Vintage receivers???

I had a Marantz 2270 that I bought new from Rabson's in NYC back in '76. Used it for about a year and sold it for $180. Wish I had kept it. Went to separates: AGI 511 pre and Son of Ampzilla. Diatone (Mitsubishi) DA-F10 tuner. I should have at least kept the 2270 for use as a tuner! 

Yeah, I agree, the best of the tuners, back in the day were hard to beat. I had a very nice Sansuii 5000X receiver if I remember right, that I too sold for separates. I went with a Sansuii BA-F1 amp.........that's in mothballs now and I see selling for around a grand on ebay sometimes, $600 new at the time. Picked up a Crown SL-1 preamp that I later sold for a Bryston .5B...........Still use the .5B as a phone preamp.

I love the look and feel of some of that vintage gear..........Digital stuff often has more bells and whistles, but I'm not much of a bells and whistle guy. A good two channel system has always been just fine for me.

 Consider also the Kenwood receivers from the 1970's. A friend of mine has a Kenwood receiver bought new in 1975. It has never needed service and still sounds great. 

The biggest problems with old Marantz receivers isn't the sound quality. It's the idiotic prices for the units and the time it takes to get work done on them. All that said, I discourage some models such as the 2270. That's a complicated receiver with complicated adjustments that are prone to drifting and it requires service every couple of years to keep it in spec. The mid and late 70's designs are less complicated. The 2230 is well regarded for it's tuner and phono section, often compared to the 2270, and it's simpler. 
Recapping them isn't hard. Some people make it more complicated than it is. It's not that hard. 

I have very fond memories of the mid70’s Sony STR 6065. Big, beefy, yet amazingly refined sound.

Astounding build quality—thick veneer over the chassis with a thick metal front panel. Beautifully damped witches and knobs, great little headphone output. A very conservative 65 WPC/8ohms. 

The only weak area the volume pot. Prone to collecting dirt and eventually crapping out. 

They're around...

kosst amogan

Agree on the prices.........many of the better vintage receivers sell for as much or MORE now than they did new. I guess what was good, still is, and people will pay for it...............I don't mind that part, but I'd hate to drop good $$$ on a 30-40-50 year old unit and have to dump a bunch more into repairs and rehab.................Might be less aggravation and less expensive to go with something more recent :(

I'll keep looking, might find a prize!!

I really like my Marantz 2252B, works and sounds great. My biggest gripe is the speaker cable connection to the rear of the classic receivers, back in the day when we only used zip cord that was fine but times and technology have changed. I hate the thought of shipping it to someone to convert the speaker cable hook up to five-way binding posts.

Here is a link to a guy in my area, I don't know him, but I know of him and has a reputation of doing excellent work. He completely rebuilds vintage gear and offers them for sale when completed. I have contacted him and he is going to rebuild my Marantz 1060 this fall. Also, check out his sold listings.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/leroy3054/m.html?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEFSXS%3AMESOI&_trksid=p2053788.m154...%C2%A0

If you can find a 70s vintage Sherwood, run, don't walk, to get it.

For my money, I’d opt for the integrated. Is there really anything on FM worth listening to these days? Try XM radio and you will likely never go back to FM. YMMV!

The prices over the last few years are most definitely not driven by the quality of sound you get from that old gear. It's an unusually long lived fad propelled primarily by millennials and hipsters raised on iTunes and earbuds who've never heard a decent stereo. I live right next door to a record shop that sells vintage gear. I've been shocked by the prices they ask for garbage that doesn't even have the right parts or working switches while they practically give away flawless higher end Adcom gear. It's insane. I saw them asking nearly a thousand dollars for a Marantz 250M that literally had a bag of spare parts sitting on top of it and the covers weren't even screwed on tight. It was gone in 2 weeks. 

tonykay

Read a few reviews on XM radio today.............almost every one said, good programming, terrible SQ.............If that's the case it doesn't seem like something I'd want to pay a subscription fee for . In all fairness, the reviews I found were at least two years old, so perhaps things are better. Seems that in the push to provide a high number of channels and appeal to the largest subscriber base, they've compressed the audio and quality sucks..............Just regurgitating what I read, no personal experience with it.............Being able to listen to my flavor of the day would be great, but if the sound is as bad as people claim.........well, my system is pretty decent. I can easily hear differences in CD recording quality, so bad radio would likely be a no-go for me...............thanks though :)

I did a complete overhaul of a Marantz 2270 that I bought a few years ago with a kit that had all the instructions and parts. I also bought new high quality filter caps for the power supply. It’s really not that hard to do over several evenings and, with a multimeter, one can easily bias the new output amps, and adjust the phono section, tuner and other parts of the circuitry just fine. The hardest part was installing the new vellum, led lights for the dial, and replace and adjust the string for the tuner pointer. The end result is wonderful and the sound quality is superb. Doing the project allowed me to appreciate the high level of workmanship and design that went into these components. They don't build them like this anymore. The quality of Marantz was tops in the 70s and it is easy to see why they charged a premium for their receivers relative to Pioneer, Sansui, Kenwood and others.

