Hello,
What's your opinion on vintage receivers (Pioneer SX-1250,80,1980) vs
new setups?
Thank you.
Dave
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Hello David,
Of course the nostalgia factor is very high if you grew up during that
era---all that brushed aluminum and big switches. The Pioneers were very
solidly built but models that old may have leaky condensors, noisy phono
stages (if you still use a turntable) and other internal components whose
electrical values have drifted with age, which will compromise their
performance.
Solid-state design since then has evolved considerably. For example, the
Pioneers of that era used huge amounts of negative feedback in order to get
the distortion figures to vanishingly low numbers like 0.003% THD and the
like. That design approach is now frowned upon because using high negative
feedback may make the amplifier susceptible to oscillation. In fact, one of
the units we tested back then, the Pioneer SX-1980, I believe (it was huge,
with enormous heat
sinks and had about 250 watts per channel output) for the magazine I edited
(Sound&Vision Canada) was one of the first big solid-state amplifiers that
would go into oscillation and audible distortion (it sounded like a rasp in
the tweeter) with any highly dynamic input signal. It was a direct-to-disc
recording of a Chopin piano work that would trigger the Pioneer. That type
of distortion was called TIM (transient intermodulation distortion) and it
was nasty.
As solid-state design advanced, engineers stopped using huge amounts of
negative feedback. The phenomenon of TIM was discovered by a Finnish
engineer, Matti Otala.
In other words, those old units are fun to look at but don't expect
state-of-the-art performance, and I certainly wouldn't pay much money for
one, unless you are an obsessive collector.
Kind regards,
Alan