I would have taken the money and searched for an even better receiver on the used market - although depending on which Marantz model it was, finding a better receiver may not have been possible.
I will never sell my Dual 1019 (Never!). It's just got too-much mojo and vibe to it for me to ever part with it. And the same goes for my Sansui 4000 receiver (once it's up and working properly - The Samsonite gorilla got his hands on it somewhere along it's journey from central PA to CT, and now the left channel isn't working - You should have seen the box it arrived in - I was PISSED, to say the least). And I will absolutely never part with the little mid '70's Rotel receiver that I've had as a backup - It's powering my Wharfedales until the Sansui is fixed, but it sounds so damn good that I'm in no hurry to fix the other one. Those little RX series receivers from the mid '70's (and the integrated amps from the same period) are extremely-warm and lively-sounding - A real bargain for people looking for that warm sound on a budget - I can't recommend them enough - You can get them SO-cheap right now.
I also have a Dean Evo SS solidbody guitar that I'll never part with (It has the same shape as a Les Paul, except with nicer woods and a better-looking flame-maple top - great body-resonance - I replaced the stock pickups with a pair of Seymour Duncan 'Seth Lover' humbuckers, in order to get the same tone as a '57 gold-top Les Paul - and those pickups have that tone in spades). I paid $300 for it (It was a demo model, but it was still in perfect shape), and then I spent another $200 on the Duncan pickups, and when it was all said and done, I had myself a kickass guitar that sounds better than most of the $1200+ guitars I see out there (including the new Les Pauls), and I only paid $500. Picked it up in Portland, Maine (Thanks to Buckdancers' Choice - Great store). That ain't goin' nowhere (except maybe for a '57 Les Paul goldtop or something crazy like that).
My "golden rule" with all precious audio gear is "DON"T SHIP ANYTHING!"
I could write a book on how and how not about this subject. I might not have seen it all--but I've seen enough.
For a good "ear tonic" for guitar you might want to consider a Gibson GA-9 if you can get your hooks on one. Little amp, like a Fender Champ, and won't be cheap. It's price may make you weep.
A customer and friend of mine in a nearby town got the eBay bug real bad a few years ago. I had a steady stream of stuff coming across my repair bench from him--none of the stuff he bought as "in working order" actually worked.
One of the pieces was a Gibson GA-9. I did repairs--and a re-cap job on the piece. I decided that the capacitance was insufficient for the amp, and went with larger capacitance. The amp to my jaundiced ear sounded super fantastic. Nice mellow sound, and the most awesome blues crunch ya ever heard.
I shrugged my shoulders, wrote up an astronomical bill, and gave both back to the customer. He was not happy with my bill.
But later he called me up and kept me on the phone for an hour or so in carrying on about how pleased he was with how this amp sounded, and apologizing profusely for abusing me about my bill.
I'm glad that he at least agreed with me that the amp sounded great.
I wondered if it was the nature of the original amp--or if it was what I had done in mods to it in my repairs to it that made it sound the way it does. My curiosity is still not appeased.
I was later in a recording studio around here. And saw another GA-9! I asked the owner of the studio--a longtime friend of mine--what he thought of the amp--which has an unique output design; it uses two output tubes, but they are parallel (push-push) wired rather than push-pull.
The owner carried on about how that amp sounded, and that he was astounded by its performance. I thought to myself that it was probably the "single-ended-parallel-output" design that was the rock-n-roll.
"Where did you get this amp?" I asked him.
Turned out it was the exact same amp that was on my bench not two years before; my eBaying customer is also friends with the studio owner, and has placed the amp there on permanant loan.