Somebody has to do it.  I went through a phase of trying to buy better Japanese 70's gear a number of years back and found nothing but trouble.  I had a Kenwoood KA-7100,  a 60 watt integrated amp, in my late teens which survived into my 40s.  Went I went to replace it from units I found on Ebay they were all a mess, some misrepresented as working , some not broken at first necessarily but broke shortly thereafter and deemed un repairable.
I then got the bright idea of buying the TOTL  Luxman receivers which I coveted for years and even when old not cheap,  half working, orreally basket cases that were also simply not repairable, for a reasonable price anyway.It sounds Like you are interested in restoring/refurbishing the piece you get.  I never had a reliable repair person, and burnt boards and such are really ridiculously difficult to find in some cases.
However I have had good luck with older units, from the tube era, and have found good success with Fisher and Sherwood.I have had some successes with a solid state Marantz amp 250 M IIRC (just barely younger than the tube units).  I ham handedly made it play a very low ohm load and it caught fire. My BAD! I also really loved a very early Accuphase  pre amp.  Even that dropped a channel but I traded it for other gear to a guy who could fix it.

I don’t have any trouble going through and doing some recapping and adjustment. It’s mandatory on this old stuff before you even plug it in. That’s why so much of it is dead or dies shortly after it used for the first time in a long time. Many of these old units used glue on the PCBs to hold parts on that corrodes into a substance that eats the legs and traces off components and circuit boards. Marantz is one that never used that crap. Sansui used it on everything. The best advice I can give if you want to get into opening these things up is just start simple. If you’re hellbent on doing the work, do it, then take it to a good CB radio tech for the alignment.

shadowcat2016,

I can't really defend the SQ of XM radio. I only listen to it in the car. I am hard pressed to find enough time at home to sit and listen to my CDs, cassettes and vinyl, let alone the radio. As always, my comments are probably unique to me, but I did leave FM radio (in favor of XM)  behind back in 2005, and I've never looked back. I'm not even sure what it costs anymore (I pay annually, but whatever it is, it's well worth it to me! Just for the nostalgia of it, I would be interested in a McIntosh MR78 or a Marantz 10B, if I could find one at a reasonable price.

XM sound quality is middling with all the compression. Then there’s the program material. XM has a very limited range of material. They tend to keep a very small rotation With less than 50 artists per channel. At least they don’t have commercials. 

I don’t need to defend XM radio. It has huge range; music, sports, talk radio, comedy, it’s all there. At less than $.50 a day, it’s a bargain. For anyone who spends a lot of time in the car, it’s indispensable! Try the promotional rate of 6 months for $25, you’ll never go back to FM.

Forgive me if this should be a new thread, but I'm thinking about buying a Marantz 240 power amp from a local vintage hifi shop, with the intention of teaching myself to recap etc. 
Can anyone speak to how good an amp this could be, and what would be a reasonable price to pay? Thanks in advance. 

@minorl 
A 2252 definitely outdoes a 2252B. The '78+ B variants are half the receiver that '77 and prior units are. '77 is where I draw the hard line. I think they screwed the pooch when they started consolidating boards like they did on new '78 B variants. Not only that, it just made the things much harder to take apart. 

Well John the Marantz 240 should make a fine amp for you to to recap and refurbish.  If the work is only a matter of caps.  The bigger problems are the integrated circuit boards.  If they are bad you will be out of luck.  Remember that older amps frequently had less power than you would anticipate seeing now.

This is generally the wrong forum to discuss vintage equipment. Check out Audiokarma.org. 

I am not familiar with the Audiokarma site.  I have used this and Audio Asylum. Do they have a vintage discussion board? Or do they have multiple vintage bulletin boards, and how are they arranged?

Buying a vintage receiver is buying nostalgia. The biggest problem is the large markup on that value. Plenty of newer better equipment at a lower price without the nostalgia tax.On the other hand, finding one dirt cheap and rebuilding it yourself could be a great deal of fun. and bring happiness.

I’d say the 240 is a horrible choice if you’re looking for a unit to learn on. The gigantic caps in it aren’t cheap. It’s full of unobtanium transistors. And most importantly, you NEED a bench full of gear to properly adjust one. They’re prone to oscillating if not properly dialed in. I’ve read a few stories where experienced techs have dug into 200 series amps to do simple work and end up with 500mV at 250kHz on the outputs or something like that and no clue why.

I guess I was wrong about the Marantz 240 if 'Kosst "is correct.  I suppose that my reliance on units that still function and my inability to do my own repairs, has made me a cheerleader to those that want to or do.

I wish I had a repairman (no bench in my apartment) Or someway be able to do it myself someday.

Mapleshade Scott lk48, using one for second system. I think it plays as good or better than a lot of $3000 integrated amps, very musicalI run this amp more than main system. 6 ohm 86 db speakers in a 800 square foot room,sounds big and detailed. Turn it on 9am till 1 or 2 in the morning on weekends and 5pm till midnight on week days for last 3 years on same tubes, never a problem. There something very special about el84 tubes