Give your opinions or choices of your favorite 70's recievers, especialy those 60-80 pounders that Pioneer, Marantz, and Sansui made. I still have my 225 watt Sansui 9090. Does anyone remember the Nikko equipment?....Regards to all...Tom
J. Vigne
Unregistered guest
Posted on
Of course the Nikko brand is remembered, but not with any amount of admiration. They had a clunky feel and even clunkier looks. Sound was not that different from the average Japanese product at the time. The 70's covered many types of products, from the introduction of many Japanese brands to quad to the super recievers. I have no fond memories of the Japanese products from that time period, though the tuners were very good for the price. The sound from most of the Japanese products was like voting for a politician or buying insurance, you merely chose which was the lesser of bad choices. The early Yamaha products were the first Japanese products that changed the sound of Japanese recievers; the 1020 was quite good and flexible without geegaws. By the 2040 they had started to change their sound for the worse. My favorite reciever from that period was The Advent Reciever. 15 watts that could swing 40, a killer phono section and tuner and pre outs for upgrading. HK was making dual powered recievers, I still have a 730, that could do a 20Hz square wave without much trouble. The Tandberg 2075 was a phenomenal match for Double Advents with a tuner that was as good as it got in recievers. And always the McIntosh gear was the best available in a reciever, a MR 1700 is classic Mac. The 70's also finally bid farewell to old brands like Scott, Emerson and Heath.
The Marantz and Sherwood receivers from the early and mid 70's were classics. Wonderful sound and good build quality. J.Vigne is right about the Yamaha 1020 and I would also include my classic Yamaha 810 integrated amp. Very heavy, great build quality and a killer 2 channel amp with tons of power and a very smooth and dynamic sound that Yamaha has failed to duplicate since that time. I used that amp for over 15 years and still have it though do not use it. I will not get rid of it as it brings back too many great memories.
J. Vigne
Unregistered guest
Posted on
I'd have to disagree about the 70's Marantz. Once Superscope took over control of Marantz the product went steadily downhill. I know everybody and their dog had a 2270B but it was just another cheap reciever. As with most of the Marantz line at that time the actual parts used in the reciever didn't match the schematic as Superscope cleaned out parts bins. The 2225B actually had a lamp in place of a resistor as it got to the end of its run. Let's see: the life span of a lamp vs. the life span of a resistor. Gave techs a lot of easy repairs though. I just put a post on old dogs that laments the aquisition of Marantz and McIntosh by the same controlling interests. These two companies under the same roof are very strange bedfellows indeed. The Sherwoods were anachronistic even in the 70's. Decent sound but the look and the lack of power for the dollar left them on the shelf too often.
I still have a Nikko Alpha 220 power amplifier (retired the matching Beta 20 pre-amp) and I use it to drive my rear surrounds. It has a near-neutral sound; my h/k avr-325 sounds a tad bright in comparison.
I remember fondly the Marantz that I used to have, I forget which model, but it was a whole hi-fi set. A turntable, a dual tape deck, a 20 band graphic equalizer with red LEDs in the middle of each slider, a separate tuner with timer, and an integrated amp all in gold tone finish. sniff! I miss that ol' thing
The Marantz I am referring to is from the very early 70's and predates the 2270. All I remember was it was built like a tank, had a nice warm sound, beautiful blue display and the typical dial tuner. Wonderful receiver for it's day. The Sherwood was a roommates unit and it sounded great with his original Advents. I lost track of Marantz as did most after the mid to late 70's after their constant buyouts and it's a good thing they have made such a nice comeback. Let's hope their new holding company doesn't screw up a good thing.
