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1970's European Receivers/Amps....any good..??

Quadrocker

Quadrocker

Active Member
I'm just curious...

...there's almost no info on a lot of interesting looking European brands from the 70's (Itt/Grundig/Blaupunkt/Braun/Telefunken..etc).
Has anyone out there got any of this stuff...? Does it compare sound-wise with the Japanese and American stuff from the same period..? or not..?

Although it's centered on the 70's...If anyone has any cool Euro stuff from any other era to add info on, that's cool too.

...any nice photo's would be super too..:D
 
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A friend of mine swears by his Tandberg receiver (with Tandberg speakers).
 
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Bang & Olufsen made some nice stuff back then. The were not powerful enough to rip nails out of the wall but they looked and sounded nice

http://www.beoworld.org/prod_details.asp?pid=338

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There's a reason why these receivers are so rarely spoken of. They weren't sold much outside Europe and usually paired with efficient speakers. Tandberg had the best European receivers as a whole. Especially the better Huldras and TR series. B&O had some nice units but usually lower powered and not suited as well to driving our inefficient acoustic suspension speakers which were de rigeur back then.
 
I worked in a small shop that was a B & O dealer back in the mid 70's when the 1900 and 2400 were first brought out. We sold a LOT of them paired with B & O speakers and B & O turntables.

At that time B & O gear was light years ahead of everyone else in design and function. Wireless full function remote in the mid 70's. Touch controls (no visible knobs, sliders under the lift up "hood"). People loved them as there was nothing like it anywhere for any amount of money, and these were not cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
 
Probably why my 2 favorite systems are B&O and Revox.

I started with a Beomaster 2400 and loved it for many years. It didn't have that much power, but it had clean power.
 
KentTeffeteller said:
There's a reason why these receivers are so rarely spoken of. They weren't sold much outside Europe and usually paired with efficient speakers.
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It´s always nice to find a good reason behind history. Thanks for sharing your views on this fact.
 
KentTeffeteller said:
There's a reason why these receivers are so rarely spoken of. They weren't sold much outside Europe and usually paired with efficient speakers. Tandberg had the best European receivers as a whole. Especially the better Huldras and TR series. B&O had some nice units but usually lower powered and not suited as well to driving our inefficient acoustic suspension speakers which were de rigeur back then.
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The Tandberg and B&O stuff seems to be the most common outside of Europe. My own suspicion was that unlike American hi-fi companies that switched manufacturing from the U.S. to Japan to stay competitive, many European companies stubbornly continued to continue manufacturing in Europe with all the competitive (price) disadvantages that involved.

I seem to remember a lot of this European stuff was rather more expensive (..and very uncompetitive with} than similarly spec-ed Japanese equipment back then....that might explain the rarity as well.

...still... there's gotta be SOME?? people out there with 1970's Itt's or Blaupunkt's or Grundig's or Braun's or Telefunkens's ......:scratch2:....were any of these brands equipment as good as the Tandberg stuff??....any rare "sleeper" European 1970's stuff out there...??
 
Quadrocker said:
The Tandberg and B&O stuff seems to be the most common outside of Europe. My own suspicion was that unlike American hi-fi companies that switched manufacturing from the U.S. to Japan to stay competitive, many European companies stubbornly continued to continue manufacturing in Europe with all the competitive (price) disadvantages that involved.

I seem to remember a lot of this European stuff was rather more expensive (..and very uncompetitive with} than similarly spec-ed Japanese equipment back then....that might explain the rarity as well.

...still... there's gotta be SOME?? people out there with 1970's Itt's or Blaupunkt's or Grundig's or Braun's or Telefunkens's ......:scratch2:....were any of these brands equipment as good as the Tandberg stuff??....any rare "sleeper" European 1970's stuff out there...??
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You got the Swedish Sentec stuff that still today is quite highly regarded here in Sweden, as well as the Sonab electronics even though they´re not as good as the speakers.

But here in Europe we have probably and still are better in manufacture speakers and not to mention turntables and cartridges (ortofon for example), in USA there´s high end/high powered amplifiers and speakers (not so much smaller ones) and in Japan theres electronics but more or less no speaker production at all.

