Advice for a new receiver/amplifier?

thanks for the recs. i'll look at these too. sounds like yamaha is reliable in general.
a friend also told me to call sound well in berkeley to ask if they'd even recommend repairing it. i took it apart to see if i could find obvious damage but everything looks ok to me, so i suspect it will probably be something costly.

I'd like to buy a receiver from the analog era--the one my mom had in the 70s was this total beast, can't remember the make. does anyone have advice about brands/models to search out and do you trust ebay in terms of condition? Any help would be greatly appreciated

I'm no expert, but having done a bit of researching and buying over the years the mid-70s (up to about '78) stuff from Yamaha, Marantz, Pioneer, Kenwood, and Sansui are pretty well regarded. The Yamaha CA/CR series from that era are so freaking beautiful. I know you said receiver, but if you don't need a tuner an integrated amp is the way to go.

No real opinion on eBay other than as with most stuff on there you can do well or get screwed; I haven't checked prices there for this kind of stuff in a long time but you should compare completed sales with what vintage shops are charging for pieces that have been gone through and checked out and might have a 30 day guarantee or something. If buying from eBay I'd look for sellers who specialize in vintage audio unless you're getting a really great deal on something you want to take a chance on. These things need to be packed well for shipping. If you have patience you can do much better at garage/estate sales depending on where you live.

Plenty of fine 70s gear but i have only owned the vintage Pionner stuff so that is all i can speak to. The primary failure of these old Pioneer units is the capacitors which fail prematurely (and yes forty-year old capacitor failure is premature considering quality of the rest of the internals). Fresh "Caps" can be installed yourself if your handy, but there are plenty of people who can do it mail order (expensive shipping due to the heft of these stereos) or even locally your area still has repair places. You can also get noise from the "knobs"; bass treble volume are actuated via knobs that are called potentiometers that can introduce noice and static when dirty -- these can be easily cleaned with DIY products or by your service tech.

Ask the seller about "volume-knob static", how long they've owned it, and when they last played it to assess your level of confidence in the seller Buying from a reseller who says "everything's been checked out" means nothing unless they can prove that the caps are new or non-original.

If you buy any of these quality units from the 70s remember that the rated wattage is the "real" wattage and you can easily shred your speakers if you get to generous on the volume knob -- 100 true amplifier watts needs a speaker also rated at 100 watts (ohm respective).

WOW. This is amazing info early rejecter and bodacious ignoramus. Thank you so much. I'll post what I go with, but this is really appreciated.

Oh i forgot -- if you want to trick some tech into thinking you know more than you actually do call those potentiometers i mentioned "pots". So you can say, "Have you checked/changed the caps and cleaned the pots?" may give you enough word cache for them to not think you're a total newb.

The Yamaha CA/CR series from that era are so freaking beautiful.

Can confirm. My dad had a CR from the late 70s that sounded amazing and worked flawlessly for 40 years. Supposedly, though, the Yamahas all suffer from the same problem at a certain point, and it can be a relatively costly repair, but likely worth it in the long run.

I bought a 1979 Marantz 2285B about ten years ago for $150. I've sunk about that much in replacement capacitors and shredded nerves into it, but I will never need to buy another amp or tuner. It's powerful enough to bring down low flying aircraft, and I cannot discern a single defect in the sound, which is warm, detailed and MASSIVE.
It's going to make my coffin heavy.

I'm looking for a fairly cheap replacement amplifier and there are a couple of NAD amps on Craigslist for what seem to be decent prices. It seems like they have a good reputation. Anyone here have any experience/feedback on NAD amps?

Ha and NOW I go back and search in the thread.

yeah NAD is a safe bet. Solid entry-level audiophile amps

Agree, NAD is solid.

does anyone have any tips on enabling an analogue amplifier to stream wireless music?

