Vintage Marantz 3300/3600 preamps

The Marantz 3300 was among the best-built preamplifiers available. I love how this one looks.

I am quite familiar with both. I owned both and my father sold them in his stores in the early & mid 70's. For the time period they were nice units. However the sliders and the volume control would get very scratchy and noisey.

If you buy one of these check the tone control sliders and the volume pot for scratchy noise. You may need to blow out the pots and give them a good cleaning.

Regarding their sound quality, many of todays units will sound much, much better. If you are into vintage and 70's coolness, go for it!

Thanks for the response. The Yamaha P 2200 is rated at over
220 watts per side. This is the older vintage model with
meters.
I don't think I'm going to pursue a vintage Marantz preamp
now. I borrowed a Hafler series 915 preamp from a friend this
weekend. Not the greatest sounding preamp by any means, but it did expose flaws in the the Marantz 1090 pre section:
Nasally midrange and dirtier sounding.The speed and more rock solid sounding Hafler wins out. I would be concerned about a
Marantz 3600/3800 pre doing the same thing,unless it was
worked on and brought up to spec. Am I mistaken?

Your Marantz 1090 is 45W+45W & the Yamaha P2200 is 100W+100W into 8 ohm speakers. I recomend bi-amping and yes, discreet preamps are better. Use a Marantz 3800 if available, otherwise try the 3600. By the way, your ears would be the best judge of better sound. As these models are old, keep in mind that dry caps can make one model sound better than the other.