Sansui AU-6500 - Vintage Delight

All,

I had planned to use the old Cambridge P110 I got off Steve (7_V) for the second system, but an opportunity came up to buy an old but mint (one lady owner for thirty years, regularly used, but gently driven ) Sansui AU-6500 integrated. Built like the proverbial brick outhouse and features aplenty, 32W, seperate Pre/Power sections, 2 phono inputs/aux/tuner, high/low filters, loudness, tone and balance controls.

I must admit I was attracted by the looks and build quality, which would put to shame much modern stuff and makes vintage Brit gear of a similar vintage look like it was knocked together in a garden shed (mind you I suspect some of it was). Beautiful aluminium surround and a black fascia with superbly weighted black and aluminum knobs (and very tidy inside - big transformer, two big reservoir caps and no PCBs here). I wasn't expecting it to be any great shakes soundwise though, but thought it worth a whirl ... how naive.

I cleaned all the connections last night and fed it some sounds from the Spacedeck and then from the Rotel into my Kefs. Frankly I'm shocked at just how good it sounds - surely it has no right to sound this good. Overall its a beautifully relaxed, gorgeously sweet sounding amp, though not warm or woolly at all - a dose of Dusty through it made me almost melt. Bass goes plenty low, perhaps a smidge fluffier than the Densen, but not bad all the same.

The phono stage is a lot quieter than the one in the Densen. The top end seems a smidge rolled off in comparison but still plenty of detail. The CD playback suggests that its the phono stage where the top end may be limited rather than the amp itself, but its still pretty damned good.

I have to say it makes one wonder exactly where the improvements have been in the past 30 years and whether some improvements were improvements at all .

Down to brass tacks though - this is definitely going to be the second system amp - it performs flawlessly, all the knobs and switches work without any noise or problem, but its 30 years old - can I expect caps etc to fail? How easy will they be to replace if they do? (schematics are still available for this amp, should help I guess).

PS. Steve - you said if I ever wanted to get rid of the P110, you might want it back, yours if you want it else I'll have to find it a new home some time in the new year.