Is it worth refurbishing my tube Marantz?

When your Marantz pieces come back from L&M, put them up on an auction on Audiogon or Ebay. I'm sure you'll be very pleased at the response. Don't worry, you'll recover your $500!

Forget what these guys are saying, just give them to me.

Seriously these are great investments to keep, if like you say they were looked after and carefully stored, they could be in great condition. BUT!!! I would not just plug them in and switch them on.

These could be in great condition component wise . As they have been in storage for a long time I would get someone who knows what their doing to bring them both on very slowly from (monitoring a few parameters like bias etc) 0vac to full mains 110volts going back to 0 every 20 volts over a period of an hour or so till you get to 110vac, using a big arse variac.

This will slowly condition things, mainly the capacitors, and even the tubes to a degree. Instead of giving everything a shock with full mains volts instantly.

Or like I said you could just give them to me.

Cheers George

They are beautiful pieces and yes if they do nice work I recommend you get them fixed. The filter caps in the preamp and the amp will need to be replaced. The selenium rectifier on the preamp will need to be replaced as well. The output transformers on the 8B are some of the best. They were designed by the late Sid Smith.

Buconero117,
I believe that modern valve designs are not advanced to the vintage ones. Practically no difference in at least performance. The only difference is PRICE.
Vintage units such as HH Scott, Fisher and Marantz can bring same level of performance for much less.

Ancient equipment is only a collectors play, not really meant for actually listening. The classic ancient designs have found their way into modern knocks off, Cayin and VAS does many of these, and does them well with SOTA parts. So, if you want to actual listen, take that route.

In any case look at the tubes inside. Sid used the telefunken ecc803s in many of these and the tubes inside may match the value of the 7C.

dave

It will always make sence as it will have value as longs as vacuume tubes are available.
For some reason with absense of good quality semiconductors, the vintage solid state electronics are completely devalued while tube units still have due to the parts availability.

08-11-14: Atmasphere
If you plan to sell it you are probably better off selling it without rebuilding and let the new owner deal with that issue.

Great point. Depending on what is done during the refurb, the compromised originality that may result could easily reduce value considerably more than the performance improvement might increase it.

Also, be aware that with highly collectable pieces such as the Marantz tube models, cosmetic condition will often affect value to a much greater degree than functional condition.

Regards,
-- Al

You're kidding right? Vintage tube Marantz is always in high demand. Especially the pieces you have that are from the 1960's.

Still crying about selling my Marantz 7C!

Its also nice sounding equipment and if properly refurbished does as good as many new pieces.

Unless you really don't want the equipment its definitely worth fixing. Just make sure you have it done by someone that does good work otherwise the value up the gear will be damaged.

If you plan to sell it you are probably better off selling it without rebuilding and let the new owner deal with that issue.

a quick ebay search on those 2 pieces shows they are selling
for $2000 - $3500 for the 8b, and as much as $5000 for the 7c
in great condition. I didn't see what they sell for in
"needs work" condition, but would expect them to
also bring 4 digit sales unless they are trashed (which it
doesn't sound like yours are.

If it was me, I would have them refurbed and hang on to them
since they were your father's, unless I really needed the
money and didn't really play music that much.