Soooooo…totally unexpectedly, yesterday I found myself the owner of a Kenwood KR-8050. I’ll apologize in advance for the length of this, but it seems these are fairly uncommon units so I wanted to give some information on it that I’ve observed, foster some conversation on it that others may find useful, and ask for some advice at the end.
I just dropped into a second-hand shop in Indianapolis (Audrey’s Place) because they frequently have decent vintage stereo gear, and I wanted to see what had wandered in since my last visit.
I walked in, and lo and behold they had this monster sitting on a shelf. I know doodly squat about Kennys—I’m a Pioneer addict as we’ll see shortly—but from some vaguely recalled reading here and from just looking at this thing, feeling the knobs and switches, and examining the features, it was obvious that this was a quality unit. I tried Googling it on my phone, but nothing much popped up initially.
It was somewhat dusty—no signs of nicotine—but clearly in excellent condition. I asked if I could have a listen, and eventually someone located a single piece of massive (12 gauge) speaker wire, and hooked it up to one of the pair of JBL Studio L890s they currently have in (at $395), which look very interesting indeed, too. (A question about these at the end.)
I could only test out the FM, but it worked great, and after a little initial scratchiness on the volume pot—which quickly worked its way out—it sounded quite good indeed.
They had a $499 price tag on it. They told me they got it from a high-end estate sale. Based on the other items they showed me which came from there—decent paintings and sculpture—whoever owned it was probably its only owner, had some taste & refinement, and likely babied the Kenny. And, thank god, they didn’t smoke.
I weighed it up for some time, because I’ve recently overspent my budget on audio gear. (Riiiiiiiight. You really can’t do that when it comes to great vintage gear, can you? You only live once.) I thought about trying to bargain them down a bit, they’ve let me do that on a couple things before. But based on what I could find online that seemed like a very reasonable price indeed, particularly for the shape the unit was in under the light dust. Given all that, the fact I’d probably taken a bit of advantage the last time I negotiated with them, and they’re good folks trying to make a living in a tough economy, I decided that price was acceptable. It was really probably worth the 50-75 bucks I probably could have argued them down on it for the goodwill toward future bargaining sessions.
I got it home, and cleaned it up. And it *is* niiiiiiiice. I wouldn’t call it absolutely mint, but it has very few cosmetic flaws indeed. All the lights work, and all the outputs I tried (haven’t done the two phono inputs yet, that’s for this evening) work great. First impressions, besides the fact it’s heavy as hell:
Good lord, the tuner on this thing is fantastic. With a crappy piece of speaker wire antenna, it pulls in faint stations like they’re transmitting from my bathroom. I had no idea just how many stations we have in Central Indiana that I’ve never heard before. And with the features of the receiver—stereo sensitivity & wide/narrow switches, etc.—you can really go after those stations if you want.
120 watts per channel—yesssss, my first monster captured
. (Plus the gimmicky orange Power Boost switch, and its supposed 30 extra wpc.) Three tone controls (including mids), two tape inputs, two phono inputs, microphone mixing control (will probably never use it), high and lo cut filter switches, 50 Hz bass boost, massive tuning/signal and responsive VU meters—this thing has some capabilities, many of which I will put to use. And it looks so classy and solid, the milled aluminum knobs have click detents, the switches “thunk” when moved with that Pioneer-like authority, the pointer sails across the dial when you give the massive, sexy tuning knob a spin. Pulling the cover off, it looks clean and well laid-out inside, it appears it won’t be a nightmare to service when I decide to do some restoration.
Interesting quirk: unlike my Pioneers, the A+B speaker setting is in series rather than parallel. So if you have speakers connected to only one of those outputs, you won’t get any sound—you have to have speakers in both outputs. This flummoxed me at first, and I later saw threads where people were ready to do major surgery to fix a “problem” that was actually a feature not a bug.
