Takman

You want a radio tuner with your portable MD recorder? The G755 is your only option. Should be within your budget, £170 or so, I think.

As handy as an EQ is, it's not a substitute for an excellent balanced output to begin with. I was worried the lack of adjustability on my DS8 would be a problem with my bassy earbuds as I would normally tweak the trebles on my R900. Fortunately, the DS8's default sound is superb so I didn't need to adjust anything. I agree about surround settings and other effects - I can happily do without them.

The best place to buy MD for cheap is in obviously Asia (Japan, Korea, HK, etc) and from the smaller stores. Importing a unit can also work out quite cheap, more so than buying from the US depending on which model you want. You can get very good deals in the UK, you just need to know where to look. I don't know about Europe but I believe the prices could be better than Canada as you'll need to add the price of a voltage converter in.

Max volume is gonna hurt your ears - far better to invest in the aforementioned canal buds as they will isolate better and reduce the need to crank the volume up as less sound is leaking out or creeping in. The VX100s are a particularly sensitive pair of earbuds and I do not need to have the volume over half to achieve a good sound on a noisy train using my R900 with its rather weak headphone output.