Most Underrated/Overrated Component or Brand

Another question. What in your opinion, is the most underrated vintage component or brand?

Just for fun, what about the most overrated brand or component?

Over the past year or so I have been listening to and restoring several Yamaha receivers, tuners, and amplifiers from the late 70s and 80s. I am impressed. They would get my vote for under rated. I have trolled the internet long enough to know that a number of people are in agreement. Examples would include the T-85 tuner, AX-900 integrated amp and even the lowly CR-820 receiver.

Hey,
My vote for most under-rated vintage brand would have to go to Kenwood. Fantastic build quality in every piece I've ever owned, and I've never had one give me electronic problems to boot. Ever. Both Kenwood receivers I've had the pleasure of owning cost me less than ten bucks, and both are still working flawlessly to this day, despite all the abuse my roommates and I have been able to throw at them. Not so much as a burnt out light.
And of course they made some of the most respected (no longer underrated I suppose) tuners of all time, but I really like their amps and the KD-500 turntable I'm still using.
As far as overrated, my vote in the realm of vintage would have to go to (prepare the flamethrowers!) Marantz. Despite their apparent build quality, I've never found so many units with electronic issues among any other brand as I have with them. They sure look pretty, and their older gear (like the oldest 22xx series receivers, and I'm sure the ones before them as well) is among the most reliable I've come across, but the same unfortunately can't be said for their later models, in my experience. Don't know and can't explain why, but I can tell you I'm not the only person I know who feels that way.

my opinions (FWIW)...

Most under-rated: EICO (although people are, unfortunately, catching on)

Most over-rated: Marantz (at least the Superscope era, post-Saul Marantz) and McIntosh

hmmmm

Underrated: Onkyo

Overrated: Pioneer (Not that they are a bad product, but they just got/get so much attention.) The two I have owned are good for Rock, but lack...something...in terms of jazz, acoustic, and classical.

To comment on people saying Marantz is overrated, I think that most vintage folks know which series to avoid. If we take into account just the classic Marantz units, I would say they deserve their excellent reputation.

My 2 cents...

Dave

Hey nukem maybe the reason Marantz (post 22XX series) is lacking is that by early 1980 Marantz had been acquired by Philips of the Netherlands and was no longer interested in high quality gear. Philips took Marantz in a mass market direction,retaining the classic looks ( gyro tuning ) but skimping everywhere else. The prices on ebay of 80's Marantz gear reflect how apparent this is to any Marantzaphile. Of course, Marantz has since moved up market again but I can't vouch for their quality now.


Overrated: That would be ANYTHING with Dr.Bose's name on it. From the $2,000 WAVE radio to his bassless crappy wall of sound 901's. If you can't beat em with brains, baffle em with bullshit. If Bob Carver could market like Bose he'd be Bill Gates by now.

Mike

Most underrated, in no particuler order:

Luxman
Yamaha
Rotel

Most overrated:
Hummm, certain models of the brand name starting with S are overated in my ofthen misguided opinion....

Lefty

In the 1970's when I was kid and droooled over glossy ads in magazines, desirability was in this order, from the top down:

for amps/receivers/tuners/tape


mcintosh
tandberg
luxman
nakamichi
sansui
marantz
hk
kenwood
yamaha
pioneer
sony
rotel
...
everybody else
...


for tt

Thorens
Denon
Lux

for speakers

Quad ESL
Tannoy
AR


Brits were out of the radar, because of plasticky feel and low wattage.


There were some excellent products from companies struggling to
make a dent in marantz-pioneer-sansui dominated market, but not enough people paid any attention. Their TOTL models are worth considering.

For example:

Philips Lab
Hitachi
JVC
scott
onkyo


Now, 20+ years later and numerous systems wiser, I can compare units on their merit, not marketing hype and peer pressure.

And the vote goes to:

most overrated: marantz XXXX models (have two)
most underrated: kenwood (have two)


Can someone tabulate results after a while?

