It worked, sort of, on initial power up on the variac, but was very shakey with a channel imbalance and very dirty controls. The tuning capacitor was especially noisy, sounding like raking gravel. Here how it looks with the top off:
This is a two board unit with the upper being the tuner. The Toshiba outputs are mounted on the very simple heatsink mounted vertically just in front of the transformer. In the photo above it runs from the left to the middle of the unit. There is very little power supply capacitance, just 3 1000 mfd caps just in front of the heatsink. The phono section is shielded and just to the left of the internal antenna. The shield was removed when this photo was taken.
I re-capped the entire unit, a mere 36 caps, and spritzed the controls. Voila! The sound was clean as a whistle. While not exactly a power house the amp had lots of life from the positively cute Toshiba output transistors. The FM tuner was surprisingly sensitive and picked up numerous stations without benefit of an antenna. The AM section was decent with the internal ferrite antenna. No 'not a handle' warnings needed for this unit. Here is a view of the front.
The sound was surprisingly musical. The treble control was a bit heavy handed; bass and loudness were a bit bloomy in quality but serviceable. All in all this would have been a sonic bargain in 1973 from one of the finest of the era's manufacturers. Mated with efficient speakers this would be the perfect foundation for a vintage dorm room system.
12 comments:
Nice article Nat! Love those Sansui's.
What a net find. Had this amp as a hand-me-down from my dad during the 90's when I was in high school. Was connected to my computer via my good old Sound Blaster 16. This amp used to rock hard on Nirvana CD's and other alternative of the era. Ah, good old days.
Balance control is a ring at base of volume knob.
I bought this unit in 1973 when the unit was a used one-year old unit. It served me well in college and on and off up to today. I recently cleaned the volume control which had gotten scratchy. After cleaning the unit sounds like a charm paired with a set of small JBL bookshelf speakers. The tuner is very sensitive. The volume control is combined as one for both the left and right channels through dual rings. Mine are stuck but that is ok for me. I am using the aux for the CD player and the "tape in" for as my auxiliary for my MP3 input so the tape monitor taggle becomes my switch for the MP3 source. It is a simple unit but the sound is excellent for normal home use.
Don't be so critical of it.even with only ten watts this Sansui sounds far better than today's new electronics.
Don't be so critical of it.even with only ten watts this Sansui sounds far better than today's new electronics.
Thanks ! Just bought absolutely mint condition Sansui 210 - all is as left from factory ! Must re-cap and new lamps too. Lovely equipment.
Thinking about buying a reconditioned unit for £60,just not sure on whether the power will be enough for what I want.
It just depends on loudspeakers sensitivity and room size - acoustics . Good for jazz or classical music.
"Lowest powered" award likely goes to their 221. 8WPC into 8 ohms. I've had one since new. A bit noisy but still running, on and off.
The Sansui 210 was the first stereo receiver I ever bought new back in the early 70s. I loved it paired with first KLH 32s then KLH 17s later. I think I paid $129 for it a discount appliance/stereo store. Sansui truly was a top brand back then but the lure of Marantz won me over and a couple years after the Sansui I sold it to buy a new Marantz 2230. I just bought a nice 210 on ebay to replace a Pioneer SX-636 in my workshop and am looking forward to new LEDS, recapping, and cleaning it.
The Sansui 200 receiver from 1971 is actually their lowest powered unit at 5 wpc. Way below my 9090DB but I like it a lot. Mine has the best looking wood case of any of my receivers and it pairs nicely with my Sansui SP-30 speakers (also Sansui's smallest).
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