I had one of these a few models down (late 70's). The round control knobs had a kind of a scalloped knurling. The clean gold look, with beveled glass was nice too.
Currently have a Yamaha CR-420 as my receiver in my setup. Always on the lookout for more of the vintage yamaha's, but damn some of them are pretty expensive. Anything from the CA or CR series is appealing to me, especially the CR-2020. Just love the overall design and the pretty good knob to dollar ratio.
I posted somewhere above that I would love to get back my old 1970-era AR amp, and I wouldn't mind finding a mint pair of the Dynaco A25s I drove with that amp. I also enjoyed my Dad's Fisher 500C. But just to be clear, while that gear sounded great for their time, I personally prefer the sound of well-made modern gear... time marches on. To quote the late, great Ricky Nelson, "if all I sang was memories, I'd rather drive a truck."
I had a fifteen year love affair with vintage receivers but its all over now.I prefer modern(post 2000).I still have a Sansui 331 that I use for a night lite and late night classical music through the FM,a Sherwood s7100a for some small vintage speakers and a Sansui 890db that was my main unit for years.The Sansui will probably be hitting the bricks since it brings the most money.They were good to me but I now prefer the more modern and refined newer units.Its like going from a 1976 Camaro to a 2008 BMW as an auto analogy.
Here is a nice vintage Harman Kardon receiver, probably made in either the US of A or Japan instead of you-know-where in the good old days ...
P Picked this up with little to no wear...made in japan 1969-1970. Sounds fantastic and only $30 from a collectable shop in Newnan. Got a like new pair of JBL's for $25 from them as well.
Skepticism as to its sound or reliability?I can safely say that 75% of all vintage I acquired was functional and for the most part continued to be so.n the other hand... it became such that there were no repair persons in my town and the cost or impending cost of some were not feasible to me anymore.That was part of my decision to move away from vintage.The remote had a part in that also.
A little of both, though reliability is the bigger factor. When it comes to equipment with moving parts like CDP or TT, I think the vintage gears have better build quality ...
Another semi-vintage receiver by SAE ... It is difficult to find a good image of this attractive receiver ...
The styling of this Rotel receiver reminds me of the Mac receiver and the Sansui receiver as well ...
A receiver without a tuner is an integrated amp. Interesting looking Rotel, but it's not a vintage receiver. Maybe you should start your own thread about vintage integrated amps.
Ever since it came out I'd wanted a MAC-4100. Even after a bunch of horse trading between the parents and older brother coughed loose a MAC-1700 that I scarfed up, my adolescence and early adulthood was spent pining for that gleaming brushed-steel beast. Finally in the early 1990s I managed to score a used one at a good price, and it's been the centerpiece of the main system around here ever since: A couple years ago the 1700's power supply went sideways (decades-old electrolyics, for the most part). It's been sitting on the bench ever since, a victim of my overly full project list, several long vacations, extreme difficulty getting that last multi-section can to let go of the chassis, and a dearth of worthwhile FM stations in Gainesville. So here's how it looks now, a view one does not often get of one's receiver:
I had one of these a while back.Sure was pretty,decent sounding and big.There was a lot of empty space in that box though.
Possible,my thoughts were it was built big to impress.I had a Kenwood KR9400 also same 125 wpc.The Eleven weighed about a third less even though it was a third bigger.The guy I sold it to was pretty damn happy with it.So that made me happy.