Kenwood L05 and L07 mono amps from 1980. They can compete sonically with any of today's five-figure amps! I wish I had a pair! I do have one of Kenwood's best preamps - another great piece!
Yes when the better portion of their audio department can have the freedom and budget to play. Having the capacity and the resources they can still create amazingly good sound also and at better pricing. One has to see what competitors components they posses just for comparisons and evaluation.
One last thing is, like in the past, many expensive stuff is not exported so we do not have the whole picture.
I had a JVC FX-1100 AM/FM tuner which performed well until it started having reliability problems. It was a well-designed unit with lots of bells and whistles and jacks for two antennae, which would be useful for those trying to pick up stations from differing directions. Kenwood also had a reputation for their tuners, although I have had no experience with them. I now use a Luxman tuner that was Stereophile Class A in the '90s, and it still sounds good and works well.
My old Harman Kardon Citation gear (preamp, amp, tuner) was nearly state-of-the-art at the time; so maybe HK was a high-end company that evolved into more mid-fi. Those components performed well for decades.
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