If it weren´t for the Pioneer HPM´s there could have been a similar topic in the speakers forum except it would have been Japanese speakers.

Best Regards/Carl
 
I've had a couple by Leak ... an amp & a receiver both solid state
They were OK .. polite presentation is the way to describe them .. but not a patch on the 70's Yamaha units I now own


My first amp was a Roger Ravensbrook in the 70's I thought this was special compared to my mate's Leak amp. Rogers was about 15 amp. I used efficient Wharfedale Linton speakers at that time.

The british Hifi press was xenophobic from late 70's on so a lot of good Japanese gear was never given reviews -

Slightly different in Germany where US forces brought in all sorts of gear & there is a far broader range of secondhand gear available now

UK marques to look for are Quad Mission Audiolab Arcam .. I've never owned Quad but have used Mission & Arcam & rate them. Audiolab I never liked much
I still use the Mission DAD 7000 CD player in preference to a Yamaha CDX880

70's gear is a bit less choice from the UK but 80's onwards theres a pile of manuf's to choose from & some of them produced very fine stuff indeed .. and then some of them hyped up the market & I personally have little patience with that kind of marketing.
 
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I have a shedload of Blaupunkt car audio stuff, including one of the really rare (over here) Berlin cassette decks from the early 80s. The one with the gooseneck remote control. In fact, it's still in the box - never installed (too many holes to drill for the installation - something I didn't want to do).

The only home piece I have, other than my Revox A77, is a Dual amp. I forget the model, but it's a whopping 15-20wpc and uses DIN connectors for everything, which is why I haven't even hooked it up since I got it for $10 at a garage sale.

I've been really close to buying some Quad stuff, but it always fetches on the high side, so I've not given in (yet).
 
jdurbin1 said:
Philips? Hello?

John
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...thanks John...

...I forgot about Phillips...

Their late 70's stuff is fairly common and seems to be highly regarded, but the early 70's stuff, I rarely hear mentioned.

Another one of the rare euro brands I forgot about was WEGA, which rebadged some of the Sony Japanese Vfet amps and a elcaset deck, and possibly a couple more others for the Euro market in addition to their own stuff. They also had some nicely styled (..retro/futuristic) equipment in the early to mid 70's.

There's a lot of nice brochure pictures of a lot of this euro stuff....but no info on sound quality...at this site here for the curious...http://wegavision.pytalhost.com/
 
I've never had a European receiver (I want a Tandberg 2075 or 2080 badly), but I've had two European amps. A Revox B242 and Heybrook P2. Both were very special sounding pieces of equipment. The Revox was my introduction to separates, trying it out for a friend who'd repaired it, and it really put the hook in me. I'm still sad I missed out on a Revox receiver in Barter Town a few weeks ago...that was going to be my second system and I had dreams of putting some formidable opponents on the sidelines with it, if it sounded anything iike the B242.
 
When I started in the business in 78 we sold Tandberg decks, added Revox and B&O to our lineup in 80. We were selling 3 or 4 Mac receivers and at 3 B&O a month. That pretty much takes the air out of selling too many other expensive peices.
 
I haven't owned a lot of European gear, but the Quad 520f power amp I have and the Revox RTR decks are wonderful stuff. I've bid on more Tandberg 2075 and 2080 receivers than I care to recall, but they always go for more than I'm willing to come up with. I'd LOVE to get my hands on one of the Revox tuners, amps or receivers but that looks unlikely unless I just walk into a deal as (like the Tandbergs) they just draw too much $$$$ for my budget. I'm not saying they aren't worth the price they get, though. Love to hear a few more and make up my own mind about that!:D
 
I drive a pair of ADS L710's with my 2080. My 3000-series system is running a pair of JBL L150A's but I have a cherry set of L1290/2 waiting to swap into that system. Can't wait to hear that combo...

John

Firby13 said:
JohnVF,
When you get one, pop on those 103.2 Kef's.
I love my 3000 separates with them.
YMMV,
Steve
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telefunken

hi there
have a telefunken receiver,a real beast 20kg and play very well :yes:
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:thmbsp: also some philips amp and recever from the 70's very good and underquoted here
 
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