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Re: Marantz 22xx, "MAIN IN" & "PRE OUT"

seek/destroy

seek/destroy

Active Member
Here's an interesting question (I hope):

On a Marantz 2235 or other receivers of the same vintage, which is considered the better section, the pre-amp or the power-amp? I am curious because of the "main in" and "pre out" on the back of it. Thanks for your knowledge.
 
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seek/destroy said:
Here's an interesting question (I hope):

On a Marantz 2235 or other receivers of the same vintage, which is considered the better section, the pre-amp or the power-amp? I am curious because of the "main in" and "pre out" on the back of it. Thanks for your knowledge.
Click to expand...

You can use it as pre-amp or also as power amp.
1. When to function it as pre-amp remember to switch off the speaker output.

2. If you have another better pre-amp unit such as tube pre-amp then you can hook it to the main in and use it as power amp.

Otherwise your uint is integrated amp.

that what I think. Maybe other AK's member have more knowledge than me then they will chime in.
 
Yep, there's internal jumpers on the main in/pre out jacks that shut off the section you're not using. Example, if you want to use the preamp, the jumpers will disable the power amp section. Marantz preamps were sometimes shared among receivers, I think the 2245 and 2270 shared the same preamp. The preamp sections are usually pretty good, and Marantz was one of a few manufacturers that used a mid tone control. I wouldn't say one section is "better" than the other though. A quality separate preamp will outperform the section in a receiver, generally.
 
Dragging up an old thread (noobie reading old stuff to catch up.) From what I can tell, plugging into the Preamp jacks does not disconnect the preamp to the Main In jacks, i.e. the preamp is still feeding the main amp but the signal is also available to feed into another amp. Plugging into the Main In jacks DOES disconnect from the preamp, i.e. two sources are not driving the mail amp. This makes sense if you think about it. This is on a 2265B. Your results may vary.
 
Instead of starting a new thread, I figured I would ask here. When using an intergrated amp as a preamp only, (Marantz 1060 in my case) where do you guys keep the output level, Loudness and EQ? Can you damage your amp (Pioneer SA-9100 in my case) from feeding it too hot of a signal?
 
Sorry I've found the oldest thread I could find to ask this dumb question, I have a Marantz 2275 and I've been told that I can keep everything input into it as normal, then connect a tube preamp to the pre outs on the receiver and back into the main ins on the receiver and this should give me a significant boost...

This seems weird to me, would that mean I'm using 2 pre-amps and then back into the receiver as the main amp? Does that even make any sense? And if it does should the tube pre amp really do much more than distort the signal of the initial marantz pre-amp and not necessarily in a good way before looping it back to the main amp?

:scratch2:
 
Pre out/main in will decouple the signal from the preamp to the amp if you remove the jumpers. Plug an external amp directly to the pre out, and the receiver becomes a dedicated pre amp. Connect an external pre amp to the main in, and the receiver becomes a dedicated amp. Replace the jumpers with a Y cable, and you can feed both the internal amp and an external amp with the internal pre amp. Running two different pre amps into the same amp? Well, that's just crazy talk. Not sure what you'd accomplish there as I expect you'd get all sorts of feedback weirdness out of the deal.

PS ... the whole reasoning behind the pre out/main in is it gives you a cleaner signal path for an external processor like an eq. Then again, tape loops ain't all that bad more times than not which is why you seldom see that anymore. I used it with my QR series Sansui quads, but when I went QRX, just moved the connections to tape one ... works fine.
 
It was more just to gain the inputs from the receiver since the tube preamp wont have them.

Doing this I thought it would either, disable the device inputs into the receiver along with the receivers pre amp section, or have the receiver preamp running with the inputs into the tube pre amp, which I couldn't imagine working very well.

But it sounds like it should just disable the internal pre amp, while still sending the signal of the device inputs from the receiver through the tube pre amp and sending it back to the receiver as the main amp.

Anyone done this? I've found a lot of talk about main in or pre out but nothing really about a pre amp between them both like this.
 
I don't think you'd gain much (no pun intended) by adding a preamp in series using the pre-out/main in jumpers. A tube buffer might do something nice at unity gain, but adding more gain will likely just make the amp distort more or sooner and possibly exceed the parameters of some components.
 
I use the pre-out of my Marantz 2235B to feed my Velodyne powered subwoofer. With my ADS L300 speakers, this setup kicks butt.
 
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