A couple of negatives: no pre-out/main-in despite the power rating, although honestly I’d probably never use that feature. I find it disappointing that Kenwood chose to wrap this higher-end beast in tawdry vinyl, but the case looks like a doddle (particularly since the two sides detach completely) to re-veneer in real wood. The three incandescent dial lights are rather dim—I will replace them probably with daylight white LEDs, I found some photos online where folks did that and they look better than warm whites. And all of the function indicator lights are red—not a big deal, but I think it would have been cool if, like Pioneer, they had made at least some of them different colors to add to the visual interest.
I’m listening to it now, have been for the last 5-6 hours, and it sounds lovely. I’m a little over 60 so I can’t say, given the state of my hearing and my lack of wide experience with tube amps or other brands beyond Pioneer, where it ranks on the sterile vs. warm scale. It sounds good to me on some Advent 3002s, and I haven’t even hooked it up to my BA A-150s or Pioneer CS-63DXs yet. I’m going to have to be careful not to blow up either of those, particularly the 80-watt Pioneers, with this thing.
The only thing I fear is that this will completely displace my beloved Pioneer SX-737 which was the first restoration I did myself—and which I think is so sweet sounding and the most beautiful Pioneer ever with its blue lights and simple faceplate with very few buttons (I really don’t like the black buttons on the 838 and higher units). I have a few other Pioneers as well (an almost equally beloved SX-750 I just finished restoring, a cute SX-820, an SX-828 that needs some work, and an SA-8500 II which was my main unit until it encountered a problem I need to chase up). I know slavish devotion to a single brand is not a good thing, but I’ve always just felt such an affinity with Pioneers—and this Kenny will definitely challenge that. Might be time to thin the herd a bit, this thing seems like it might be the all-conquering Godzilla stomping around on my carefully curated little collection.
Anyone else have one of these, or a model on either side of it? Any advice on things I need to watch out for, stuff that should be replaced/looked after in short order, your own experiences with this particular model? A BOM for recapping/replacing transistors, etc.? Since, relative to many other receivers, there seems to be a bit less information on this one online, I would be grateful for any information, insights, or suggestions anyone may have. Oh, and how about those JBL Studio L890s? Would they pair well with the KR-8050—and maybe some of my Pioneer gear as well? Should I go back and snag those at that price I mentioned above? (One of them is missing one of the jumpers between the bi-amp inputs, but they are in literally mint condition otherwise.)
Thanks so much!
I just dropped into a second-hand shop in Indianapolis (Audrey’s Place) because they frequently have decent vintage stereo gear, and I wanted to see what had wandered in since my last visit.
I walked in, and lo and behold they had this monster sitting on a shelf. I know doodly squat about Kennys—I’m a Pioneer addict as we’ll see shortly—but from some vaguely recalled reading here and from just looking at this thing, feeling the knobs and switches, and examining the features, it was obvious that this was a quality unit. I tried Googling it on my phone, but nothing much popped up initially.
It was somewhat dusty—no signs of nicotine—but clearly in excellent condition. I asked if I could have a listen, and eventually someone located a single piece of massive (12 gauge) speaker wire, and hooked it up to one of the pair of JBL Studio L890s they currently have in (at $395), which look very interesting indeed, too. (A question about these at the end.)
I could only test out the FM, but it worked great, and after a little initial scratchiness on the volume pot—which quickly worked its way out—it sounded quite good indeed.
They had a $499 price tag on it. They told me they got it from a high-end estate sale. Based on the other items they showed me which came from there—decent paintings and sculpture—whoever owned it was probably its only owner, had some taste & refinement, and likely babied the Kenny. And, thank god, they didn’t smoke.
I weighed it up for some time, because I’ve recently overspent my budget on audio gear. (Riiiiiiiight. You really can’t do that when it comes to great vintage gear, can you? You only live once.) I thought about trying to bargain them down a bit, they’ve let me do that on a couple things before. But based on what I could find online that seemed like a very reasonable price indeed, particularly for the shape the unit was in under the light dust. Given all that, the fact I’d probably taken a bit of advantage the last time I negotiated with them, and they’re good folks trying to make a living in a tough economy, I decided that price was acceptable. It was really probably worth the 50-75 bucks I probably could have argued them down on it for the goodwill toward future bargaining sessions.
