Blaupunkt FM reception driving me nuts!

[donbryce]

I bought a Blaupunkt Denver CD player on EBay about a year ago. It looks great in the dash of my '85 30SE, which is 90% of why I got it. My old 450SE had a Blau cassette, and the tuner in it was excellent, so I figured...wrong, big time! This piece of junk has an intermitent squelch-like sound (like you get on CB radio) and a lot of sibbilant (sssssss) interference on FM. It does vary with the driving location, but happens on all stations, all FM bands, and no amount of fiddling with the tuning gets rid of it.

I have tried adding an antenna booster (some help, but it's still there), changing the antenna to the original Hirschmann (new mast, still no change), and looked for a screw to adjust the 'trim' (there is none).

Can anyone offer a theory on what is wrong, other than the unit's tuner must be bad? I love the looks of this thing, it plays CD's flawlessly, but all I listen to 99% of the time is 3 FM stations. I'm seriously considering replacing it, but now I'm gun-shy of anything that isn't available locally (Pioneer, Kenwood, etc.) or designed for the North American market. I noticed a post from someone who is having trouble with AM reception with his Becker Audio 10. We're talking high $$ stuff that won't tune in what a $99.00 Koss can do. Is there something fundamentally different about European AM/FM vs N. American?