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Pioneer announces it's leaving the stereo audio business.

Sad news indeed! All cause of the waning demand for quality built hi-fi,e.g., listening/downloading music on smartphones etc...perhaps one day they'll return like Technics.
 
Nostalgic I guess, but I really hate to hear this. As with a lot of us, I have their gear from the silver era and bought a fair amount of it new. I just always remember growing up in my teens aspiring to work for Pioneer. Never happened, but grew up in their hey day and always loved their gear. Life moves forward, I wish them the best in their next chapter... Guess it makes my old gear that much more special (at least to me).
 
Better to exit gracefully and "die pretty" than to linger as a shadow of their former selves, pumping out crap from China.

Oooops. Too late.
 
c.coyle said:
Then I guess it's up to us to keep as many old Pioneer (and other brand) components alive and singing as possible. Restore a quality piece of stereo gear from the '70s, and there is a good chance it will still be giving people pleasure for another 40 years. I just sold a completely restored Marantz made in '74 to a kid in his 20s. It could be 80 years old and still making music. I think that's very cool.

And let's face it, if Pioneer would stay in business, they'd just be pumping out cheap plastic **** that can't hold an LED to their golden era stuff.

Maybe it's better to just let it go.
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Not necessarily. They could have been putting out better quality gear that would me folks forget about the old stuff.
 
Jack Lord said:
This^

Having grown up in the 70s and 80s, the notion of Pioneer, a formidable Japanese corporation no less, ceasing a once great product production is hard to swallow.
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Even more sickening is what happened to RCA, Zenith, Motorola, Admiral etc. Between the later three there were thousands of jobs in Chicago alone; I remember the buses going by our house packed full of Zenith workers.
 
This has been in the works for a while now.

As I've seen it written up I don't think that the Pioneer name will disappear from the home A/V market any time soon. Basically what Onkyo ( and KKR with the DJ Equipment ) has done is buy the A/V business product lines from Pioneer. This likely includes the production facilities & related contracts as well as the right to use the Pioneer name on future products.

So, we will likely still see Pioneer products on the shelf at BestBuy until such time as Onkyo decides otherwise.

Mark Gosdin
 
Bigerik said:
Not necessarily. They could have been putting out better quality gear that would me folks forget about the old stuff.
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Yes, but they weren't. And they weren't about to, because there is such a small market for quality gear. Certainly no mass market any more.

We here at AK are not the real market.

Maybe things will swing back. The future is opaque.
 
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The name will live on for awhile at least. I suspect Onkyo will not desecrate the image, but it will be interesting to see exactly what they will do with it. There is only so much pie after all and I see no benefit to them to compete with themselves. They already have Onkyo and Integra (and TAD?). Maybe Integra will still focus on the CI business and Onkyo will be the affordable premium brand...which leaves Pioneer for Best Buy and Walmart. No shame in that, but not exactly like the 70's either. I don't think we'll see a SPEC system again unless it has the TAD name on it!

ps: My Pioneer Elite VSX-55TXi and DV-47Ai are still going strong after 11 years.
 
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I am saddened. Especially as the Elite Line are some of the finest AV receivers and modern integrateds. And the Andrew Jones designed speakers great bang for the buck. And Pioneer's parts and service support was a model for the Asian audio industry as a whole. A sad farewell.
 
c.coyle said:
Yes, but they weren't. And they weren't about to, because there is such a small market for quality gear. Certainly no mass market any more.

We here at AK are not the real market.

Maybe things will swing back. The future is opaque.
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I bet we could support a company if we all bought new gear from them every year. But buying stuff made 40 years ago doesn't help keep an industry alive.
 
Bigerik said:
I bet we could support a company if we all bought new gear from them every year. But buying stuff made 40 years ago doesn't help keep an industry alive.
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No, just our fond memories and music...
 
What a bummer. I just purchased an SA-6500II, PL-512, and TX-6500, and these things are gorgeous, sounds great and are built like rocks. I'm going to keep them for a very long time. Also picked up the SP-BS22-LR speakers and matching subwoofer and they sound amazing for the price.

Sad to see them go.
 
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