If I honestly personally comment, I hope my findings, or opinions of the Marantz 2330B won't discourage, or dishearten you.
I've had two of them, yes, two 2330B recievers, Both were in mint condition. I owned the pair about 8-9 years ago. In all, I've owned 9 vintage Marantz Recievers, my very first, was a brand new Maratz 4400 Quad Unit, which set me back $1200 back in '74. Six months later, the CRT Display burned out, and i dumped it, for McIntosh gear.
First, I'll say the good things I personally found. Firstly, this Marantz reciever, like many others, is a quite beautiful looking reciever. With all the nice lights, the beautiful craftsmanship, brushed Dial Face, and beautiful Knobs, this is one very pretty reciever. Most will agree, Marantz had virtually no peer in the reciever dept.
A very heavy reciever, yet, once one picks up a 100 watt vintage McIntosh Amp, you'll then quickly see some differences!
As for sonics, I found both 2330B recievers to be sort of bland, monotonic, not very musical, not very dynamic, and seemed also have rolled off high frequency response.
And these were both tried with my JBL L-65 Jubal Speakers, which IMO are in no way lacking in thier high frequency response performance, with thier 077 Tweeters.
The triad of Tone controls on the 2330B seemed to have no likeable, or usable setting. Once one started to try to dial in better sound, it seemed the sound only got worse from there. Dead flat on all the Tone Controls actually seemed better sounding, than by dialing in any sort of compensation with them, to make up for the shortcomings I previously note.
Did the Reciever have power (wattage) Well, yes it did, but as an old saying goes, and I'll apply it to this reciever, if the first watt doesn't sound good, what good is another 129 watts? In truth, this reciever, somwehat reminded me of a cheap Circuit City Emerson Reciever, I once bought for my mother years ago.
I quickly sold both 2330B's, and moved on.
Of the 9 Marantz recievers i owned, and the ones I thought possessed the sweetest sound, and seemed to be what Marantz was known, and admired for, was a perfect, mint 2265 that I once bought on Ebay, from a woman, for $108, and it was a beauty. Superb FM section as well.
An the other, which i would say was the finest of all the Marantz Recievers I ever owned-had in my possession, and also ever heard, from any other sources, was a absolute dead mint 2285B Black Face Euro Version. I won that one as well from ebay, and in fact, i won the auction on my birthday. I paid $400 for that reciever, and paid an additional $200 off auction site, to the seller, for it's matching companion, a mint Black Face Euro 5025 Cassette Deck.
If you should be curious to see what those two Units looked like, if you can find Ben Blish's vintage Marantz site, and Database, there you will see my attributed-donated pics of the Black Face 2285B, and its 5025 Cassette Deck brother.
Ben's site is pretty cool, and any Marantz Fan should have his site Bookmarked!
As for what Recievers that I like better than the afofmentioned Marantz, others I look highly upon, where the Sansui Eight-Eight Deluxe, the Sansui 7070, 8080, 9090, the G-8000, G-9000, and any other big "G" Series Sansui's.
I always felt, and this opinion is usually shared by many others as well, that Sansui had better designed, and more "usable" tone controls. Marartz was sort of odd in this regard with many of thier Recievers. Mark