In reply to my own question, I thought I would suggest a few names.

As far as overrated, I would have to agree with an earlier post that Bose is by far and away the most overrated line of products out there. Brilliantly marketed to the mass market consumer who does not know much about audio, but just wants convenient sound, Bose is hugely overpriced as well as underperforming.

Another too-easy target I suppose would be Sony, excluding certain members of their occasionally excellent ES line. I will not ever again by anything Sony made after the early 1990's. Like Bose, their price is totally unjustified considering the mediocre performance and criminally bad reliability. Also, Polk Audio and Infinity have really taken a dive to me compared to their sound quality first approach in the 70's and up to the early 80's.

Underrated brands include Onkyo (one of the best kept secrets at Circuit City *L*), vintage JVC -- especially their cassette decks and turntables which are indestructable, ADS speakers which trounce B&W's (IMHO) for the price and in most areas of performance. Paradigm speakers are one of the best speaker bargains going today, espcially the Reference Series. Very high performance at a moderate cost.

Just a few of my suggestions. Keep the replies coming.

Underrated:
Luxman -- I have two cassette decks, a K-210 and the one with the motorized faceplate. The motorized one (forget the model #) is absolutely stuffed to the gills with circuitry and layers of boards.
Rotel -- understated design but very smooth sounding
Yamaha -- at least until 1978. Later Yamaha's are a bit plasticy (CR-x40 etc)

Overrated:
Bose (duh)
Marantz (flameproof suit on) -- the script makes the controls hard to read and looks well....tacky.

The reason that Sony has failed miserably starting in the late 90's has to do with a single event -- the retirement of the founder. Just like Wal-Mart (strangely transitioning the same time frame), the founder was the only thing keeping the bean-counters from taking over the company and sucking the ethics and soul out of it. There's more money to be made in the mass market of things. Make more items cheaply, then take the golden parachute when you can!

It's all about profit now, boys!

This is about "vintage" gear, right? ......... And I'm basing this on 1960's and 70's SS stuff.

Of course, I disagree with the notion that Marantz is over rated.

I have worked on, and owned, about every VINTAGE (1960's and 70's) brand mentioned, Marantz has been right up near the top in quality.

Last time I tried to recount how many pieces (all brands) I've had, I'd say about 350

Boze isn't vintage is it? (but it is overated, and over priced)

Maybe it's just the ones I've had, but most of the Yamaha needed lots of repairs, to get them to so all functions work.

Vintage Pioneer and Sansui have been good in my experience.

Some underated brands of vintage gear is Rotel, Hitachi, Onkyo, and Kenwood.

Clearly, vintage McIntosh is over priced and over rated.
(based on the five or six pieces I've had, they don't produce better sound than most others, especially for the mega $$)

In the 80's and later, most consumer brands went down hill.

The "newest" vintage piece I've got is the Allied tube receiver.
Just a real nice working unit, ....a brand that I've never any experience with before.

I think it really depends on how a PARTICULAR unit preforms for you.
If you get a Marantz that needs work, then your not wild about Marantz.
If you get a Marantz, and it works super, never needing work, then you do like Marantz.

And I think to some extent you can insert any brand name in the above two sentences.

I'd say it is more about certain models more than

Most Overrated: Sansui G22000, many people drool over the looks of this beast, but several people here have owned this big (expensive) receiver and were unimpressed

Most Underrated: Pioneer SX-1010.

Chris

Hey,
Just a quick clarification to add to my previous reply (which was done late at night!):
First, to ProacFan, when I write about 'the oldest 22xx series of receivers', I am specifically referring to the 2230, 2245, and 2270 models, which as I understand it were capacatively coupled (unlike all their 'newer' vintage models), and of which I have never personally seen a single one malfunctioning. The even older models than these would be the 18/19/22, and other double-digit ones. The 'newer' models I'm referring to are not the models made by Marantz after they were bought by Philips, but rather the 2220, 2250, 2275, 2325, etc. The equipment they built during this era didn't live up to the extremely high standards that their previous models set, IMHO. Sorry, I should have been more specific!
As for Shain's comment,

I think it really depends on how a PARTICULAR unit preforms for you. If you get a Marantz that needs work, then your not wild about Marantz. If you get a Marantz, and it works super, never needing work, then you do like Marantz.

