Fully Restored Draco (Sherwood) CPU 100 Audiophile Stereo FM Tuner "Worlds First Computer Controlled Tuner"

For sale is a fully restored Draco CPU-100 stereo FM audiophile tuner in nice overall condition for its vintage! This was a very important design when it was released - this tuner was one of the very first microprocessor designs that wasn't a basic calculator! It also originally cost a whopping $2000 in 1976! Sherwood released this Draco design under their name but there were also some Draco versions as well. This is the Draco version that was released first - functionally there is no difference. Sonically this is an incredible tuner - there was an incredible amount of effort put into every aspect of this tuner and it shows in the sound quality! It truly rivals tuners like the Marantz 10B and 20B as well as any other tuner we've heard...and we've heard them all!

Cosmetically the tuner is in nice overall shape - please study the pictures carefully! There are minimal marks on the face and it looks like there were maybe some wood sides at some point that we did not receive with the unit. A few of the LEDs below the numbers on the dial don't light up but otherwise all LEDs and displays light up nicely.

Electronically the entire tuner was first disassembled, cleaned thoroughly and then each board had all electrolytics and tantalums replaced throughout. Special attention was given to the power supply board to ensure that no heat issues arise from transistors being too close to the board. All power supply transistors were also upgraded and any other failure prone components replaced. Next the battery clip was removed and luckily in this unit there was zero battery corrosion damage. We left the backup battery off as we did not really like how the memory function was working anyways and wanted to prevent future damage.

Functionally the tuner itself is great - it aligned well and sounds/performs incredible in all aspects! The memory functions do seem to work as far as being able to program a station and it remembers the station - however we did not get too deep into learning how this section works as it seems to hang up when trying to program names/characters to your presets (a tedious task in itself with the interface). It does best as simply an analog tuner with a digital interface. Also we have found that if it ever does get hung up, a quick power cycle will bring it back to proper working order.

We will package and ship this so it arrives as it left here.