The empeg does not have a radio tuner built in. There was an add-on option that was offered later. It retailed for about $100, IIRC. Not too long after, the empeg price drops started kicking in, and, all of a sudden, the empeg user base exploded. Many of these new owners wanted tuners, but apparently the run of tuners was not ordered with this increased demand in mind. By the time the tuners ran out, SonicBlue had EOL'd the empeg, and it looked as if there would never be any more tuners, so people started selling them on eBay and prices kept on going up. Some people are making a tidy profit on their tuners. However, it also looks as if there were a number of speculators that purchased large quantities of tuners expecting this to happen, and that was considered not a nice thing to do, as it may have deprived many (more?) legitimate consumers from getting theirs at a reasonable price and being forced to pay through the nose for a tuner, do without one, or work around it in some way.

In recent months, Patrick, one of the designers of the empeg, has designed a new kit so that there will be more tuners available (see his large thread in this forum), and while they will require some assembly (read ``soldering''), and they won't be the original ones, he claims they will have some additional features. They are not yet for sale, and price has not apparently been decided, but it looks like they'll be in the $150 area, IIRC.

So that's the history of empeg tuners. Any questions?