less fussy. There's a dedicated output for an external multiplex adaptor, because the ST-96 does not decode FM stereo on its own. That was normal for the era, and Eico had a specific partner in mind: the MX-99 adaptor. Eico's own copy for the MX-99 names the ST-96 among the tuners it was designed for, alongside the HFT-90 and HFT-92.
The MX-99 pairing wasn't entirely frictionless, according to period testing. High Fidelity (April 1962, p.57) measured the ST-96's composite output at 2.6 volts, a relatively high level for an adaptor to handle, and found the MX-99 ran just under the maximum level at which it functioned well. Drop the composite signal below 1.2 volts, the review noted, and the adaptor's 38 kc oscillator would drop out of sync. So the ST-96 hands the adaptor a hot signal, and the adaptor is fine with it right up until it isn't. The same review measured the MX-99's channel separation at 35 dB, typical across the audio spectrum.
Physically, the ST-96 is a compact component: 5½ by 15½ by 13½ inches, 24 pounds, drawing 45 watts from a 117-volt 60-cycle line. The tube complement splits between the two tuners. The FM side has an ECC85, three 6AU6s, a 6AL5, a 12AU7, and a DM70 indicator. The AM side has two 6BA6s, a 6BE6, a 12AU7, a crystal diode detector, and a second DM70. An EZ80 rectifier handles the power supply. Both DM70s double as tuning pointers. Panel controls are separate for AM and FM tuning and level, with an FM AFC switch, an AM bandwidth switch, and a selector that chooses FM, AM, FM & AM together, or FM stereo when an adaptor is connected.
The "FM & AM" position is the sleeper feature. The ST-96 can run both tuners simultaneously, which made simulcast AM-FM stereo broadcasts usable: one channel over FM, the other over AM, both tuned independently on the same chassis. Most tuners of the period didn't bother with this, and it's the reason the dual-tuning layout exists at all.
Pricing landed at $89.95 in kit form and $129.95 factory-wired, metal cover included. One Eico catalog page lists the ST96 kit at $84.95 and wired at $119.95. The discrepancy is likely a mid-run price adjustment, and collectors should treat the higher figures as the safer reference. The MX-99 adaptor added $39.95 as a kit or $64.95 wired if you wanted FM stereo.
Production years are uncertain. The period advertising and review coverage cluster around 1961-1963, and the ST-96 shows up in Eico catalogs alongside the ST40 and ST70 amplifiers and the MX-99 adaptor, so it belongs to that generation of Eico component tuners. Buyers should expect to confirm the exact revision from the serial number and manual in hand.
On a used example, watch the capacitors. Any proper restoration replaces the electrolytic, paper, film, and oil types, because decades of degradation bring hum and noise along with them. The DM70 tuning indicators are the other weak point. They're the signature feature, and a dim or dead eye changes the whole look of the front panel. Schematics and service documentation circulate, and the ST-96's construction was documented well enough that restoration is a reasonable project rather than a gamble.
It's a tuner for someone who wants the AM band treated seriously, who likes the ritual of two dials and two glowing indicators, and who doesn't mind adding an adaptor to get FM stereo. It isn't the most sensitive FM front end Eico ever built, and the press said so plainly. But Audio (September 1961, p.64) recommended it for modest budgets without hesitation, and that verdict has aged better than a lot of 1961 marketing copy.
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