A vintage Marantz amplifier or receiver can be a better value than a new amplifier, because it is already fully depreciated. In today's dollars, these units would cost upwards of $1700 to build and sell today. Just as the upper end of today's consumer audio home theater receivers cost in the range of $2000 and higher, this is where the Marantz gear would be priced.
The Marantz gear offers:
- Phono preamp (rarely found on today's gear)
- Preamp/Power amplifier (on many of these vintage models the preamp and power amplifier can be operated independently)
- Balance control and tone controls with separate bass, midrange, and treble controls (Unless you are a purist who would never think of using tone controls to modify and improve the sound of a mediocre or bad recording, this type of tone control configuration is superior to the usual configuration of only bass and treble not only because the midrange (700Hz)can be controlled separately, but because the bass control is set to a lower turnover frequency of 50-100 Hz, while the treble control has a higher turnover at 15Khz.)
- AM/FM stereo tuner (ok, no station presets here, but with a decent signal a properly aligned analog FM tuner will sound better than most of today's digital frequency synthesis tuners. For classical and jazz programming, this is FM radio the way it was meant to be heard.)
- Headphone jack with the ability to drive any, even the most inefficient, dynamic headphones including the AKG K1000 headphones to more than needed volume levels. Works great with high impedance designs such as Sennheiser 580 and 600 headphones too. Also drives low impedance headphones well. Any of today's solid state amplifiers can drive a pair of Grados, or other high efficiency low impedance headphones, but not many do as well with the high impedance models.
While nothing lasts forever, just about the only part on the Marantz gear that has been proven to fail over time is the power switch button. This switch can easily be replaced. These units were manufactured using the best quality parts and attention to detail during assembly. I personally would not worry about a selector switch failing. Even though these units are more than 25 years old, a working unit in good condition should continue providing high quality audio for many years to come. How about another 25 years?
Many believe that the moderately powered Marantz receivers have the best sound. So while the 2270 and similar units are popular today because of their conservative power ratings probably being closer to 100 WPC instead of 70WPC, the better choice and value for headphone use may be one of the units such as 2215, 2220B, 2230, 2235B, etc.
Downside:
- Large chassis, heavy to move or ship (Much of the weight is due to the large power supply, this effectively filters out most AC ripple and is a key reason why these amplifiers and receivers sound as good as they do.)
- On the receivers, multiple tiny lamps inside the faceplate that will eventually burn out and will need to be replaced for the unit to maintain it's aesthetic value.
- No presets for the AM/FM radio on the receiver models
- No remote control of any kind. No wireless control for such features as power, selecting the source or for the volume control.
- No Dolby surround or DTS surround decoder. However, some of the integrated amplifiers allow a second pair of speakers to be connected in an ambience mode, a type of surround.
I would not compare a Meta42 or one of the other portable amplifier designs to any of the Marantz gear as the Meta unit is not suitable for driving the AKG K1000 headphones. I would compare the quality of sound of the vintage Marantz receivers and integrated amplifiers to units such as the Corda or similar stay at home AC line powered amplifiers costing $400 and up. For somewhere between $60 and $120, you can purchase a working example of a vintage Marantz receiver or integrated amplifier that will sound as good or better as a modern amplifier that costs several times as much as the Marantz and the Marantz will, as an added benefit, provide a wide range of other capabilities. That is the real beauty of these older amplifiers.
