A while back I was reading a forum thread on Audiogon about integrated amplifiers that had sparked quite a few entries. As “goners” made mention of and recommended several current and recent production units, one gentleman left glowing remarks about his beloved vintage Sansui. This was followed by a series of posts that amounted to head pats as the more “serious” audiophiles acknowledged their well meaning fellow poster and his fondness for his amp with a barely concealed condescending tone that implied that what they really thought was that there was NO WAY IN HELL that this guy’s vintage unit could compete with a modern one.
Not long after, a friend of mine suggested to me that a vintage unit could not only rival more modern amps but flat out beat them. If it weren’t for the fact that I had already adopted several of my friend’s other recommendations with surprisingly good results, I might have thought he was off his rocker and dismissed the idea entirely. After all, I’d spent about $7k in total on my CJ ET3 preamp and LP70S amp, somewhere in the ballpark of HALF of what both of these units would have cost new. Could a Japanese integrated from the 1970’s I’d likely pay well under $1k for come even close to competing with over $10k worth of CJ stuff? It seemed BEYOND improbable.
Needless to say when I started A/B testing a Sansui AU 7500 I bought on EBay against my Conrad Johnson tube gear I remained pretty skeptical. As many of these units do, the AU 7500 has a pre / main in / out so the preamp and amp can be used independently of each other. This allowed me to test how I liked the AU 7500’s amp with the line stage preamp of my ET3, as well as how I liked the AU 7500’s line stage preamp with my LP70S amp. The phono stage in the AU 7500 is terrible so I used the phono stage of my ET3 in all tests.
Skepticism aside, the prospect of making an upgrade in sound by replacing my beloved CJ gear with a relatively inexpensive vintage unit, allowing me to sell said gear for what was no doubt still a substantial price, was very appealing. Could it ACTUALLY be possible to upgrade my system and have thousands of extra dollars in my audio spending account left over to play with?
Having had tube gear for the better part of 3 decades, I was concerned that the change to solid state would be a difficult one. As it turns out, the AU 7500 has a fairly “tubey” sound as Japanese units from this era go, and that made the transition all the more easy and comfortable. Very early on I could hear that the sound of the Sansui was by no means a seismic shift from my CJ stuff, although a shift nonetheless.
Much to my surprise and delight, I ended up liking the Sansui AU 7500 a lot. But what was more unexpected than the fact that I liked it so much was that I liked it SO much better than my CJ gear. It didn’t take me long with each A / B test to confirm my clear preference for both the amp and the preamp units in the Sansui and begin thinking about which phono preamp I’d buy to pair with it.
My preference for the AU 7500 was based on hearing several improvements that all centered on one thing – MY BEST SOUNDING RECORDS SOUNDED EVEN BETTER!
For starters, my tests with the AU 7500 revealed a clear improvement in tonal accuracy. Every instrument sounded less colored and more natural. This reduction in coloration and improvement in tonality was one that I’d already begun to achieve with other changes I’d made in my system, particularly with wires and power cords. Thus when I introduced the Sansui amp and heard even more of these changes, it was easy to see this vintage unit was moving my system in the right direction.
Jazz records in particular benefited mightily from the improved tonality. The AU 7500 gave instruments a naturalness and “real-ness” I’d been missing with my tube gear. Horns had cleaner, clearer transient edges. Drums had more impact. Bass was better articulated and piano sounded weightier and more present. Overall every instrument on my best jazz records has a more “right there in the room” quality that made the performances more engaging.
The next thing that struck me about the Sansui was an increase in SIZE and OPENNESS of the soundstage. This was particularly apparent with large orchestral pieces. I was better able to appreciate the scale of these recordings, and I could hear more of the instruments, more clearly articulated and placed throughout the hall they were recorded in.
And with my better rock albums, drum kits and bass guitars sounded BIGGER and played with more ENERGY. In fact every instrument from the guitars to the vocals enjoyed an added size and energy that made the performances seem more live and lifelike.
But neither of the above improvements would have mattered that much if the Sansui had not delivered those improvement with the necessary TRANSPARENCY to reveal those performances convincingly. The AU 7500 is very transparent as these units go, certainly more transparent than my CJ stuff, and this was especially true at the lower end of the frequency range where tubes tend to sacrifice IMPACT and SOLIDITY for warmth and “tubeyness.”
