kUngdrew
Leader of the dUng kRew..
Hey everyone, not new to Marantz but new to this site/group and wanted to share my thoughts and my story about my gear. About 8 years ago a friend of mine called me up to ask if i wanted some junk his dad had cleaned out of his garage and i said sure, when i got there, i saw that he was giving me an old reciever that was neat looking and heavy along with some other tools and things, i took everything in my car, said thanks and went home to figure out what to do ith everything. I waited a day or two to hook up the reciever, not knowing if the thing would even work and not very familiar with the Marantz name I unhooked my black plastic mid 90's Pioneer (100 watts a channel...yeah right) and set up to listen to the unkown 2215B. WOW! that's all I could say, this thing was smoking the pioneer in every way possible, and the sound was something I couldn't believe, music that I knew began to reveal things I had never heard before. I was hooked. After a little research on the net I found out this thing was only rated at 15 wpc, at that point i was really hooked. How could this be i kept thinking, all I had ever known or heard as a young man was the cheap stuff off the shelf, but this was something special.
After a few months with it I started trying to find a service tech to fix a pesky tape montor switch issue and one of the dial lights, i was lucky enough to find a gentleman with thirty plus years of working on these things and he had a 2270 that had been left in his shop for about ten years he said, someone didn;t want to pay to fix it and just gave it to him. I became close with this man and evetually talked him into bringing her back to life and selling me my second reciever. he also had a 4270 which we tried to get working but i passed on at the tme and somebody else has now, but the 2270 was an incredible sounding machine and served me well until i sold it to a responsible friend in 2005 as a christmas present to his father who was VERY happy about that let me tell you. in 2002 i bought a 2325 off of ebay and while it was loud as all get out and awesome sounding, it didn't have the warmth or organic qualities that the little 2215B or even the 2270 had and didn't see much use after the first few months until I recently sold it to a local hi-fi store who seemed really thrilled to take it off of my hands, maybe someone else needs bleeding ears besides me, haha. Not overly impressed but just my ear maybe and not meant to degrade any 2325 owners out there. all of this is leading up to my ultimate purchase (again my opinion) of a Model Nineteen in the spring of 2003. To date this is the finest sounding piece of audio equipment i have ever heard. It is so easy to listen to music on this thing i find myself trying unfamiliar styles and artists just to see what it can;t do and there seems to be nothing that sounds bad on this thing. It is the one i have and will keep as long as I live, some other deals have come along on higher rated units and diffent manufacturers but nothing i have heard comes close to the pure music that comes out of it. I don;t even have that great of speakers hooked up to it, I plan on saving for some heritage Klipsch's but the money aint coming in like it used to so the Sansui SPX-8000's I am using will have to keep plugging away for now. They are actually pretty efficient (98db) and match up really nicely to the power and range of the 19, actually the 19 could probably make a shoebox with aluminum foil stretched over it sound good, but anyway, I don't see many other writings or reviews of this model, is it that there just aren't too many of them around or do people only prefer the higher powered maodels, either way, as I mature and refine my music listening, I rank the 19 at the very top of the Marantz pieces I have heard, auditioned and or owned. Any one else agree? Thanks for reading this and maybe responding. kUngdrew
currently owned:
Marantz 19
Marantz 1200B
Marantz 2215B
Dual 1249 table
Dual 1218 table ( my tech is a wiz with these crazy engineered things)
Marantz 5420 (2)
Marantz 5400
Sony TC-366 and 355 reel to reel decks
Sony minidisk component deck and a portable mini diskman
RCA dual tray burner
DBX 128 compressor
pioneer cs-77 speakers
Sansui SPX-8000 speakers
previously owned:
Marantz 2270
Marantz 2325
Sansui BA-2000 and CA-2000
Sansui 7700 tuner
and...
Lots of over rated junk I had as a kid and thought sounded good before I knew what Music was supposed to sound like.
After a few months with it I started trying to find a service tech to fix a pesky tape montor switch issue and one of the dial lights, i was lucky enough to find a gentleman with thirty plus years of working on these things and he had a 2270 that had been left in his shop for about ten years he said, someone didn;t want to pay to fix it and just gave it to him. I became close with this man and evetually talked him into bringing her back to life and selling me my second reciever. he also had a 4270 which we tried to get working but i passed on at the tme and somebody else has now, but the 2270 was an incredible sounding machine and served me well until i sold it to a responsible friend in 2005 as a christmas present to his father who was VERY happy about that let me tell you. in 2002 i bought a 2325 off of ebay and while it was loud as all get out and awesome sounding, it didn't have the warmth or organic qualities that the little 2215B or even the 2270 had and didn't see much use after the first few months until I recently sold it to a local hi-fi store who seemed really thrilled to take it off of my hands, maybe someone else needs bleeding ears besides me, haha. Not overly impressed but just my ear maybe and not meant to degrade any 2325 owners out there. all of this is leading up to my ultimate purchase (again my opinion) of a Model Nineteen in the spring of 2003. To date this is the finest sounding piece of audio equipment i have ever heard. It is so easy to listen to music on this thing i find myself trying unfamiliar styles and artists just to see what it can;t do and there seems to be nothing that sounds bad on this thing. It is the one i have and will keep as long as I live, some other deals have come along on higher rated units and diffent manufacturers but nothing i have heard comes close to the pure music that comes out of it. I don;t even have that great of speakers hooked up to it, I plan on saving for some heritage Klipsch's but the money aint coming in like it used to so the Sansui SPX-8000's I am using will have to keep plugging away for now. They are actually pretty efficient (98db) and match up really nicely to the power and range of the 19, actually the 19 could probably make a shoebox with aluminum foil stretched over it sound good, but anyway, I don't see many other writings or reviews of this model, is it that there just aren't too many of them around or do people only prefer the higher powered maodels, either way, as I mature and refine my music listening, I rank the 19 at the very top of the Marantz pieces I have heard, auditioned and or owned. Any one else agree? Thanks for reading this and maybe responding. kUngdrew
currently owned:
Marantz 19
Marantz 1200B
Marantz 2215B
Dual 1249 table
Dual 1218 table ( my tech is a wiz with these crazy engineered things)
Marantz 5420 (2)
Marantz 5400
Sony TC-366 and 355 reel to reel decks
Sony minidisk component deck and a portable mini diskman
RCA dual tray burner
DBX 128 compressor
pioneer cs-77 speakers
Sansui SPX-8000 speakers
previously owned:
Marantz 2270
Marantz 2325
Sansui BA-2000 and CA-2000
Sansui 7700 tuner
and...
Lots of over rated junk I had as a kid and thought sounded good before I knew what Music was supposed to sound like.