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Yamaha R-300 receiver

Tube Radio

Tube Radio

Super Member
I just purchased a Yamaha Natural Sound Stereo Receiver R-300 for $100.00
It is in excellent cosmetic condition. Receiver is in perfect working condition. I will be getting a service manual for the receiver. Sound quality is excellent. I'm using it with my Sony TAE-5450 preamp.
 
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I just recently had an R-500 receiver that I liked quite a bit. It sounded fantastic and was plenty powerful , even at only 35/40 WPC. It had a great tuner and pulled in stations like a champ (but FM stereo on mine was flaky).

The older Yamaha receivers are very nice.

-Matt
 
The only downside of these receivers is that they use a somewhat proprietary voltage regulation stage "chip" that is hard (if not impossible) to find should it go out. $100 is OK, but I would not spend any more on one. I have a R-700 that I listen to all the time. It is a nice receiver (hence the all the time use - I own about 6 receivers, but this one gets the bulk of the play). :)
 
So far I like the sound of this receiver. I just got finished playing "Black Snow" and "The Sons Of Italy" By Henry Mancini. Next I will play the album L.O.V.E. by Paul Mauriat as it is plentiful in the mids and highs. I may also play "Blessed Assurance" by J.D Sumner to test how vocals sound in the bass region of the audio spectrum. Of course no test would be complete without some George Wright thrown in the mix. This is the first receiver I have seen with a variable loudness control instead of just a loudness switch. I have the preamp connected to the tape input on the receiver to bypass the circuitry before the tape loop. I do need to adjust the preamp though as the left channel is slightly lower in level than the right channel.
 
I found out last night that the FM has a problem. The audio cuts in and out. A tap on the case will bring it back to proper operation for a few seconds then all is silent.
 
Hey, I got an R300 and I do love the sound of it. Also I have sentimental value for it because it was my first foray into vintage audio (other than a couple of things that turned vintage because I owned them so long). I joined AK as I was trying to figure out if I could fix the poor thing- the Ebay seller did not realize how it should have been packed, so it arrived with the volume & loudness controls busted (no left channel). It was well worth repairing. The selector switch still has issues, I have to wiggle it just right, but for any room in my house I don't think I could do much better.
It did die on me last summer, but I got lucky & spotted cracked solder joints on the power amplifier or something chip- sounded fine again when I redid them with the soldering iron.
I wonder if your FM problem is related to the selector switch- those things are finicky on lots of receivers and amps I own.
Enjoy your new receiver- I hope it sweet songs for you for many years to come!
 
BTW it is only the R1000 and R2000 that have the X-power chip, the lower numbered R300, R500, R700 and R900 use rather conventional power supplies
 
I did a search to see if anyone else liked this receiver and found your thread.

Just got mine a week ago and I abolutely love it. Might be the best sounding 30 watt receiver I've heard yet. I have it paired to some Boston Acoustic 60's and its a very nice union. And they both have Rosewood cabinets so it looks really nice to boot.:yes::thmbsp:
 
Tube Radio said:
I found out last night that the FM has a problem. The audio cuts in and out. A tap on the case will bring it back to proper operation for a few seconds then all is silent.
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Clean the tuner fins and board properly and it should resolve itself.
 
Lost function screw years ago

I bought my R300 new in '83. After several moves I lost the Allen wrench and later found it by the time the screw had loosened enough to fall out. Since then I have relied on tiny metal or paper objects that I can wedge between the control and the front panel.
I haven't listened to radio signals with it in years since there are only two stations playing classical or jazz in the Detroit area and it's too much trouble to adjust the function. My vinyl's sound fine on my Garard B-30 through the Yamaha NS-440RMs . I usually fully attenuate the bass and never go over mid-volume. Most recently I've been listening to Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66.
 
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I just bought an R-300 that I came across in a Goodwill. Paid $35. It sounds good so far and is in excellent physical condition except it's missing the bass and input selector knobs. So far I have found one website (oaktreevintage.com) that has the knobs that I need but I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to pay another $40 for the two. Is this model generally worth $75 or more? If it is, it would be easier for me to justify with myself spending the extra money to make it complete. It's such a nice looking unit, clean and gracefully simple.
 
Cronky said:
I just bought an R-300 that I came across in a Goodwill. Paid $35. It sounds good so far and is in excellent physical condition except it's missing the bass and input selector knobs. So far I have found one website (oaktreevintage.com) that has the knobs that I need but I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to pay another $40 for the two. Is this model generally worth $75 or more? If it is, it would be easier for me to justify with myself spending the extra money to make it complete. It's such a nice looking unit, clean and gracefully simple.
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Check ebay for lesser priced knobs.I don't know how much of a purist you are but one can also look for similar knobs for way less than oaktree.
 
Thanks for the response superdog. I did consider using similar knobs and if I can find some that are pretty close for a good price, I might do that. I'm definitely going to keep shopping around before I buy anything thought. I think it's so nice looking I'd love to keep it original if I can. I'm really leaning towards shelling out the $40 but I wonder about the overall value of the unit. I saw the response above from BrocLuno, who said $100 is an ok price. If that's accurate then I would feel comfortable being in it for $75 total. Just wondering what other people think about it.
 
Had a guy bring an R300 into the store in the mid 80's. It had been in a house fire and looked way worse than that Marantz in the famous ad. The dial was melted even. Boss set it by the back door to be tossed as it stank really bad. It was dead that night so I set it on the counter, jumped the tape monitor ( button was froze), set the record out to FM, hooked it up to some A40 Bostons and let her rip. FM worked perfect except it could only be tuned from 98 to about 102. People that walked in that night were amazed how good that burned up little receiver sounded.
 
I had an R300 and like it quite a bit. It has the Yamaha house sound that I like very much.
I picked mine up for $15 in dusty but really great condition due to low output.
I cleaned the problematic selector switch and it's worked great ever since. The only other things I did was to replace the heat sink grease on the STK and add a stick on heat sink to the voltage amplifier as it got pretty darn hot and there isn't any heat sinking from the factory.
After repairing it I gifted it to a friend as I didn't need any more gear and shes been using it every day.

As far as spending $40 on the knobs, it really is up to you. If you like it and are going to hang on to it for a while I'd say it's probably worth it but if you are going to buy something new pretty soon I'd just try to find something suitable to stick on for now.
 
That's a great story ggregg, at least I can be confident that it should be a reliable piece :D

OMGCat!- I'll probably keep it for a while. I'm feeling pretty satisfied at this point about the unit's value so I think I'll buy the correct knobs after I've shopped around some. I'll also clean the inside and maybe take your lead and check for hot spots.
 
Would someone be able to recommend some speakers for this receiver? When I picked up this receiver they came with YORX S104 older speakers, looking for something clear sounding, what speakers do you guys use with this receiver?
 
uswish said:
Would someone be able to recommend some speakers for this receiver? When I picked up this receiver they came with YORX S104 older speakers, looking for something clear sounding, what speakers do you guys use with this receiver?
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A hard question to answer.You'll just have to try out whatever comes along first.
 
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