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On Tuesday, October 20, 1998 at 4:00:00 PM UTC+9, David Anderson wrote:
Hi,

I don't want to start a price-flame war, but I'm simply curious as to why
Marantz 7 preamps command such high prices compared to other tube preamps
of their era.

I've looked at a schematic for the Marantz preamp, and it appears to me to
be a well-implemented, but fairly conventional, design. I have seen one
opened up for service, before, though I've never heard one in operation,
and the only unusual thing I noticed was the placement of the tubes. In
fact, it doesn't seem to differ too much in terms of circuit design from
the McIntosh C22 preamp, which I've seen offered at somewhat lower prices.

In fact, for $2-3K, it seems to me that you could build a really good
preamp--one that had far fewer switches in the signal path than the
Marantz 7 and one that had things like a stepped attenuator volume
control. For that matter, it wouldn't be hard to duplicate the Marantz
design. Power amps are harder to copy due to the output transformers, but
preamps are generally built from commonly available parts.

So, are the high prices just due to collectors value--the thrill one gets
from owning something with a certain name and number on it--or is there
something else that I'm missing?

Regards,
David Anderson

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When the buyers go crazy, the sellers go crazy to counter... Thats why the 7's are selling like crazy with unreasonably high prices