Vintage Marantz

I have a very clean Marantz model 8 that i purchased a while back. I had gone through the motions of hooking it up into my basement system and then found out that none of my speaker cables would work with it. The amp uses little screw terminals for speaker jacks and everything that i have has got good sized spade connectors on them. I was contemplating getting rid of it but i'd like to at least fire it up before saying goodbye. Maybe i'll work on that this coming week. One of my buddies has a set of Marantz Model 9 monoblocks that i've never heard. He has urged me NOT to hook mine up. He says that i should just sell it to him and not worry about it : ) Sean
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I have the 5's (six), sc9 and sc6 together with the sm6.I use the 5's to drive proac tablettes and doublettes. I keep two of the six for backups. I pull the lows off through a dual subs before sending the final signal to the speakers. Sounds great. I use the sm6 to drive rear channel in HT set up. As you may know a pair of 5's recently went for $650 on ebay. Hang on to them. I don't think with the right speaker match then can be beat. Let me know what interconnects/speaker wire you use. I've not done too much in that area.

Hey Sean,

I think most tech guys could replace those screw terminals with some version of a binding post (you may have to supply a decent one). I've seen it done quite often on some Dynaco Stereo 70s. It's probably not all that expensive, but I don't know if it's possible to put them on the Marantz. If you plan on selling...collectors prefer them to be all original stock, but I would think that anyone planning on using the amp would probably love decent binding posts.

I have a pair of Marantz One preamps, possibly the most desireable of the old Marantz tube gear. I would probably sell them if the price was right as I think they ought to be use. They are not mint, but they are quite good. Joe

I own a pair of original Marantz 9's that have served me extraorinarily well for over 20 years. They are no longer original because key resistors and capacitors have been updated, the power supply has been modified and the input filters and volume control bypassed (with significant improvement to the sound quality), but the original circuit is otherwise unchanged. I listen almost exclusively to acoustic music, and these amps have a truthfulness to the overall timbre of instruments, and a magic to the recreation of harmonic overtones, that have kept me with them over the years. Only in the past month have they finally been replaced in my system with a pair of Atma-Sphere amps.