Hi!

Great write-up, William, thanks.

You are welcome, and thank you for taking the time to read it.

For my sins, I play with earlier all-analog stereo receivers (1970's and
1980's
Sansui, Pioneer, etc.) I can't seem to resists the low cost - even free
sometimes!
But they all sound very good.

For the most part I haven't been impressed with modern stereo receivers and
these home theater "things" that seem to be all over the place. I didn't
really feel that a lot of them had good enough construction internally to
meet what the specifications printed in the book said. One case that stands
out was where a friend of mine decided to dump his old Pioneer (mid 70s)
receiver for a brand new Harman/Kardon unit in the early 2000s. After
comparing the two, I talked him out of it and gave the Pioneer a good
cleaning. It desperately needed one (controls and internals), after which it
was fine again.

These (RX-4105, 4109 and the clones) actually seem like pretty decent
receivers to me. If they a little more thought put into the cooling for the
power transistors, I think they'd be even better.

I like the old gear too. I guess you could say it has character--and
oftentimes, more interesting visual design than the stuff of today. I have
an old basic Sansui receiver in beautiful condition that was given to me.
I'm not sure of the model # or specifics, but it plays well and its only
problem is a fidgety blinking lamp behind the "signal strength" display. I
haven't dared to take it apart just because it's in such nice shape, nor do
I know what its power ratings are. I'd say not much (there are no vent
openings in the case, other than at the rear) yet it still works very well
in the rec room.

When I was young, I got to partying with my dad's Pioneer SX-5 receiver and
burned out some part of the power supply for the front panel controls! It
still played from external inputs, although the tuner quit, the display
showed only incorrect symbols and most of the front panel buttons didn't
work properly. He opted to have it fixed, and the repair shop that worked on
it (can't recall who it was now) said that the failed part was a common
problem. They not only replaced it but also claimed to have tried to give
the part better cooling. That was in the early 90s.

I always wondered what they did, yet I never bothered to crack the cover
until around Christmas 2009 when that receiver decided to play holiday music
at full volume regardless of what the volume dial was set to. I did manage
to fix it, and at the same time, I found the repair--a small transistor
toward the front of the unit had very clearly been replaced. The shop that
had worked on it ran extension wires from the circuit board to the
replacement transistor, which they mounted to the same heatsink as the power
transistors.

Anyway, trying to give them up and stick to tubes!

My only piece of tube-type hi-fi equipment is a Knight/Allied Radio stereo
amplifier and tuner pair. Both date from 1959. I don't make any fancy claims
for these pieces, although I really do think there is a noticeable
difference in the sound this puts out as compared to solid state gear. I
don't use the tuner as much, because it doesn't receive FM stereo (it would
receive stereo broadcasts with one channel coming from AM and the other from
FM, and it has an output for an external multiplex decoder). So I'm using an
analog tuned Kenwood AM/FM Stereo tuner that I'm very happy with when I want
to listen to the radio there. The speakers are some tall, late model Sansui
units (don't recall the model number for those either).

http://greyghost.mooo.com/knight/ has pictures of amp and tuner from the
night I brought them home. I went over the amplifier looking for serious
problems when I bought it, but I probably need to do more as one of the EL84
tubes seems to be going into a mild runaway state after a while. Some of
those old wax capacitors probably aren't too good...

I have other tube-type audio equipment, nearly all of those pieces are table
radios. Most wouldn't qualify as "high fidelity" outside of the two Zenith
radios that make the "high fidelity" claim on their cabinets. That stuff is
he

http://greyghost.mooo.com/radiocollection/

So that's probably more than you cared to know, but there it is.

William