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Yamaha B-2 & C-2

Yesterday I went looking for a good sounding secondhand receiver with a remote, a good phono stage, no transformer hum, and good volume control at low level. Although I didn’t find one, a Yamaha B-2 power amplifier and C-2 preamplifier from the late 70’s caught my eye.

My initial impressions are: good build quality, revealing, low noise floor, good phono stage (2 MM & 1 MC), flexible, good control of bass but treble more emphasized than I am accustomed to. The apparent treble emphasis makes me a bit nervous but they sound fine on music I use to check for harshness. Perhaps different speakers would change the tonal balance, and perhaps I am just used to a warmer sound.

I have a few questions and I’m sure that some inmates will know a lot more about these pieces than I do.

C-2 Preamp.
1. Are the two MM phono stages identical or different?
2. There are two sets of what I assume are RCA terminators for unused inputs. What unused terminals should they be in?

B-2 Power Amp
1. The amp has massive heat sinks yet seems to run quite cool. Is this normal?
2. There are two sets of inputs and two sets of outputs with a separate gain adjustment on each output.
a. It appears that you can chose between the two inputs and select either or both outputs. Is this correct?
b. Should the gain be just set for a comfortable range on the preamp volume control or does the power amp work better with a particular gain setting?
c. How is gain control applied to an output rather than an input or am I misunderstanding something?
3. Does this amp use the special (VFET?) transistors that are used on the B-1? Peering through the grille on top, the output transistors did not look unusual.

Thanks for any help.

Regards

David



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Topic - Yamaha B-2 & C-2 - energyandair 20:25:32 10/31/04 (9)


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