Marantz 4300 receiver sterile 2+Quadradial 4

[Driftwood]

Am looking for advice, have just inherited a Marantz as above , and don't know anything about it , looking for help and advice on how to use it , also don't have an instruction manual ,can anyone help, thanks

[paulsherwin]

https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_li...ntz/4300.shtml

Beautiful bit of kit, but a handful for a beginner. It will almost certainly need some basic servicing, such as cleaning all the pots and switchgear. There may also be some bad electrolytic capacitors by now too.

You could always sell it on 'as found' and untested, though it's a big lump to post.

[Edward Huggins]

Media sources for 4CH will be hard to locate now, so it could just be used as a straight stereo receiver. It's very well built, but also it's 45 years old.....so what are your plans for it? What experience do you have of using and servicing these (quite complex) vintage receivers?

['LIVEWIRE?']

You have to register with HiFi engine, which is free and only takes a couple of minutes, after which you can download documents from their site, including the very informative User instruction manual for the above model, which explains how to connect speakers and external sound sources, etc., and how to operate the unit.

[Radio Wrangler]

The manufacturer's user manual will tell you a lot about that unit but will completely miss some of the most important facts about the systems it relies on.

It will tell you that you need four speakers to go with it, and being an up-market model, it will helpfully illustrate it with four of the most expensive model from that manufacturer. Meanwhile in the real world, most people used their best speakers for the front pair and relegated the also-rans to the rear positions.

There were four sorts of sources of quadraphonic material:

"SQ Matrix" this was the system used on CBS records and Sony dominated the hardware. It 'worked' by combining true 4-channel material into two channels by phase shifting them and mixing them together. Listening to it back in the day, I can testify that occasionally odd sounds came form odd directions. But it basically doesn't work. You get a bit of an ambience effect.

"QS Matrix" system was the opposing one with hardware by Sansui. It too didn't work.

"CD-4 Discrete Quadrophonic" Really DID work. It used special cartridges, styli and very careful record cutting to carry extra signals shifted to much higher frequencies than normal records carry. RCA did the records and JVC was the original hardware maker. They did records that placed you in the middle of the orchestra, ones that had planes, trains and suchlike zooming past around you. Unfortunately the records wore out - the high frequency extra channels degraded with playing and the records became effectively stereo.

The whole quadraphony business died out. It deserved to.

If the above wasn't enough, the real killer punch was that each record label picked one system. Artists were tied to record labels. So for every listener, their favourite artists were spread across the different systems. Even if the systems had worked they couldn't all win, so they all lost.

Treat what you've got as something which will give you a pleasant ambience effect and enjoy it. But don't bust a gut trying to get records cartridges etc to re-create what there was in the seventies. I'm pretty certain you won't think it worth it.

The remaining quadraphonic source was multi-track tape. It works very well and doesn''t have the CD-4 record's wear-out mechanism. Finding tapes would be very difficult, but they could be duplicated relatively easily.

I suspect that most of these amplifiers still producing 4-channel sound are doing so from audio from computer sound cards.

David