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Reviews For: Dentron MT-3000

Category: Antenna Tuners/Matching Networks

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Review Summary For : Dentron MT-3000
Reviews: 34MSRP: 279.95
Description:
Dentron MT-3000
Product is not in production
More Info: https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/dentron-mt3000-a-butto
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00344.7
WC3O Rating: 2011-02-09
The best Time Owned: more than 12 months.
A little rough on the no-coders there Ken, don’t ya think? hihi

Yep, this is the best tuner I have ever seen. Ken left out a couple wonderful details. Silver connectors in the back. Silver switch contacts. That is the sign of a high quality RF product. I actually met Denny Hadd (The Den in Dentron) at AES in Cleveland a couple years ago. I felt like I met a rock star! hi

I told the folks at Palstar at Dayton that they should make a stepped inductor tuner and they looked at me like my hair was green. You can take your roller inductor tuners and run around the block with them. A stepped inductor is sooooo much faster and easier to tune. So Palstar, make a stepped inductor tuner, and no, my hair is not green.

So the MT-3000 has all the best stuff and it will tune a wet noodle to boot. If you see one and buy it, you will not be sorry. It is the best tuner ever made. And that is that.

Best 73 DE WC3O
Bob
AD6KA Rating: 2011-02-08
Can't Go Wrong With This One Time Owned: more than 12 months.
The Dentron MT3000A is a TRUE high power, superbly built tuners. Just open one up and take a look. All steel chassis & enclosure construction, double bottom steel chassis. HUGE capacitors. Internal RF hookups are are 5/32" solid aluminum RODS, not cheesey stranded wires. Wafer switches are massive. You can tell THAT just by operating them. Now take the cover off and look inside! I suspect people who have had problems with theirs have gotten units that have been messed with, or they don't know how to properly operate a tuner. One poster said that the meters on his were not very accurate. Really? Did you try ADJUSTING the FWD & RFL power on the RF sense Board, Einstein? Two trimmer resistors too much for ya?

The only thing I would change on this tuner is to have ONE more "Coax Through" setting. There's only the one, on COAX 1. I might Mod that though, adding it to Coax 2 or 3. Hell, you could take out the 200w Dummy Load and run that line to an added SO-239 but it would **ONLY be a through setting***, no choice to Tune, but you'd have a 4th coax input for an already resonant antenna, though losing the dummy Load (which I don't use in the tuner anyway!

The damn things is indestructable. So in SOME units the meter bush buttons wore out. The units
are 30+ years old! Stop whining, look at the schematic, and replace them. (yeah you will have to find another brand and make of switch, BOO HOO. Be a HAM and not another NO CODE Appliance Operator!
W1MBB Rating: 2010-09-29
Best tuner ever!!! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
If this was built today it would cost $1000+

Overbuilt with velvety smooth load and tune, meters with great ballistics, 3 coax, random wire, balanced line, internal dummy load. Will handle 2KW.

And this will tune just about anything.

Excellent item. Too bad Dentron isn't around any more. This is an elite class with a few legendary tuners like Johnson.

Worth about $350.

W5LZ Rating: 2010-06-25
Very nice Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I'm on my second MT-3000(A). The first one bit the dust after something like 5 - 7 years (destroyed the wafer switch (one stage of it). They do have limits. If the antenna is somewhere close to 'reasonable' it will tune anything you can hook to it in my experience. Even a few antennas that weren't all that reasonable. The bush-button switches are easy to wear out. Both tuners I've had have had that problem. Considering that both tuners are older than a lot of hams, I figure that's sort of to be expected. All-in-all, I think it's a very nicely made and a well performing tuner. I've used a lot of different tuners, the Dentron is the one that I've kept.
Paul
W6AG Rating: 2010-06-24
Top Notch!! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I bought this MT3000A used, and after being a licensed ham for 72 years, I think this the best tuner I ever had. It handles all bands with my "Center Fed Zepp" 240' long on about any frequency I throw at it. One thing though: I have had NO trouble with the meter switches, but unfortunately, the reflected power metering does not work at all, and I hope someone can tell me how to fix it??
VR2XMQ Rating: 2010-05-21
Built like a tank! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is an old tuner, but built like a proverbial brick out house. It's heavy and mine suffered a bit in transit getting shipped over, one of the caps came loose, some of the inductor straps broke loose as well as some other connections. But two days on the bench and with resoldering it was back in order.

Just wished the guy who sold it to me would think about how to pack heavy gear for international posting! Some people have no idea about packing.

OK it does not sport a roller inductor and has coils and taps, but it does the job very nicely and tunes my antennas quickly. What's more it is a beautiful looking tuner.

Steve, VR2XMQ
WY4J Rating: 2007-11-23
Indestructible Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have owned this tuner since 1978 and is a tank. It will tune everything is faced with. Mine is in pristine shape even down to the watt meter switches everyone complaints about. After not using it for 20 years all I had to do was open it up and clean the antenna and inductance selector contacts with a pencil eraser and it was good as new.

If you find one in good shape, grab it and it will be last last tuner you will ever need.
WW3QB Rating: 2007-04-15
A Tank Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I got mine in 1978. With an amp, no sign of too much heat inside when I opened it up. When it was built, 160 meters was very limited with many power restrictions, and there were no amps for 160. So Dentron may have not done much testing of it on 160. But on the rest of the bands it matches anything. Consider it for 80-10 meters. The buttons for the watt meter still work, but will occasionally pop out. The rest of it is built like a tank.
5R8GQ Rating: 2006-12-04
Truly Serious Tuner Time Owned: more than 12 months.
So many tuners on the market today are just plain junk, and I don't mean only MFJ.
I have had this tuner for 7 years and it has never given me a speck of trouble. It is built like a military piece of gear. Unlike MFJ's phoney "True Legal Limit Tuners" (Most of which will not handle 1.0 kw on RTTY or 1.5 kw SSB on 160m), this tuner handles it all. I bought it used from Burghardt. I have never had any problems with the wattmeter buttons or power meters as some have. I have used it to tune verticals, loops, dipoles,(coax and twin lead fed) and long wires. I am a RTTY contester using high power, so I have really poured lots of RF through this tuner for long periods of time. It has traveled with me literally around the world. It has been dropped, sat on, bounced around the trunk of a car. I wouldn't use any other tuner.
If you see one for sale, JUST GET IT, because folks who have them rarely sell them.
W2PA Rating: 2006-09-06
Solid at high power Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This tuner is very solidly built. I routinely use it on all bands, 160 through 10m, and almost always find a match. It handles 1500W without complaining a bit - not a sound. The built in dummy load is convenient too (at lower power, of course). The only reason I did not rate it a '5' is that the wattmeter selector switch buttons (with the green indicator) tend to come off easily and the indicator stops working. This doesn't affect operation of the meter but it's annoying.