Stop calling the Sansui Eight Deluxe the "Engineer's Receiver"

But you have realize that Sansui intentionally vamboozeled its customer base all knowing that a deluxe model would draw interest. So the company chose to sell an inferior model to reap additional profits by cheaply extending the manufacture of the receiver and advertising it as better. Look how many people thought the Deluxe model was better because deluxe generally means it's a better model....
 
Rob, that ad jpeg image is too small to read. I tried saving it as a jpeg but the resolution deteriates to mush when you try to enlarge it. Any hope to getting it as a pdf? I'd really like to read it.

- Pete

It is a very rare ad that I have only seen in the tiny web pic.

Here is what it says.

"Some time ago, Sansui engineers were given a blank check. "Create the finest receiver in the world today". They were told "put in everything
you ever wanted to see in your own equipment". And that's what they did. Today the Sansui Eight is a reality. The proudest achievement of a company
renowned the world over as a leader in sound reproduction".

So that's why the Sansui Eight is called the engineers receiver.

And for the record, I am ignorant on many subjects. It's not a bad thing, just a word that sounds bad.

Rob
 
Everybody says "cost cutting" like it's a bad thing. Every successful product ever made, in fact everything ever engineered, is a symphony of compromises. There are no completely blank checks, though sometimes the line where you write the number is quite long. How good something is reflects the skill of the designers in making compromises. Otherwise, you'd end up fabricating every single nut and bolt and capacitor and resistor in-house to meet an impossible standard of quality that nobody on the planet could afford.
 
I just used the cost cutting term to support my point. IMO, Sansui did the cost cutting in the right places, and focused on the circuit designs.

Rob
 
I agree with Stereofun. I can tell you, that from this engineers perspective, the Eight is the engineer's receiver. Sansui, in addition to everything else, made a groundbreaking statement with the amp section parameter adjustments. Most people have no idea, but there are some current values and adjustments typically done with 5% resistors (which means not even close) that hugely affect amplifier distortion, slew rate, and over all transparency of sound.

These parameters need to be adjusted to the equivalent of 0.1% on those same resistors. Sansui made those adjustments settable, with the 4 trimmers mentioned above. Now if they had just added a constant current source, it would have been the amp of the entire Golden Age of Stereo. Yamaha made such an amp with adjustable parameters and a constant current source in 1971, the CA1000. They went backwards after that.

None the less, it was a huge step forward. The most siginificant change, to me, in the 8D, was to go back to setting these parameters with 5% resistors. A real step backwards.

I imagine the problem was that technicians in the field could not figure out how to make the adjustments. The description in the Sansui Service Manual is worse than cryptic... you literally cannot make the adjustments from the description. I put a post up about how to do it some time ago. It is actually quite easy to do.

Just my 2 cents.

I am curious, is it possible to add a constant current source to an 8?
 
My Eight Deluxe has both the engraved face plate and the solid aluminum billet knobs..........hmm o_O

And yes in terms of sonic attributes, nothing in my stable including a 9090db and 8080 can touch it. Except of course my AU-8500 which is a whole different can of worms......hmm o_O
 
I imagine the problem was that technicians in the field could not figure out how to make the adjustments. The description in the Sansui Service Manual is worse than cryptic... you literally cannot make the adjustments from the description. I put a post up about how to do it some time ago. It is actually quite easy to do.

Most of these super sensitive adjustments had to be made powered up. What are the chances the average bench tech ended up frying the units they worked on?

PS ... CCS is one of the main selling points for deciding on a VTA board for my Dynaco clone amp. That feature was added back in 2012 - Just way more stable under load. Gone are the individual set and cross fingers pots and fixed resistance compromises. Those tiny lil LM334 ICs take all the guesswork out of maintaining perfect splitter balance with corresponding reduction in distortion.

vta-board-ccs.jpg
 
My Eight Deluxe has both the engraved face plate and the solid aluminum billet knobs..........hmm o_O
o_O


Very interesting. How about a pic of the face of the receiver, and a shot of the set screw in the tone control knobs? Never seen this before. Only on the tuning knob.

The knobs on my Eight Deluxe are very thick aluminum, but do have a plastic insert inside to attach to the splined shaft.

Rob
 
Everything's connected to everything and making fundamental changes in an amp design can have unanticipated consequences. That's why developing decent mods takes so long. A problem I've had with adding current mirrors is that the clipping behavior, which might have been excellent before, has spikes or other issues on the negative rail. That's the reason for having it done by somebody that's been down the road a few times and ironed out all the issues.
 
The only way "blank check" engineering works is if your customers are also willing to use a blank check to buy it. Please keep in mind that the value of the yen decreased significantly during the 1970s. All Japanese manufactures that depended on exports needed to "decontent" their products to maintain price points. Here's a link to a thread discussing the exchange rate issue. There was roughly a 30% decrease in the value of the yen between the start of production for the Eight and the end of production for the Eight Deluxe. So don't accuse Sansui of decreasing content to increase profits. They decreased content to stay in business.

- Pete
 
Everything's connected to everything and making fundamental changes in an amp design can have unanticipated consequences. That's why developing decent mods takes so long. A problem I've had with adding current mirrors is that the clipping behavior, which might have been excellent before, has spikes or other issues on the negative rail. That's the reason for having it done by somebody that's been down the road a few times and ironed out all the issues.

Conrad,
Doug Self talks about the current mirror in his books. It is his preferred way of setting up the front end of a complementary lab type amplifier. I think that the mirror adds coloration that I do not like. The later Yamaha's use the current mirror, and a lot of other amps in the 80's and 90's that I do not like. It does more than supply current, it causes amplification to occur as the differential pair meets the constant demand of the mirror, that their currents be balanced. My opinion is that the only point when the currents should be balanced is when their is no signal.

Early on, as I mentioned, Yamaha did this in the CA1000 without a current mirror. I think that amp is probably the best one they ever made, especially when upgraded with new caps, and film caps for all the coupling between stages.
 
The 7000 and the Seven have nothing in common. The 7000 is totally unique. All though it does use chassis elements from the Eight, all the electronics are different from any other model.

- Pete

Thanks for clarifying not sure why I thought that.
 
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