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RE: Marantz Tube Receiver and Speaker Recommendations

Posted by Charles Hansen (M) on November 23, 2017 at 08:20:23

In Reply to: Marantz Tube Receiver and Speaker Recommendations posted by dofthesea on November 22, 2017 at 21:57:34:

I would recommend looking at the photos available on vintage Marantz equipment sites. A receiver comprises three components into one box:

1) FM/AM tuner
2) Preamplifier (including RIAA equalizer for playback of LPs
3) Power amp

The most common tubed Marantz products were the 7 preamp (often called the "7C", where "C" was for "Console" and meant that the unit included a walnut-veneered box for better appearance. The most common power amp was the 8B at 35 wpc, although a few people would spring for the twice-as-expensive Model 9 at 70 wpc.

What killed Marantz as we know it was the development of their 10B tuner. It was a laboratory-grade instrument, and retailed for $485 or so - much more than their other products, but low enough that they lost money on every single one of them. Even selling them in high volumes didn't help (!), and within a short time Marantz was in a bad financial spot.

Marantz was distributed in Japan by Superscope, Inc. Superscope bought out Marantz, and soon after discontinued the tubed products,replacing them with some of the day's better solid-state products. As others have noted, these were the first Marantz receivers. There are two possibilities:

1) Your father had tubed separate - a 7C preamp, an 8B power amp, and a 10B tuner. These are all collectors items, with the bulk of the originals in Japan. If you can find all three things, that will likely set you back between $5000 to $8000. The tuner needs to be aligned properly to obtain the best performance. You will want to buy it from Audio Classics (or one that has been recently tuned up by them).

If you get the tubed stuff, the most common speakers used with it were JBLs with 15" woofers, a horn midrange, and a horn tweeter. You only need 10 watts to rock out on with system like this. Other less common (but more sophisticated) speakers would be KLH 9 full range electrostatics (although these would likely also need the extra power of the Model 9 power amp and also require some extra maintenance).

The later solid-state receivers were some of the best of the day. They weren't nearly as good as the tube equipment, but far beyond competing solid state amps. Their early series was the 22xx, where the xx was the watts per channel, so a 2235 would be 35 watts per channel. This is a case where one tube water amp is subjectively as powerful as a two watt solid-stage power amp.

Have fun, and let us know how it turns out.

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