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Sony are they worth anything

mikebh50

pfm Member
Hi I have an elderly friend who has these Sony items that are no longer used as he does not have the room for them. they have been in storage so I would think they are sold as spares or repair . the amp has been tried but only worked on one channel as I was not there I can't say if this was a wiring error or there is a problem so is there a market for them and what they worth. Any advice greatly apricated.

Mike
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Sony kit is always decent, even the budget stuff. Very surprised to see silver-face kit of that era (late-70s/early-80s) not made in Japan though.
 
Definitely a market, even if in need of repair, though it isn’t high-end Sony. No idea of exact value, but you are certainly looking at a couple of hundred quid for the lot minimum on eBay.
 
That amp was the Sony response to the Pioneer SA-7500; matching the latter's 40W/ch plus adding those meters. S/N was a full 10dB better on both MM and line in too.

I'd be having that if it were local.
 
thanks Craig have been offered £80 from someone fairly local for the lot taking into account the possible problems and no fees or postage does that seem fair?

Mike
 
thanks Craig have been offered £80 from someone fairly local for the lot taking into account the possible problems and no fees or postage does that seem fair?

Mike
Yes, I'd say so. Untested, no aggro sale, sold as seen, buyer collects. Try for £100 but it's not ridiculously low. Tony's view that it would fetch £200 on Ebay is not shared by me. That's before you start with postage, scammers, courier damage and all that.
 
Personally I think the amp alone is worth more than £80, but packing and shipping that sort of thing is such a PITA that only you can decide what you want. I’ve certainly got stuff here that’s worth quite a bit (e.g. a Mk1 SL-120) but I can’t be bothered advertising it as I don’t want to either take a low-ball offer or have to pack it.
 
I differ from the consensus. I was selling Sony gear around 1980, which I think was its nadir time. The quality stuff from the seventies was long gone and it took a while for them to pull their socks back up. Cardboard back panels, shoddy build and general ugliness. We also had a by then elderly TC377 open reel in the shop at the time, and the difference in quality between that and the new electronics at the time was immense. On planet fiveamp the amp, tuner and tape deck are worthless, although what do I know, and maybe somebody with Sony tinted specs might fancy them. I like Sony gear generally, but not from that era. That CD player, on the other hand, looks rather interesting.
 
Certainly the quality dropped off in the ‘80s aside from the ES range, as it did with so many Japanese products that found their way to the UK. This was when the cheap black plastic facias, lightweight construction etc started to appear. I’d have thought the TA-F4A would predate that though. The only one I can find sold on eBay (link) went for £110, so I wasn’t far out with my guess. I googled-up a few pictures and it doesn’t look badly made, though not the battleship build of my early-70s TA-1140/ST-5150 amp and tuner.

As I mentioned above I was surprised to see the tuner and cassette were not made in Japan, that to me suggests these items were very much entry level. Piano keys on a cassette deck were pretty much gone by the late-70s too. I suspect the amp has potential though.
 
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I think my period in gainful employment back then was from about September 1979 to August 1980, but it was a while ago and now a bit fuzzy. It was only towards the end that we got a touch key cassette deck, I think maybe from JVC. All the others were piano keys. We did Marantz, Sony, Pioneer, JVC and Akai and maybe some more. After I left, I got from them, still with staff discount, a TEAC A430, still with piano keys, early in 1981, although touch keys were getting common by then.
 
I’ve got a ‘79 Sony TC-K6B in my ‘things that don’t quite work’ pile (which is mostly cassette decks) and that has soft-touch keys, but that was a pretty high-end job so might have been one of the very first. It is remarkably heavy and full of ‘stuff’. IIRC the model above (7B) had a wired-remote!
 
That’s definitely a generation later as it has a ‘metal’ tape option, so yes, piano keys obviously stuck around longer than I remember. I don’t think they arrived until some way into the ‘80s. The TC-K6B certainly hasn’t got it.

PS By saying all this the Marantz CP-230 journalist tape deck I had in the mid-80s had a mechanically switched (piano key) transport, as does the WM-D6C (kind of), so they was certainly a lot of overlap.
 
Hi thanks for all the comments and help these have now found a new home and hopefully will be given a new lease of life.

Many Thanks
Mike
 


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