Best vintage Marantz receivers?

If you're an FM fan, the Model 18 and 19 had their top tuners inside them with the really cool ocilloscope. Only 40 and 50 wpc if that will do. I also like the 22xx series.

To add to Jea's response ...

The pre-1978 Marantz models are the most desireable. Saul Marantz had sold his company back in the late 60's to Superscope. Superscope was a very benign owner and did not look to muck around with Marantz' original designs.

In 1980, Superscope sold Marantz to Phillips and things were never quite the same afterwards. This is very similar to when Acoustic Research was sold to Teledyne and Fisher was sold to the same conglomerate that made cheap mass market electronics under the names of Emerson (another old time US radio brand that had been sold) and Sanyo. Fisher went from beautiful work like the 400 and 500 receivers to the rather poor performing Studio Standard line.

It was a very bad time for the American stereo business, as most of the American manufacturers had to move production overseas (it was cheaper) and eventually had to sell out altogether, as the Japanese manufacturers (Sansui, Pioneer, SONY, Panasonic/Technics, Kenwood, Onkyo, JVC, etc.) took over.

Regards, Rich

Here's a link to the Classic Marantz site:

http://www.classic-audio.com/marantz/mindex.html

I have owned several of the vintage Marantz receivers. I currently have a 2330 and love it. One of the most sought after units is the 2325. It is supposed to have the best FM receiver of the lot. It's hard to go wrong with an old Marantz.

Great receivers. Even the sound in the smaller ones (2216) was great. Plenty of power at 16 watts.
However, I would try to find one of the models with pre-amp outputs. This allows some more flexibility.
The tuner section is awesome.
Consider old Sansui also.

I bought a Marantz 27 new in fall of 1970 and it was a Superscope product. Don't know when they bought out Marantz brand but someone made design decisions that greatly downgraded the product. Very disappointing performance but I believe most if not all the 22xx series were far better - perhaps reacting to the poor performance of the early '70s products.

By the mid-'70s, Harman-Kardon, Sansui, and several others offered some very good products. To generalize, my experience suggests the '75-'80 period offers the best of the later (meaning solid state) vintage electronics.