I got it home, and cleaned it up. And it *is* niiiiiiiice. I wouldn’t call it absolutely mint, but it has very few cosmetic flaws indeed. All the lights work, and all the outputs I tried (haven’t done the two phono inputs yet, that’s for this evening) work great. First impressions, besides the fact it’s heavy as hell:
Good lord, the tuner on this thing is fantastic. With a crappy piece of speaker wire antenna, it pulls in faint stations like they’re transmitting from my bathroom. I had no idea just how many stations we have in Central Indiana that I’ve never heard before. And with the features of the receiver—stereo sensitivity & wide/narrow switches, etc.—you can really go after those stations if you want.
120 watts per channel—yesssss, my first monster captured
. (Plus the gimmicky orange Power Boost switch, and its supposed 30 extra wpc.) Three tone controls (including mids), two tape inputs, two phono inputs, microphone mixing control (will probably never use it), high and lo cut filter switches, 50 Hz bass boost, massive tuning/signal and responsive VU meters—this thing has some capabilities, many of which I will put to use. And it looks so classy and solid, the milled aluminum knobs have click detents, the switches “thunk” when moved with that Pioneer-like authority, the pointer sails across the dial when you give the massive, sexy tuning knob a spin. Pulling the cover off, it looks clean and well laid-out inside, it appears it won’t be a nightmare to service when I decide to do some restoration.Interesting quirk: unlike my Pioneers, the A+B speaker setting is in series rather than parallel. So if you have speakers connected to only one of those outputs, you won’t get any sound—you have to have speakers in both outputs. This flummoxed me at first, and I later saw threads where people were ready to do major surgery to fix a “problem” that was actually a feature not a bug.
A couple of negatives: no pre-out/main-in despite the power rating, although honestly I’d probably never use that feature. I find it disappointing that Kenwood chose to wrap this higher-end beast in tawdry vinyl, but the case looks like a doddle (particularly since the two sides detach completely) to re-veneer in real wood. The three incandescent dial lights are rather dim—I will replace them probably with daylight white LEDs, I found some photos online where folks did that and they look better than warm whites. And all of the function indicator lights are red—not a big deal, but I think it would have been cool if, like Pioneer, they had made at least some of them different colors to add to the visual interest.
I’m listening to it now, have been for the last 5-6 hours, and it sounds lovely. I’m a little over 60 so I can’t say, given the state of my hearing and my lack of wide experience with tube amps or other brands beyond Pioneer, where it ranks on the sterile vs. warm scale. It sounds good to me on some Advent 3002s, and I haven’t even hooked it up to my BA A-150s or Pioneer CS-63DXs yet. I’m going to have to be careful not to blow up either of those, particularly the 80-watt Pioneers, with this thing.
The only thing I fear is that this will completely displace my beloved Pioneer SX-737 which was the first restoration I did myself—and which I think is so sweet sounding and the most beautiful Pioneer ever with its blue lights and simple faceplate with very few buttons (I really don’t like the black buttons on the 838 and higher units). I have a few other Pioneers as well (an almost equally beloved SX-750 I just finished restoring, a cute SX-820, an SX-828 that needs some work, and an SA-8500 II which was my main unit until it encountered a problem I need to chase up). I know slavish devotion to a single brand is not a good thing, but I’ve always just felt such an affinity with Pioneers—and this Kenny will definitely challenge that. Might be time to thin the herd a bit, this thing seems like it might be the all-conquering Godzilla stomping around on my carefully curated little collection.
Anyone else have one of these, or a model on either side of it? Any advice on things I need to watch out for, stuff that should be replaced/looked after in short order, your own experiences with this particular model? A BOM for recapping/replacing transistors, etc.? Since, relative to many other receivers, there seems to be a bit less information on this one online, I would be grateful for any information, insights, or suggestions anyone may have. Oh, and how about those JBL Studio L890s? Would they pair well with the KR-8050—and maybe some of my Pioneer gear as well? Should I go back and snag those at that price I mentioned above? (One of them is missing one of the jumpers between the bi-amp inputs, but they are in literally mint condition otherwise.)
Thanks so much!
