Well Ray,
I was where you're at, about two years ago, when I decided I wanted to upgrade my late 80s Onyko/Boston Acoustic system. Chances are you won't find many (or any) reviews on a lot of equipment manufactered back then. Anyway, the first questions you ahould be asking yourself, is why do you feel the need to upgrade and what are you looking for in doing an upgrade, and how much are you budgeting for the upgrade, and are you going to do it "piece by piece" or take an "all at once" approach? Also, are you "buying new" or willing to "buy used"? My approach was "piece by piece", and my budget was (still is, for that matter) somewhat limited. So most of what I bought, I bought "used" here on Audiogon.
Basically, I evaluated my old system, and figured out what I liked and didn't like about it. And then started replacing components in order of what I felt was the "weakest link". One of the things that I wanted to accomplish was to go from solid state receiver to a tube base integrated amp, after that it was the replacing the speakers and then the CD player, with components that I felt brought out the best in the amp that I bought. Also, along the way, I upgraded speaker cables/ICs/power cable, replaces tubes, ect. And it took me about a year and half to accomplish my goal. One thing to keep in mind is what you finally want the system to be sounding like. Even though my system was put together "piece by piece", I still had a "good idea" from the beginning the steps I was going to take in getting my system to sound the way I wanted it. IOW, know where you want to go, and have some idea about how to get there.
One thing about taking the "piece by piece" approach is that each time you replace something, you can evaluate it's affect on the other components you have, who's qualities you know well and hopefully, learn what's the best "nest step" to take. btw, I've gotten quite a bit of good information, just be asking people on the Audiogon forums about different audio issues. No doubt, you'll find people here as helpful as I did. Anyway, good luck in your upgrade.
