Old Classic Receivers: A Mistake to Buy?

I purchased a Luxman 1120A new in 1982. It worked fantastically well for almost 20 years. I liked it so much, in fact,that when it finally started to "go" last year, I invested about twice what I paid for it originally to have it completely rebuilt with Black Gate capacitors and all kinds of upgraded parts. The power supply has also been rebuilt so that it is rock-stable into any electrostatic speaker. I'll take this over any receiver available today at any price.

My bedroom system for years was based on a Fisher 400 driving a pair of Infinity Monitors. (I bought the Fisher for 10 cents at a thrift store) I did not find the Fisher to have the FM sensitivity I needed so drove FM through it from an H H Scott stereo tuner. The final result was just WOW! I never tired of the sound coming through the Fisher, and while not wishing to get into the "woo-woo" area of home audio, the soundstage was such that while watching a stereo vcr ( also of course "plumbed" through the Fisher), I and my lady clearly heard and enjoyed a 360 degree soundstage. I'm not kidding about this, and I attribute this to the vcr's rendition of what I'm sure was the video's "time delay" codings on the audio track of the videotape. And in search of this phenomenon tried several vcr's. But let me tell you, when we were propped up most comfortably in bed watching a video and suddenly, so very clearly, heard pure, solid & full range sound coming from, but for the bedroom wall, sound from the sides of us and even from BEHIND us,(should be impossible, no? As the bed was solid against the wall) we just looked at each other without a word. The one thing I will say is that while I am not a member of the NRA, you or anyone may attempt to pry my Fisher 400 from my cold hands.....and if you are successful, my ghost will do its best to harass you at every opportunity. Period.

i had a marantz 2275 as a kid and sold it to my brother, he still has it. it don't keep up with my $8k worth of seperates but it still sounds mighty good and it is a loud bugger. i think the money involved in it back in the 70's was still sub $200.

as to Mr Pass giving the life of caps as 15 yrs...maybe, maybe not. there are a ton of old fender amps out there from the 50's and 60's and a bunch of them have not been re-capped. Them amps are going for stupid money

The Japanees receiviers of the 1970's will outperform ANY compination of seperate components made today regardless of price. They cannot be beat for clearity of sound.The design engineers of that era were audio perfectionists .

Mint:

"The Japanees receiviers of the 1970's will outperform ANY compination of seperate components made today regardless of price"

This statement ranks up there with your "powerslam" of acoustic suspension design speakers in an another post this week. You really can't be serious ... or maybe you just have not have listened to ANY separates or acoustic suspension designs, for that matter.

In all candor, it was the Japanese receivers of the 70's that drove us to buying separates in the 80's and 90's. Even today, the Marantz 2240 receiver that I use in a bedroom system does not perform at the level of my NAD C320BEE integrated amp... and that is at least a fair comparison ... both units were/are lower priced electronics of their respective product lines.

Regards, Rich