The simple answer is that there is no one brand that has been on top forever. In the 1960’s it was Fisher, in the 1970’s it was Marantz, in the 1990’s & 2000’s who knows… And that is based on desirability and consumption. Virtually every audio manufacturer had exceptional components at one time or another. Yes, even Sanyo, RCA, Zenith, GE, & Sears had top notch offerings in equipment. Today it’s basically a crap shoot, you acquire old stuff it will need restoration and alignment and then maybe it will work as designed. Until something else breaks, and it always happens. Even when you have replaced everything there is always something that goes South. Things you wouldn’t expect such as an on/off volume control or a knob cracks in half, or a stream of white smoke shoots out of the vent/cage. For absolutely no reason other then it is old and tired. Even when you restore, many of the “new” parts are of inferior quality. I estimate 25% of the “new” parts are simply poor substitutes and have a short shelf life. Components such as New tubes and twist-loc can capacitors simply Suck… it’s quite frustrating sometimes. You buy new equipment it’s quite underwhelming with loads of plastic and cheesy switches and controls. Sound quality is not wonderful for most of the new audio equipment unless you spend a small fortune and buy esoteric components such as McIntosh. Go ahead, look at their prices online, if it wasn’t real it would be considered comical. Is it their phone # or the price of one component? I know quite a few well off people who have varied interests and class. They live in big beautiful homes and drive exotic cars and also go on major vacations. Not one of them would spring for a 15-20 grand amplifier although they have wrist watches that cost double and triple that figure. I don’t even see this equipment in professional athletes homes. Who buys this stuff?
To be honest with you I am in a little bit of a funk here. I just powered up an old Dynaco ST-70 two channel tube amp and one of the output transformers went up in smoke. This is the problem with old equipment, it’s not new, lol… I have a couple of chassis that still have output trans…time to scavenge and also find the problem.
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