Early All American Parts Made Solid State vs Early Japanese SS. Which sounded nicer and made better?

Not sure its definitive,,, I have a Sansui 800 I got in 1969 which I used until I got into tubes a few years ago... I also have a Fisher 220T(1966, I believe) which I found cheap (5 bux) at a hamfest and rehabbed with help from the SS Fisher experts (Fred and Larry notably) here... That Fisher has been my shop "radio" for a couple years now, and sounds very good to these old ears, specially when teamed up with the OLAs...
 
I think I can use a couple of different KLH models I've owned as examples........I have a model 27 receiver, made in usa, good build quality, but the layout is kind of maddening. I also had a model 51 receiver (made in japan for KLH) and the layout was much better, similar build quality to the usa made 27. As far as sound, both being rated for the same wpc, I think the 27 is a bit sweeter sounding, not to say that the 51 sounded bad, just a bit more mellow maybe. The 27 has been totally recapped, whereas the 51 had nothing done to it. Both are low powered (so they say) quality receivers, they each look cool in their own way and they both have their own distinctive sound, but for me sonically, the 27 has a slight edge to the Japanese made 51, even though the layout of everything inside the 27 is, like I said before, maddening.
 
Having compared Marantz Model 1060, 1070 (designed in the US, made in Japan) and Marantz 1120 (same period, designed and made in the US), I liked the amps made in Japan better (in terms of both layout and sound). But that's the only situation where I could more or less compare apples to apples - same brand, same period, same type of unit, different power rating (but that was in favor of the amp I liked less).

The only other unit made in the US that I have is Harman/Kardon Citation 16, which is absolutely awesome. But I don't have a comparable amp made in Japan.
 
Way too vague and completely strange.

Are you looking for great sound? Or great construction?


I think SS parts "Made in Japan" have been around a long long time and used a lot in all US made gear.
In fact, I think by the time gear went SS, the parts were mostly from Japan.

Was Motorola all made in US? That would be a vote for the early Marantz gear.
I haven't seen enough Sherwood to know if any were US parts only.
McIntosh is US but I haven' been in many of those.

Just those three companies alone are a vote for US gear. I have never seen or read about anyone not liking the early gear from those people.
Sherwood is the one NOT on the MU$T HAVE LI$T.

SAE is US and damn nice when its working well.
All the units I've worked on were built very strong and a royal bitch to work on because of the chassis design.
They LOVE to use TOO many screws and way too many panels.

Phase Linear is US but I think it was all Japan parts.
Carver is US and Japan parts.

Sansui, Pioneer, Kenwood are Japanese companies and we all know how good some of that is.
Every Sansui I know of has special problems (the glue problem alone on many units).
Early Kenwood is great gear but the loved the 2SC458 transistor. A known trouble maker.
Early Pioneer has those damn things too. The SX-9000 is fantastic build and sound but needs update service because of those transistors.
And the early Pioneer used speaker connector plugs that everyone hates unless they have some.


As far as "made better", that is also vague.
Some units seem much easier to work on. Some real Pain In The Ass (PITA) units sound EXCELLENT.
I wish they were "built" better to work on, but they are "built" well as far as "designed to sound great".
 
^^^ What he said ^^^

Worked on all that stuff as a warranty repair station. Topic is waaaaay too vague to be of value.

Regarding the topic, please consider this: From the late 60s, as Solid State gear became more common, though the end of the 70s, there were 10 or better complete product line rolls. That is, all the US/European audio vendors and Asian (not just Japanese) completely replaced the audio products in their product lines across that time. Each time, for competitive reasons, they reduced the number of parts (and manufacturing costs) along the way. Further, the Japanese came to dominate the market due to lower overall costs. All this happened while the audio market consolidated from local-owner stores to department stores and then to national electronic store chains. Lastly, as the old names died off (Fisher, Scott, KLH, etc), the brand names were slapped on mass-produced mid-fi (at best) products.

So, the topic effectively asks for us old dudes who might remember their exposure to all that activity to name specific models from 40-50 years ago? Let's narrow down the topic, how about?

Cheers,

David
 
Is carver early ??? is Phase linear early ? How about Mac ? Mark Levinson ? Adcom ? Pass Labs ? If these qualify -
I think American all the way. But I don't know of the jap boutiques - which these are just about the captains of.
If it has to be receivers only - Maybe I don't know enough US made receivers but here I have to hand it to the japs.
Thanks.
Srinath.
 
I have the very first Sansui SS receiver made, they claim sound room quality, I beg to differ. I don't think many receivers I have owned impressed me until the early 80s BIG Technics New Class A offerings (silver faced versions) but even then, they do not hold a candle to good quality separates. I have had several other giant Sansui's and Pioneer's and none ever really grew on me. US stuff I have had receiver wise sounded ok but nothing than made me want to keep any of it for any period of time. Always gravitated to separates, they sound best to me
 
Early is 1965 to 1970. There certainly are some charming SS gear from McIntosh, HH Scott, Fisher, Marantz, Eico, Sylvania, and others. The MAC 2100 has stood the test of time with restored examples sounding just as good as modern amps. Can't say about country of origin for the components but I would say Mac is closest to all American. Early Japanese SS are not without charms. The "Japanese McIntosh", aka Nikko looked the part and had a nice mellow sound with those finicky Germanium output transistors.
 
early solid state (US made) hifi:
1962
LRELA-4401962 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

OEM, I believe, was TEC.

TECS-15LRE1962 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Radio Shack had a variant in 1962 as well.

082.jpg

source: www.radioshackcatalogs.com (1962)

The first transistor hifi component is widely held to be a phono preamp introduced by Fisher in 1957:
tr1a.jpg
 
American parts were better but became unavailable because of the war effort, cold war, space war, etc (the best parts went to the military and nasa, seconds were available that had lower quality, usually lower hfe, some so low they would have been rejected). The Japanese asked to be able to produce parts under license (US said yes, US manufacturers also said yes as they didn't care since uncle sam was buying as much as they could produce). Japanese firms started to produce american licensed solid state transistors and ics. That's why you see in early gear, american produced solid state and in later gear Japanese produced solid state(sony, toshiba, sharp, panasonic, etc).
Today, most of the japanese firms that produced solid state are either out of that side of their business or bankrupts, with a few exceptions. American firms have merged and consolidated and Intel basically won the ic market (ready to loose it again by not focusing on small chipsets for smart phones and tablets). Chinese firms are emerging but their quality sucks (unfortunately, electronic manufacturers don't seem to care that thins fail right after the warranty).
There is a whole documentary (japanese made and multiple parts) that shows many facets of the start of the Japanese electronic industry (60s to 80s) where the Japanese manufacturers admit they were clueless and had no understanding of what the americans (who were very open) were talking about and were shocked at how many solutions americans could come up with for the same problem. They were also shocked at how open american corporations were to show every part of the manufacturing process which most companies kept secret (early silicon valley folks where fairchild employees would call Motorola, and visa versa, when they had a problem, like the men going to the bathroom problem)
 
I think the Japanese had more experience using SS components in stereo equipment when it was first taking over.
 
Early is not a vague qualifier in the context of the question. From strictly the consumer sound products point of view the period of time could only have been from 1963 or so with the beginning of the changeover from tubes and ending with the last US unit with total US only parts. Was there such a thing? So,,,,,

When was the last all US made SS main stream production unit built, and what was it?

And Northwinds my Sansui TR 707A sounds very impressive.
 
As technology in audio moved on, I think you can only compare early SS equipment if produced within 2 years or so if stuff is to be "judged"
 
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