I just bought a
JVC R-X300 <(not my picture) for $5 from the original owner today. It's what most people would call typical mid-80's "BPC", but like a lot of JVC stuff, it sounds much better than it has any right to. I actually really enjoyed listening to
Electric Ladyland through it just a little while ago, and right now I'm enjoying Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper's
Super Session. Anyway, while I was giving it a quick cleaning I saw that there were batteries in the back of it. Like many receivers from this era, it wasn't uncommon for them to have a AA battery compartment on the back for the tuner memory bank, so I took the batteries out and saw this!...
Original equipment 33 year old JVC batteries!
Luckily they were still in good condition, and they hadn't blown and made a mess. TBH, other than a few minor scuffs on the top edge of the faceplate and on the side, I don't think this unit was used very much at all. Before hooking it up, I took the lid off to see if there was any dust inside that needed to be blown out, and there was hardly any. After giving it a very quick shot of compressed air, the interior looks like it just came off the assembly line. The fluorescent display is also still bright and vibrant, every light works with its corresponding switch, all the RCA connectors and screw down knobs in the back for the phono ground wire and AM/FM antenna hookups were very clean and without any residue or corrosion. More importantly, all the sliders and switches operate without any noise at all, so the owner must have taken good care of it and stored it in a cabinet or a box in a dry spot all its life.
Again, it sounds better than it has any right to though. I think a lot of people would overlook this little 15 pound tin can unit, but I say it offers a nice sound that would certainly please plenty of new audiophiles as a part of their first system for many years to come. What I like about it is that it has decent midrange clarity and presence. Better than it should considering its sparse internal componentry. Presence is a hard thing to find in the lower end of audio, and this unit has plenty of it. Also, while it might not have an absolute powerhouse sound, it has good bass quality. The bass has plenty of output, but most importantly, it's not sterile and/or sloppy like so many units from this era. It actually has decent definition and texture. It's the kind of bass that allows you to hear the textured kick of a kick drum, the different
tonalities of bass guitars being played, and whether they are being played with a pick or not, etc. It's not just some homogenized bass sound purely for the sake of output instead of
quality.
Overall, it's just a nice, listenable unit. I don't find it grating or fatiguing to listen to, and I don't find it's overall sound to be sterile and lacking in tonality like a lot of other gear from this era. The funny thing is that you look on the inside of this thing and the layout is pretty sparse with a few printed PCB boards and flat ribbon cables, but it never ceases to amaze me how JVC was able to get a good sound out of nothing. Pretty much everyone de-contented in this era, but suffered in sound quality, yet JVC did the same, but was still able to make compelling sounding gear. Go figure. That's a testament to the engineers at JVC at the time to be able to achieve decent sound with minimal componentry, as well as a cost-cutting budget criteria.
With all that said, is this receiver good enough to make me sell off my other gear? Nope. But it's good enough that I think it just might knock off the other receiver I use for demoing speakers and other associated gear for sale. This unit has an EQ, which I find handy for selling different gear because you can fine tune it quickly for a nice sound that instantly grabs people. BTW, that other receiver was a JVC too.
Really though, I mostly bought this thing out of minor curiosity and because it was so cheap, but after it's all said and done, it just might replace my other JVC for demo duty. Go figure.