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National Panasonic - Before Technics ...

Nice little amplifier - a friend used to have one. You now need to buld up the rest of the system, inlcuding the tuner, the cassette deck, the turntable and the black and white video monitor!
 
Bloody hell, I'd forgotten about National Panasonic, my dad bought a NP music system in the late 70's.

Always used to make me chuckle as a kid because the label on the back said Matsushita.

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The SU-2300 was a very modern looking integrated amp for the mid-70s and more or less started the mini component market. It also harked back to a time when a hare's breath below 1% THD was considered acceptable (at least on budget models), and all the better sounding these were for it, as they weren't strangled by OTT amounts of negative feedback.

The only thing that was rather 'hokey' about this amp was that the apparent heat sinks on the side were only just for show, the matching tuner had them too. The amplifier output modules were fastened to central sinks within the chassis.

This model actually straddled the branding between National Panasonic and Technics...

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The SU-2300 was a very modern looking integrated amp for the mid-70s and more or less started the mini component market. It also harked back to a time when a hare's breath below 1% THD was considered acceptable (at least on budget models), and all the better sounding these were for it, as they weren't strangled by OTT amounts of negative feedback.

That's very interesting thanks. I'm going to take the lid off and take some photos of the inside. I happened to come across this by chance so I'm not planning to keep it - perhaps sell it on to an enthusiast at some point. For now I may as well have a good listen to judge the competence of this amp (using an appropriate pair of sensitive speakers). I do like the volume control - you can feel the steps in the control as you dial it round which has a nice tactile feel to it. I don't expect much SQ wise but it's a nice little semi-compact box which I'm going to take for a spin.
 
Assuming that it functions properly, I think you'll be surprised how good a little 10w/ch from this period can sound.

Then again, you had that Philips 520 integrated for a while last year, didn't you?

Regardless, I'd reserve judgement until after giving it the usual spit wash and enough time for the wee power supply caps to reform (assuming it hasn't been in use for a while).


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As I recall Panasonic & Technics ran side by side in the Matsushita empire with similar product ranges where Technics was the better quality product. They then seemed to focus on the Panasonic brand with AV taking priority over hi-fi in the UK market & challenging Sony. I have no recollection of the the National Panasonic brand but I did not get involved in hi-fi until 1975 so maybe before my time.
 
Assuming that it functions properly, I think you'll be surprised how good a little 10w/ch from this period can sound.

Then again, you had that Philips 520 integrated for a while last year, didn't you?

Yes the 520 was an amazing looking amp - but it was faulty - so I sold it on (as faulty).
 


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