Arkay
Lunatic Member
Aw, come on, guys, you are all showing DINOSAURS compared to the Marantz MS-53's amp, the ST-53. It is a full-featured amp, with four separate inputs, bass and treble tone controls, balance control, loudness button, stereo/mono switch, volume control, headphone jacks, etc... AND it is barely 1 - 1/8 inch high, a smidge under 4" deep (with buttons included!) and just 5-1/2 inches wide. A good bit less wide than a dollar bill, and less than 1-1/2 as deep, and just over an inch tall. THAT is SMALL!!! Or perhaps I should say that is small! 
The ringer is that it runs on 12V, so you have to add an external transformer to that size, to make a really fair comparison. Still, it is one shockingly tiny amp, as is the whole system, which, when complete, includes tuner, equalizer, and cassette deck, each the same miniature size. The speakers are relatively tiny, too, but loud (horn speakers!), and they are as tall as the entire ultra-mini stack.
The ones I have (missing cassette and equalizer) is in champagne gold color, but I've seen another set (with equalizer, but missing cassette) in more typical Marantz silver color.
This set DRASTICALLY 'underwhelms" any other set I've seen, except in sound quality, which is so good for its size it has to be heard to be believed. Marantz made a FREAK thing when they made this, for sure. It is almost as if they used some sci-fi movie's "miniaturization ray" to shrink a regular stack to ultra-mini size.
Otherwise, the smallest amps I've seen were a 25 WPC Rotel that I owned that would fit in a cigar box with room to spare, and a round JVC amp (looked like a circular heat sink with one flattened face for the controls) that was perahps 7" in diameter and not more than two inches tall. Both of those included internal transformers, unlike the Marantz, and so could run directly off of house current.
The ringer is that it runs on 12V, so you have to add an external transformer to that size, to make a really fair comparison. Still, it is one shockingly tiny amp, as is the whole system, which, when complete, includes tuner, equalizer, and cassette deck, each the same miniature size. The speakers are relatively tiny, too, but loud (horn speakers!), and they are as tall as the entire ultra-mini stack.
The ones I have (missing cassette and equalizer) is in champagne gold color, but I've seen another set (with equalizer, but missing cassette) in more typical Marantz silver color.
This set DRASTICALLY 'underwhelms" any other set I've seen, except in sound quality, which is so good for its size it has to be heard to be believed. Marantz made a FREAK thing when they made this, for sure. It is almost as if they used some sci-fi movie's "miniaturization ray" to shrink a regular stack to ultra-mini size.
Otherwise, the smallest amps I've seen were a 25 WPC Rotel that I owned that would fit in a cigar box with room to spare, and a round JVC amp (looked like a circular heat sink with one flattened face for the controls) that was perahps 7" in diameter and not more than two inches tall. Both of those included internal transformers, unlike the Marantz, and so could run directly off of house current.
