Marantz 2230 Receiver

It's HERE!

I recently won a Marantz 2230 Receiver while fishin' in the 'bay... Ebay that is. I remember wanting that "Marantz sound" so bad when I was a kid, but they were WAY out of my price range. Well, I picked this one up for like $76. Of course, it takes another $30 to get it shipped here, but that doesn't count, right? I've been looking forward to it for over a week now!

First impressions.... well, it's not BAD. Several of the dial lights are out, so I'm not getting the full Marantz blue dial effect yet. No big problem. I've ordered a re-light kit from another Ebay vendor. One scratch on the faceplate. Case is slightly bent at the top right rear corner, lake maybe it was .... heck, I don't know. It's not scratched up so it's not like it was dropped. Some of the screen printing on the front controls is a little faint. All in all, not bad for a 30+ year old receiver. I should look so good.

Time to hook it up. My Snell CII speakers are out of commission at the moment, needing to be "refoamed". So I drag out my pair of Realistic Mach Ones. These are about the same vintage as the Marantz. Some lampcoard for speaker wire, fire her up, and it sounds like crap! Oh geeesh! Maybe what they say about speaker wire is true. I dig out my big heavy speaker wires, not sure the gauge, but about 5 times as heavy as the lampcord. Hmmmmm..... too thick to fit into the speaker connections on the receiver. Well, I can kind of use half of the wire's thickness and make it work. Fire her back up again. Ahhhhh.... better. Cables DO make a difference. Tune in an FM station with no antennae hooked up, and it STILL sounds sweet! Creank up the volume a bit. Ahhhhhh, YEAH!

I'm going to LIKE this puppy!

More to come later.

Those Big Black CDs......

It's all my grandson's fault!

We were cleaning in the garage, sifting through a bunch of stuff, tossing some, keeping more. I'm a real packrat, you know? Jordan (12) and Nick (8) were helping me. As I pulled a box of 33 1/3 LP's off a shelf, Nick shouted, "LOOK Jordan! It's a bunch of those BIG BLACK CDs!".

Well, l'm in the process of resurrecting those, and building a stereo system from vintage audio equipment..... the things I wanted in my youth but couldn't afford. Now I'm finding a whole new world, or old world, of classic audio gear. I'm hoping it's going to recreate the sound of music I remember from my teenage years, when music rally MATTERED to me. I know, CD's, MP3's and all the latest techie gear is so much more convenient now days, but it just doesn't SOUND the same. I'm betting that if I can re-capture that sound of old, I can relight the PASSION I felt about it all back then.

It's worth a try.

Plus, I'm a kind of a retro-tech junky in many ways. I like writing with fountain pens. I dig nice old arts & crafts furniture and decorating. I've got a floor model radio from the 30's... with TUBES. So why NOT start collecting audio gear from the "golden age", the 60's and 70's.

Stay tuned and I'll tell you more about it!