I have a 101 downstairs that I just figured out and will give it a spin,
Also the NAD 3020 used to get a lot of kudos for it's great MM/MC phono stage and I know some folks here must have had/heard one
Vintage gear with great on-board phono stages.
- Thread starter JohnVF
- Start date
Also the NAD 3020 used to get a lot of kudos for it's great MM/MC phono stage and I know some folks here must have had/heard one
If you average $25 a pop new, it's still 100 rekkids. Dat's a lotta rekkids.
Looks like the sale is about the seller digging out of a hole--$900 sunk into it for refurbishing. Probably paid a fair chunk for the 2270 as well. In my mind, it's a $300 receiver with a $2200 Marantz Tax added. I could build an entire system with that much money, or replace my tubed power amp (which sounds way better) with the same model and still have several hundred left over.
It's mind boggling what being silver with a tuning dial adds to the perceived cost of something. I understand it, sort of, when somebody admits they're just after that aesthetic. Its when they say they're after sound quality that I just get a weird look on my face and change the subject. You can go online and find something from the late '80s or early '90s, the "shunned" gear that gets lumped in with the dreaded BPC label, that will walk over this stuff sonically. There must be a million Denon PMA-2000ivs out there...great sounding amp. Or the Pioneer PM shared above, or the one-notch-down A-77x that fetches about three hundo, or the A-90 which must've been very popular for the number I see pop up. Good stuff...but not (generally) silver.
This is the kind of real-world economic impact that's not adequately reflected in the CPI and other such indices.
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it's the covid supply chain disruptions. Do you know HOW MANY thrift stores were closed over the last 4 years??This is the kind of real-world economic impact that's not adequately reflected in the CPI and other such indices.
Or you can do a little DIY to a $50 Goodwill find. Was missing the amp/preamp jumpers and needed a few caps replaced. I really didn't care for it much so I traded it to someone for a McIntosh MA6100. That was several years back. I still have the MAC, but it has developed what I believe to be a driver transistor issue as of late. To stay on topic, the MA6100 has a better phono stage than the 2270.
I can't remember if I asked earlier but I was wondering about MAC phono stages, as I had a MAC-4100 receiver that never got connected to a turntable. And come to think of it, neither did my MAC-1900. I'd heard a C26 that I didn't love but its hard to judge a brand by one example in who-knows-what condition.
The 2270 certainly looks nicer than the 2275. The one I really wanted was the Model Eighteen, mostly for looks.
I feel my MC C30 preamp has a really good phono stage. I had a Darlington Labs MP7 which is known a tremendous value... and sold it since it thought the C30 phono section was just as good.
It's replacement, the C22 MKIV, is obviously way better, but is also tube based, I'm using Tele 12AX7's
I never listened to the preamp section of the 6100 with another amp so can't really compare it to separates. It was quiet and detailed, but I think the amp section gave it a warmth that probably wasn't preamp related. I liked it better than the C26, but not sure of all the similarities. Both the C26 and C28 overlapped it, so I would think it would compare more to the C28. I think the phono section in my C34V is far superior, but then it should be.
I would nominate the CODA FET 01P circa 1991 which is an outstanding SS pre with a great MM/MC phono stage. I use a tubed pre but the CODA products are outstanding up to the present.
GuyK
Junior Member
There. Fixed it for you. I've never heard a Marantz receiver that I thought sounded good. They are mighty pretty, though.
I don't think that the phono section in my Mac C28 sounds very good, FWIW.
It is utterly original, though, so my data point may not be very helpful.
It is utterly original, though, so my data point may not be very helpful.
The black-faced versions are very attractive.
As for "good" sound, they were better than many of the mass-market receivers back in the day.
There was a point in having a stack of vintage receivers that covered half a wall where I realized that they all sounded more alike than different. None of them really sounded great. The only one I kept was the coolest looking one, the Citation Receiver. Which...has a laughably bad phono stage considering that the rest of it is pretty good.
could start a business putting the innards of great sounding modern gear into the cases of the big vintage receivers.
Quirk Audio, a member here, mods vintage gear with some more modern components to bring it up to date a bit. That's why I still have an Onkyo A7 around...its been quirk'd.
Both the Yamaha C4 and the Apt Holman have multiple remarkably good phono stages (MM only for the APT).
I completely forgot about that. My C-2X had an awesome phono stage, but I had a pretty crappy old Collaro PH12** series table back then. Believe it or not my old Heathkit AP-1800 had a pretty good phono stage, especially for a kit.
I had a Yamaha C-85 that had an pretty-ok phono stage. Which is interesting for this thread, to me, as it was -better- than the phono stage in the Onkyo TX-2500mkII but -not- better than the things I considered to be contemporaries of the Yamaha. As in other high-end-ish stand alone preamps. Actually the Yamaha phono stage might have been great, but the preamp, overall, was just tooooo smoooth. It lacked excitement. And the phono stage suffered from that overall sonic signature. All the edges of the sound had been worn down.
