Many thanks John for your excellent work on my 1979 Pioneer SX-980 Receiver.
The Pioneer had begun to show it’s age and over time you don’t really notice the slow degradation in the sound. Along with some repairs and fixes required I was in two minds about what to do, buy new or refurbish the Pioneer. Searching for months, it was a struggle to find someone to entrust the work to but through recommendation from Retrotech Audio in Caterham, John was happy to take on the task.
I am so pleased I was encouraged to refurbish rather than buy a replacement. In fact John suggested I had the repairs sorted out, then to refurbish and upgrade, replacing the aged and degraded components to the power supply, amplifier, protection circuit and tuner. This would give me many more years of the warm and detailed sound I’d grown to love. The result has been excellent, much better than I expected, maybe better than it’s ever sounded. Brighter, cleaner, bigger, more detail and alive. A little like a door has been opened. These late seventies, early eighties Japanese amplifiers and receivers were beautifully designed and built. Now the refurbishment has given back it’s sound quality to match it’s glamorous looks.
There were a lot of man-hours in this job so I’m very pleased I gave the project to an expert like John Samson and that he encouraged me to go for the fixes, refurbishment and upgrade that will give me another 35 years of fun.
Pioneer Receiver SX-980 lives on
Michael Jeffrey