Alot of the collectable 70s pioneer/sansui mega receivers have an overly bass dominant sound...some would say 'tubby' quality...far from nuetral but kinda fun in a muscle car way...I didn't come into my own till the early 80s...when luxman and hk still made decent stuff...the hard part was finding good 2 way monitors ala BBC types...which are far more readily available today...but from a purely cosmetic and build quality standpoint...the vintage stuff has some merits...this is a crude generalization...but the low to moderate power offerings always seemed to perform better...the 70s amps listed above didn't hit my radar still much later...
How do we remember 1970s amplifiers?
I would be curious to hear some of the memories and impressions associated with the following short list of 1970s amplifiers:
- McIntosh "first generation" SS amps, MC2105, MC2505, MC2300, MC250, MC2100
- Dynaco Stereo 400 and Stereo 120
- Phase Linear 400 and 700
- Bang & Olufsen "slide rule" receivers (i.e. especially blackface Beomaster 4000)
- Original Ampzilla (not Son of Ampzilla)
I've chosen this list mainly because they cover a wide range of approaches to solving the issues of early semiconductor technology, and they were all pretty mainstream products in the U.S. I'm excluding the Japanese receivers/amps not out of predjudice; it's simply that the circuit designs varied quite a bit with each model, and thus harder to broadly classify their characteristics.
I'm interested in impressions of both sonic and non-sonic attributes, and a preferred ranking of the above, if you like.
- McIntosh "first generation" SS amps, MC2105, MC2505, MC2300, MC250, MC2100
- Dynaco Stereo 400 and Stereo 120
- Phase Linear 400 and 700
- Bang & Olufsen "slide rule" receivers (i.e. especially blackface Beomaster 4000)
- Original Ampzilla (not Son of Ampzilla)
I've chosen this list mainly because they cover a wide range of approaches to solving the issues of early semiconductor technology, and they were all pretty mainstream products in the U.S. I'm excluding the Japanese receivers/amps not out of predjudice; it's simply that the circuit designs varied quite a bit with each model, and thus harder to broadly classify their characteristics.
I'm interested in impressions of both sonic and non-sonic attributes, and a preferred ranking of the above, if you like.