Question about older stuff

I am facisinated by the older equipment from the 80's, which is an outright bargain compared to "mid-fi" new equipment. I would not go back to the tube equipment of the 70's or 60's personally being worried about capacitor problems and such. But in my view you can definately get a better system cheaper if you go with older used equipment. (since you are around $400 for the preamp).

Thanks for all the responses. I am looking at getting a marantz 7t preamp around $300 on ebay, but I have also been reading about Audio Alchemy DLC(around $200) which sounds like it would be pretty good except for I would need a phono section. I would pair it with PSB Image series speakers still undecided between 4,5 or 6t and I am using right now a dynaco 410 amp so I might keep the amp until I get more money. This is what I am looking at purchasing so if anyone has more comments that would be great.

It is hard to answer this in general. Here are a few personal impressions. I still have acces to a fairly large amount of Marantz, CJ and ARC equipment that I owned from the late 60's onward (sold to friends, moved to second system). Yes, there are capacitor problems after awhile and you may want to replace them if you are handy with a soldering iron. However some very good ARC and CJ stuff from the 70's that I know is still quite good can be had for cheap (check ebay). I think the advances in very high end power amps have been less than in other electronics. I would never buy an old CD player. Preamps from the early 80's are still decent but unless you want a phono stage built in, the CJ and ARC preamps do show their age compared to newer designs. I think a significant amount of progress was made in speaker performance during the 80's and would be leary of older multi driver systems unless you are pretty sure of the performance. Just my opinion.

Musiclover, Keep in mind, that the purchase of a $400.00 amp brand new today, yields about $80.00 in parts costs including chassis. I dont know about you, but I would much rather have ,say, a used Aragon or Perraux Amp that sold in the 12 to $1500. region, when new, for the same amount. I am reminded of the time I purchased the original, famed NAD 3020 integrated amp, new for $175.00. We tried improving the sonics by attaching very short MIT interconnects between pre-out and amp-in. The rca phono plugs were soldered directly to the pc board, rather than mounted directly to the back chassis. The pressure of the wire eventually cracked the rca jack right off the board. Just an example/lesson, that cheap will always yield cheap....Frank

Dekay is right on the money about the need to audition equipment. One possible way around this may be to buy an older piece of gear, try it, and then re-sell it if it doesn't work out. The going price of a 10 year old amp shouldn't change much in a few months, whereas a new amp loses a lot of value once it becomes used. Buying, trying, re-selling seems like a lot of hassle, but it could save you some serious money.