ericleehall
Active Member
I've been a vintage Marantz guy for a long time, but a couple years ago I got bitten by the Concept bug, so I've been looking for deals on them..
My 4.5 was the first one, and I was shocked at how good it sounded, unrestored for about $150.
So then I decided to buy a 11.0 from a board member here ($300), and boy did it rock my little Marantz world. It ended up replacing my main system, a fully restored mint Marantz 2330B.
That drama here: http://audiokarma.org/forums/index....-buys-concept-receiver-problems-ensue.679126/
Then like a fool I gave away the 4.5 and replaced it with a 6.5 but unfortunately I was never able to get the 6.5 to work properly, and restoring the lower end units isn't feasible, money wise.
Finally this week I got my hands on a 16.5 via Craigslist for $1200. (boy these things are going up in price very fast, 3 to 4 times what they were 10 years ago.)
I had it sent directly to my intrepid Marantz restorer, (& board member) Randy Buckner (rbuckner) as his first Concept he's ever seen, for a restore, and here are his (edited) observations.
Gonna tell ya right up front it sounds VERY nice. Crisp and accurate but not harsh. Everything works so far and I just haven't checked the second inputs on the phono and tape but that's just switching. About half the pots and switches are a bit noisy but not bad at all. One LED is a bit dim and it's for the FM Muting button. One odd thing is that there's no "stereo" indicator for the FM (or anything else for that matter. They just didn't want to design one in. The stations are in stereo though and the tuner is very sensitive. The 4 lamp bulbs all work but the lighting is pretty pathetic and the meters are under-lit. We'll have to see what can be done.
One other cosmetic thing I noted was missing numbering on the tone controls from years of wear which is a bit of a bummer.
As far as the construction goes it's a tank. Very well built. One thing I absolutely love is that almost all connections are connectorized. I'll be able to pull whole boards out for better cleaning and recapping. Also that way the chassis can be better accessed for cleaning and polishing the rust spots. There is an overall light corrosion and some definite rust hotspots, pretty average for gear this old though.
I'll have to see if banana jacks might fit the speaker jack area. The existing ones solder into a pc board that also holds the three speaker switching/protection relays and all of the related signal routing. So it may not be too bad of a modification.
All of the main power filter caps are single units that don't have to be cut open and restuffed like the double packed ones.
Best Randy-
My 4.5 was the first one, and I was shocked at how good it sounded, unrestored for about $150.
So then I decided to buy a 11.0 from a board member here ($300), and boy did it rock my little Marantz world. It ended up replacing my main system, a fully restored mint Marantz 2330B.
That drama here: http://audiokarma.org/forums/index....-buys-concept-receiver-problems-ensue.679126/
Then like a fool I gave away the 4.5 and replaced it with a 6.5 but unfortunately I was never able to get the 6.5 to work properly, and restoring the lower end units isn't feasible, money wise.
Finally this week I got my hands on a 16.5 via Craigslist for $1200. (boy these things are going up in price very fast, 3 to 4 times what they were 10 years ago.)
I had it sent directly to my intrepid Marantz restorer, (& board member) Randy Buckner (rbuckner) as his first Concept he's ever seen, for a restore, and here are his (edited) observations.
Gonna tell ya right up front it sounds VERY nice. Crisp and accurate but not harsh. Everything works so far and I just haven't checked the second inputs on the phono and tape but that's just switching. About half the pots and switches are a bit noisy but not bad at all. One LED is a bit dim and it's for the FM Muting button. One odd thing is that there's no "stereo" indicator for the FM (or anything else for that matter. They just didn't want to design one in. The stations are in stereo though and the tuner is very sensitive. The 4 lamp bulbs all work but the lighting is pretty pathetic and the meters are under-lit. We'll have to see what can be done.
One other cosmetic thing I noted was missing numbering on the tone controls from years of wear which is a bit of a bummer.
As far as the construction goes it's a tank. Very well built. One thing I absolutely love is that almost all connections are connectorized. I'll be able to pull whole boards out for better cleaning and recapping. Also that way the chassis can be better accessed for cleaning and polishing the rust spots. There is an overall light corrosion and some definite rust hotspots, pretty average for gear this old though.
I'll have to see if banana jacks might fit the speaker jack area. The existing ones solder into a pc board that also holds the three speaker switching/protection relays and all of the related signal routing. So it may not be too bad of a modification.
All of the main power filter caps are single units that don't have to be cut open and restuffed like the double packed ones.
Best Randy-
