Texasgeorge
New Member
In early 1990 I purchased the whole Legacy Series shabang for $1199 plus tax at the Mongomery Ward store in Austin. When I took it home and set it up the amplifier did not work at all. The next day I took it back and traded it for the floor model until a new one arrived. Two weeks later they told me the new one was in and I told them I was going to keep the one that I knew worked. They said fine. The rack was pressed sawdust and contact paper with a glass door, my kid still uses it to house some old stereo components I used to have. I never used it. The turntable was crap but I had a good one already anyway. The graphic equalizer was a trouble maker from the beginning and I disconected it after a few years and chunked it in a closet. The CD player had a five disc cartridge that worked well for about ten years before it became too annoying and I bought a Sony instead. The tuner was chintzy but it worked fine for me. The dual deck casette tape became obsolete pretty quick but I still have it hooked up and it would work if casettes were worth bothering with. A couple of weeks ago the amp went into protection mode and I took it into a vintage shop to see if they could repair it. Three weeks later they are still working on it sporadically as parts come in. They said that they have replaced all the diodes and resoldered every connection but that a router switch (or something like that) still isn't working right and that they were waiting for a new one to arrive. Despite it being the worst stereo system that Marantz ever made (supposedly) it still kicked ass for 15 years. I'm willing to pay up to a couple of hundred if they can fix it even though I know the market value is only a fraction of that. It's a hundred watts per channel and the speakers are massive and rattle the windows in the neighbors house when I crank it up. I've never taken it anywhere near the point of distortion although I'm sure my kids have. I've found rap cd's in the player and the bass and treble set all the way up so I suspect the volume level has been there too yet the speakers are unscathed and still sound great. The point I'm trying to make is that although it will never be a collectors item it was still a pretty darn good unit for a decade and a half and I never would have known it was pure crap unless I had read it here. Everything says "Constructed in China" except the speakers that say: "Designed in the U.S. A. constructed in Tiawan" but the audio tech still tried to tell me it was all made in Japan, although I don't know why it would make any difference. If the amp is declared a loss I was thinking of buying a new Marantz receiver from Amazon that is priced at about $300 or a new low end Marantz amp that is around $700. Are any of the current Marantz products any good in that price range? I imagine the ones that are $5000 and up are pretty good but I can assure you I will never know for sure.
Or, would you recommend that I get into a bidding war with y'all on E-Bay for a vintage model?
Or, would you recommend that I get into a bidding war with y'all on E-Bay for a vintage model?