Chromecast audio is worth considering. I think I got mine for £20 so it's not the end of the world if you don't like it. Sound quality isn't quite as good as a big expensive box but it's much much better than you would expect for the price.

http://www.tp-link.com/us/products/details/cat-5526_HA100.html

£25 delivered, good reviews, sounds great to me (though a touch quiet for some reason)

Or plug an old iPhone into your amp. That way you can use Airplay, as well as Spotify Connect.

Oh wait I don't think phones can we Airplay sinks...

I've got my AppleTV plugged into the digital input in my NAD amp & stream from my iphone, it works pretty good

thanks all. NotEnough, I might buy this one that was on the amazon page as an alternative when I googled your recommendation.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BIJVCFE/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1

agreed, plugging an apple tv into a receiver works fine. bit of a pain if your receiver only has RCA inputs and you have a new appletv, which has hdmi (you need to get an hdmi to rca splitter, which is what I did), and you do have to then hook the apple tv also up to your tv so you can see what the fuck you're doing. but it does work.

Apple Airport Express is a simpler option and allows either analogue 3.5mm or digital optical out.

true. and then you can just airplay (if you're wanting to just airplay).

one of the channels on my old amplifier has gone kaput and as it has various other small problems i'm thinking it'd need substantial refurbishment, so i've decided it's time for a change. i've got tannoy mercury v1 speakers, a pro-ject debut turntable, and play digital stuff from my laptop via a 3.5mm to phono cable*, and i'll be using it for music alone so don't need anything too fancy - perhaps this means a bit of ebaying for older equipment will be my best bet. any suggestions on a budget of ~£150?

*via a focusrite interface to compensate for my laptop's bad soundcard, though this admittedly is still probably a stupid, quality-destroying way to listen to music

Onkyo or Yamaha make really great low priced 2 channel receivers, with phono input

I always input digital sources via line-level aux/cd/tape inputs (3.5mm to RCA plugs) and use the actual phono inputs only for turntables.

Quality DAC is key -- consider a used Dragonfly.

New 2-channel Onkyo and Yamaha units get a second vote from me and probably cost about the same as it would to fix your old amp (depending on the particulars).

seconding the Yamaha recommendations - what's your budget? the Yamaha A-S801 has both USB input and a great built in RIAA, meaning you won't need an external sound card for your computer

I've a weak spot for the NAD D3020, will get you a USB input but you'll have to use an external phono amp. A fantastic little digital amp, more contemporary in its design/construction than the Yamahas, not saying it's future proof, but I think it's a good bet.

thanks, these yamaha and onkyo options look promising. what do you like about the nad, niels?

I used to work for a company with a close connection to NAD so I'm biased, but I really think it is the coolest little digital amplifier you can get. Reasonably priced, takes up very little space, sounds awesome and packs a surprising amount of power - will drive almost any speaker! Built-in bluetooth and USB input is very practical, and although I love analog amps I think the future is digital, so (though I'm not an engineer) the digital amp design makes sense to me.

It was very well received at the time https://www.whathifi.com/nad/d-3020/review but it's possible there are more quality digital amps on the market now

Bought one for my younger brother, matched with a set of Dali Zensor 3's - he loves it

I didn't know the NAD was in your price range; if so, i'd go for that. Clean, honest power by reputation -- the on-board DAC is likely the Burr-Brown set-up... looks GREAT!

i've been loving the second-hand NAD i bought a handful of years ago but one of the channels seems to be crapping out. this is a vague question, but does anyone think this is worth taking in to a shop to be looked at versus trying to find a inexpensive replacement? am in school right now so am on a poor student budget. i think this thing is >20 years old

my guess...is unlikely that it's worth fixing

NAD products are not as disposable as most big-box electronics... ...i suppose it depends mostly if you have a decent repair shop in your area (because shipping costs can take a big bite out of any repair budget). Also, the repair shop does not necessarily have to be an Authorized NAD outlet to get good work. I would google the NAD model number and symptoms and look through the myriad discussion forums to try and narrow the possible repair schemes.