In fact a major reason I found myself wanting to move toward solid state electronics in the first place was that I was starting to hear the way my tube gear was failing to resolve well in the lower frequencies. It’s the sort of thing that we tend to get used to in audio when we’re drawn to a particular sound, and I began to realize that that preference was not without significant drawbacks.
Don’t get me wrong, the sound of tubes is a special one and one that I still desire, it’s just that I’d rather have my tubes in the recording and/or mastering chain and not in my playback system. That “tubey” sound we tube lovers love is found on many of the best sounding records, and if it’s already on the records, do we really need MORE of it in our system?
In the end my answer to that question was a decided “No.” I moved the AU 7500 into the space the LP70S had occupied on my rack for several years and never looked back.
Would I recommend such a change to ANYONE? Not necessarily. The Sansui AU 7500 amp delivers a very modest 32 WPC into 8 ohms and may not provide enough power to drive every speaker, although I suspect it will work with more speakers that conventional wisdom might dictate.
The specs on my Verity Audio Parsifals indicate they are rated at 91 db efficiency and can run on as little as 18 watts, so they would seem a reasonable fit for the AU 7500. But specs can be misleading and ultimately, hearing is believing. The Sansui paired with my speakers was a convincing improvement in literally EVERY area of performance compared with my CJ gear, even with less than half the power.
I would recommend anyone contemplating adding a vintage unit consider their cabling. If you’re using balanced cables between your phono preamp and your current amp, you’d need to use adaptors and/or get a pair of unbalanced cables to connect to the AU 7500. Not a big deal but worth considering.
Perhaps more importantly, these 70’s era units have 70’s era speaker connectors and won’t work with bananas or spades. If you want to use one of these units with your typical “audiophile” speaker wire, you’ll need to remove the terminations. Or you can do what I did and just get some “conventional” speaker wire that you’d use without terminations. If you want suggestions on which wire to get and how to install it for the best performance, get in touch and I’ll let you know what I’d recommend.
But given how much we audiophiles tend to spend on electronics, even a modest curiosity about how good a vintage amp might sound in our system could easily be satisfied, given the relatively low price these units fetch. I think I paid $550 for my AU 7500, and I can see there are several for sale in the used marketplace right now starting at that price and going up from there.
It’s an unconventional approach to audio, there’s no question about that, but one that SHOULD NOT BE DISMISSED. Some of these low powered (between 25 and 50 wpc) 70’s era Japanese integrated amps and receivers have an uncanny way of delivering the subtle nuances found on the very best sounding records. Nuances, mind you, that higher powered amps often struggle to convey and the conveyance of which, or lack thereof, can mean the difference between a record that just sounds good and one that sounds STUPENDOUS!
Increasingly it seems to me that a lot of the gear out there these days is built to compensate for the common flaws in the modern record, “audiophile” and otherwise. Bloated bass and hyped up highs are not just features of many modern records, but of much of the audio gear out there these days used to play them, especially the wires. Therefore most systems need more work to get out of this trap than simply adding a vintage amp.
So whether you will ultimately like a good Japanese vintage unit in your system will depend on what’s in the rest of your system, AND on what records you play on it. The better of these vintage amps have a VERY neutral sound that will reproduce the content on your records with a level of accuracy you may be unaccustomed to with your modern gear. If you play a lot of 180 or 200g modern releases and reissues, for example, you will likely find that these types of records sound worse to you with a vintage unit because it may make their shortcomings more obvious.
The good news is that many of your vintage records will sound much better with vintage electronics, and you’ll have a blast digging through the lesser played parts of your collection and finding some real gems you didn’t even know you had. And of course, if you want some help finding some TRULY KILLER sounding records that will sound great with a vintage unit, feel free to reach out to me.
In conclusion, I’d say that of the many options for lower powered vintage 70’s era Japanese integrated amplifiers and receivers available in the used market these days, the Sansui AU7500 is worthy of serious consideration. Is it the best one out there? I’m not sure it is nor do I think it matters. The best of these units out there will be the one that sounds the best with your system and that will depend a lot on how well it matches with your speakers. Therefore the only way to find out which of these units is best is to start by buying one and testing it.
Will the Sansui AU 7500 sound better than other current or recently manufactured electronics? In some cases absolutely it will! That was my experience and I’d be surprised if others don’t have a similar one. In fact, with the RIGHT records and the RIGHT system, the sound of the AU 7500 will be surprising improvement over many other amps costing far more.