Help selecting Pioneer Elite used receiver

@nebulae ,

There are quite a few of the Pioneer Elite series showing up on EBay as refurbished, so at least someone thinks they are still repairable.

Given the constraints or your question and the relatively low cost of any of your choices, I suggest you go for the newest version of the TXH series that you can afford.  These were known for reasonably good SQ in their price range and a long (though now a bit outdated) features list.  Your cost risks ( initial and depreciation) are low and the unit may end up lasting longer than you expect.

Refurbished is just a gimmick.

From what I can tell the 80TXV is the latest and the 56TXI originally the most expensive. You won't be able to get them repaired unless you have a nearby hobbyist and it's something simple like a parts exchange, but all these are likely to be and stay in good order for a long time. Pioneer receivers sound good and are reliable but at some point they really began gimping the EQ; also not sure many of these will have separate speaker crossover points.

You could go through manuals.lib to compare their specs, focusing on DACs, transformers, etc. If it turns out you do require newer feature sets I'd recommend a current brand new Sony with Atmos 7.2 at about the same cost. Otherwise there's also canuckaudiomart.com for more choices.

Thanks a lot to everyone for the detailed responses. This is great advise. I had no idea that repairing older av receiver model is difficult and hard to find parts. How are these AV receivers different from vintage stereo units like preamp/power amp separates? I had my vintage preamp and power amp re-capped last year. How is that different from re-capping surround receivers? 

The guy selling the VSX-94 TXH said the MSRP on the unit was $2000 back in 2008, does that mean it is high end for that year? Expensive units seem to have low THD like under 0.1% for entire 20 hz to 2k hz freq response. I don't know if that something to consider for superior sound quality.

also some units they post ad saying the unit has huge toroidal transformer, I believe that is something worth considering right?

Thanks again to everyone for the feedback.

I had one of the OP choices, can’t remember which, cost me about $200 used 10 years ago.  Used it for 5 years with no issue.  My son has it now and no issues