The fried Marantz receiver ad is stuff of legends.
I have a small collection of vintage stuff.
And a friend of mine has a bunch of vintage low wattage receivers and amps that he recappes and sometimes connects to a self made switchbox, 6 at a time, on 3 pairs of speakers. We compare sounds in his Man Cave.
He is crazy about Marantz. Although I’m more of a Tandberg and Sansui kind of guy, the low wattage Marantz receivers do have that warm, open sound.
A clear distinction when comparing however can be made between capacitor coupled design or not. The caps coupled amplifiers usually come up trumps, regardless of brand. It’s that open, cohesive yet spaceous and at the same time warm, rich sound that is quite addictive to me. Involving but in no way fatigueing. Has been described so often on AK. Sansui did it great, but we find it
When comparing Marantzes, Akai, etc. I have no comparison of such a Pioneer to my SX 737, but suspect the difference can be found there as well. It’s a sound that is a little bit reminescent to my old Telefunken radio’s, but more open sounding.
And as so many others here have found out, to me the Sansui AU 777, 555,etc amps are exceptional in that regard ( even apart from build quality).
Somehow to me it seems Marantz tried to keep some of that sound signature into their later amp sections in some artificial way. Nice, but just not exactly the real thing.
About Accuphase. I only had one, a E206, and found it less involving than the Sansuis I had or have.
Tandberg on the other hand ...