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About This Listing
This is one from our "personal" stash - it is from the era where Pioneer was dedicated to making truly hi-fi/audiophile performing tube gear with some incredible quality tubes/transformers to boot. We have this Pioneer for years - it was used sparingly but always treasured for how ridiculously good it sounds! It was advertised as such - boasting a generous 16WPC from 20Hz to 50kHz and sporting the famously great quality output transformers in these truly help support this performance. They're some of the largest output transformers we've seen for a push pull pair of 6GW8/ECL86 that we've seen. Performance on phono, aux and the tuner performance for AM, FM and MPX are all fantastic - amongst the best sounding small tube receivers we've heard!
Cosmetically the amp is very presentable despite having some wear/tear. The paint could potentially use touching up around the front ring but we let all of that be. The previous owner knocked off some of the glass silkscreening but overall it is still usable for referencing the stations. The knobs and front faceplate are in nice overall shape and the chassis has no corrosion or rust issues. All tubes except the power outputs are era correct Matsushita made in Japan tubes and test fantastic. That includes the Matsushita-made GZ34/5AR4 which is a famously great performing copy of the Mullard GZ34 rectifier. The output tubes are a beautiful matching quad of 6GW8 that we pulled from our personal stash of the best Euro version of this incredible output tube!
The electronic restoration consisted of first rebuilding the power supply from the ground up with all fresh high temperature, low impedance, long life capacitors and replacing any failing resistors etc as well. Any potentially weak/worn wiring was replaced including cleaning up the power transformer primary wiring and adding a thermistor to protect the power switch and drop modern wall voltages a bit as well. Next the entire preamp, power amp and tuner sections had every single failure prone paper in oil film capacitor (the crappy gray ones that leak PCB oils) as well as every single electrolytic and tantalum capacitors replaced throughout. Any suspect wiring was replaced/removed and any failing resistors was replaced. All solder joints are carefully inspected and touched up as needed.
The tuner received a complete rebuild including replacing any failing germanium diodes in the discriminator/MPX circuit and realigning the entire unit for the absolute best tuner performance in all aspects. The tuners on these old Japanese receivers can rival some of the best analog sources in the world...even from modern FM broadcast radio!!
Next all tube sockets, switches, jacks, pots etc are cleaned thoroughly with the proper cleaning products for completely noise free and dropout free operation. The output tubes are carefully tested and matched for the best performance and any other issues were worked out until performance was perfect. Again - this was one from our personal stash and has always been a fantastic performer in all aspects. It has been outfitted with the best era correct tubes that we could find including a Matsushita-made 5AR4/GZ34 which is a direct clone of the famed Mullard GZ34. This rectifier alone sells for $100+ these days by itself - however these are incredibly reliable and will easily last for another 50+ years. The output tubes are two perfectly matched pairs of european made 6GW8/ECL86 which are the best version of these tubes made!
The receiver will be packaged and shipped so it arrives as it left here - we put a lot of work into these restorations and want to ensure they arrive working perfectly with no shipping damage! Any removed tubes will be clearly labeled for easy reinstalling and plug/play operation.