Click to expand...

I would definitely agree at least partly with that statement. I own at least one piece of Marantz gear that I will never willingly part with, my 20 tuner (one of the best of all time IMO). Then again, I've owned numerous Marantz products that have let me down, even different units of the same model! For example, I've owned five or six 125/115/115b tuners, and all of them had problems. Same with the receivers; my 2230, until I stupidly sold it last year, was the best receiver I'd ever owned, bar none. However, I've owned several 2215/2220s and their variants, and they all had problems as well. I've never seen a more issue-prone receiver than the 2325, although I've also heard the opinion expressed many times that this exact model is among the best-sounding, and most reliable!
Great thread topic; something I'm getting more and more used to on this board!

C'mon Lefty- Sherwood made some nice products and Sony too

Technics - Never gets any respect, I own an SA500 reciever and like it every bit as much as the vintage Sansuis and the Pioneer recievers and Int. amps I've owned, I also prefer it's looks over all of them.

Cerwin Vega - Has made so much crap that it is understandable why they get no respect, almost as bad as Bose. But they have made some outstanding stuff too as those few of us who happen to have the gems they have produced can attest.

Thor;

Dude, it's hard to take anything you post serious as long as you have your flopping tits working..... :

Lefty

BeatleFred;

Hard to get anything past you street smart New Yorker types

PS: + their service manuals still suck

Lefty

Well, since there has been a couple of attacks on McIntosh, I'll chime in. If it ain't McIntosh, its second best at most.

Bose, over rated, nope - it probably did more for the audio industry than any other brand since it taught so many what bad sound can be. It set a standard for all other speakers to matched against.

Any company that can't design a stable amp into 4 ohms just doesn't make it so wipe out Marantz.

Most overrated - just about any totl receiver from the power war period. Most under rated - just about any of the smallest powered receivers from the same period - amazingly how many of these actually sound so much better than their big brute brothers.

LET THE FLAME WARS ENSUE! Hi guys.

Actually, what do we mean by under rated and over rated. In terms of dollars of resale value, sound quality, to a collector, to a user? I started to seriously respond and that had to stop. If price vs performance then ppossibly something like the KLH 27. Beautifully built; great pedigree, I love the looks but the sound is almost horrendous new out of the box. And these go for big dollars in relation to so many other units. If price is the criteria, without regard for performance then what about the Marantz 10b. A great tuner, expensive and high maintenance. For 80% less we all can thow out a tuner than sonically comes very close in quality.

Under rated. Believe it or not, I will pick some of the McIntosh products especially the 1st and 2nd generation ss and all of the ss preamp/tuners. Great products with an ability to convey feeling in the music almost unmatched by any other ss equipment. Admittedly, for ss lovers too close to a tube sound and for tube lovers too much of a crossover sonically to ss. Darned from either perspective. Yes more expensive than say a Pionee or JVC, etc. But look - either persons love them or hate them, doesn't seem to be many with a middle of the road feeling.

Also, under rated are the US produced ss units from Scott and Fisher. Funny, for the tubies, Sherwood is the underdog to these companies for the vintage crowd while with the ss lines, Sherwood seems to get the more attention.

Originally posted by Brian
Well, since there has been a couple of attacks on McIntosh, I'll chime in. If it ain't McIntosh, its second best at most.

Click to expand...

:thmbsp:

Overrated: Bose.

Underrated: Stuff from the early 80's. My Sansui Z-9000 is a very nice sounding receiver. It beats a lot of nice stuff I have from the 70s, but it looks ugly and kind of cheap (on the outside, at least.)