What is there to say about the 2270 that hasnt already been said? Lol its great! Ive has several of them over the years. I do think they are a bit overrated tho. Good? Yes. Solid? Yes. Versatile? Sure. The 2270 does really good with bass and crisp highs. Has a solid amount of weight to it and has all the controls you could ever want in a receiver

Lacks a bit on the midrange. Solid sould but breaks up a bit when pushed really hard. Power button fails on all of them and its a known fault. Tuner section and phono stage is kind of meh.

pro's : lots of connection options plenty of output power

Contra: no Bluetooth, no remote control.

Haven't heard it as its in for service and recapping. Hoping to match it with a pair of JBL 4211"s and see how it compares with $6000 worth of Onkyo and Jama equipment. BTW the marantz was a freebie and the JBL"s $500. Can't wait to wow the wife.

Grief falls upon me, we have posters thinking this is tubed, we have users hooking this thing to Bose speakers, bet someone out there is trying to push a HDMI cable through the air vents to get their Visio connected.
It has been seen at garage sales, bought at welfare centers and even appeared it trash piles. It bothers me on an almost spiritual level. While I figure that means the built like a tank and will always work no matter where you find it ads were correct, It is disturbing how it is being used.
As in "MY God" do you understand what this thing can do? What it can sound like? Take it down to you local Best Buy (or any mid-fi shop in your area) and ask to hook it up against the best they have. Find the high end shop in your area and get them to let you test it with high end speakers. This is a special product, it does more than the owners here think it can.

Ah yes, another review of the Marantz 2270, just what the world needs. Why bother, right? Well, why celebrate holidays or take vacations? For the fun of it, that's why! The 2270 is indeed a special piece of equipment and history. Say what you want, an awful lot of people have taken the time to write about these units, you have to wonder why. My own audiophile journey began back in the 60s with my dads Eico HF-81 vacuum tube amplifier driving Electro-Voice loudspeakers, so it's his fault I have spent all this time thinking about audio equipment.
In the 1970s I read the reviews about the Marantz 2270 and even saw the house fire ad others had mentioned. Unfortunately, a college student who works weekends to go to school can rarely affort the $600.00 asking price (Around $1958.00 in todays dollars) and so made due with other more affordable equipment.
I finally found a used 2270 I could afford in 1992.
Since that time in the 1970s, I have spent considerable listening to a wide variety of units including:
Technics
Scott
Hitachi
Onkyo
Sansui
Dennon
Harman Kardon

Each has had good and bad qualities, and while I still have 3 of them besides the Marantz, the 2270 is the one I spend my valuable time listening to.

Mine has not been restored or upgraded other than replacing the burned out sterio indicator with a LED and resistor to reduce the amount of current and thus reduce the chance of burning out the driver IC. The potentiometers and switches are due for a cleaning as you would expect, but the sound is still excellent.

Regarding power output, according to an old audio magazine I read, the 2270 would have been rated at at least 90 watts RMS by many other manufacturers. Please don't confuse the current idiotic ratings of modern equipment with the 70 watts RMS of these or any of the older Amplifiers or Receivers and consider them underpowered. These units consume roughly 500 watts at full power. My modern home theater system is rated at 600 watts output while only drawing in the same power.

And don't get me wrong, surround sound is fantastic for movies, but most recordings designed for stereo playback are not improved when played over these unit, modifying the sound is for better or worse a form of distortion. I personally find the sound of the Marantz to be clear and uncolored. It performs its job admirably and seemingly effortlessly. Besides the fact that the unit weighs about 40 pounds, just to still be operational after 40 years of use without an overhaul is a testimony to a solid build quality. In addition, they are very attractive units with smooth controls.

A half power bandwidth of 10 to 100,000 cycles per second guarantees solid bass and clear highs. A low TIM reduces listener fatigue and as with most transistor equipment, issues with reactive speaker loads are unlikely due to a solid damping factor.
I have run 2 pair of speakers in the past without the circuit protection kicking in.
Test results in the magazines I read showed higher distortion and reduced power output with low impedance circuits.

When combined with properly placed high fidelity speakers and quality source material, the resulting sound quality is very rewarding indeed.

Should my unit fail, I will most certainly repair it.

There are indeed other companies whose equipment is also excellent and I think they are great too, but I love my Marantz and have informed my family that the only way my receiver is leaving me is when it is pried from my cold dead hands.

This was my dad's prized unit. He bought it new (I'm guessing it was about 1977) and by then it was already an older model but the build quality is second to none (see 70's Marantz ad featuring this model surviving a house fire and then a 10-20 foot drop from the wrecking crane 100% intact. Unbelievable. I literally grew up listening to this one. At 14-15 years of age, when I first got into The Doors and Led Zeppelin, it was this receiver casting it's spell in my still developing brain. Think about it, this receiver sold for up to $600 new back in the mid-70's. Do any of you people know how much that is in today's $$!! That was far beyond the price range of the average consumer back then because it was built to please the most discriminating audiophiles, yet you didn't exactly have to be rich to afford it (see Macintosh, did I spell it right? No? Well, probably because I don't have one!) Thanks to my vintage receiver collecting hobby, I now have many others to readily compare it to. For you number obsessed people, here are the most notable: 70wpc RMS (definitely powerful but far from being monsterous), THD .3% (not bad at all), but here's the kicker, powerband width 7hz-50kz - incredible! By far, I think, the widest of any vintage Marantz, (most are only 20hz-20kz). I guess I'm just trying to explain in numbers why this receiver sounds so freakin' good. While it's true that numbers explain a lot, they never tell the whole story. While far from being the most powerful, or lowest distortion, or widest frequency response, it is still the most beautiful sounding receiver I've ever heard (and believe me, I've heard a lot). No, I haven't heard a Mac yet, but I believe the emperor wears no clothes. A lady at a music store once asked me, "Have you heard a Macintosh? Well, my dad swears by them." And I'm thinking your dad must have an awful lot of disposable income. Because I'll bet my money that this Marantz can easily hold it's own against any Macintosh for pure sound quality, in spite of what the hoighty-toighty stereo crowd may tell you, and you don't have to spend a small fortune on it, either. I once talked to a nose-in-the-air stereo technician at a local high-end stereo store who told me that Marantz was made by Macintosh! Marantz's were like Mac's for the masses. I thought, oh my gosh, he's talking about me! I'm just one of the masses who can't afford a Mac, so I have to "settle" for a Marantz! He even went so far as to say they didn't even sound that good! I wondered what world he was living in. In the meantime I'm holding onto my Marantz's, because "settling" has never sounded sweeter!

Bought my 2270way at a yard sale with two tower 15's sounded decent hot home and hooked up two 12in jvc towers and lets say the neighbors werent to happy. I've had it for seven years now and I will not go back to anything else best thirty bucks i have ever spent thank you marantz!

its amazing that this still sounds better than new receivers, anyway... my dad bought this new when he was in the army in europe... with a pair of imperial 7's.. i never heard it with those but he said it sounded amazing, i wish i woudl've... we still have them but they've rotted out over time, we now have a bose acoustimass, he doesn't listen to it much anymore and i get the most use out of it... i respect the receiver a lot, (as weird as that sounds) its still perfect, never needed to be serviced, everything still lights up perfect (some lights are a little dim)... eventually i hope to have this reciever and get some tower speakers for it when i move out.

I bought a 2270 three years ago and just had it completely recapped (replacement of all electrolytic capacitors). These do wear out, and as my receiver is now 40 years old it was time to give it a makeover.

Wow. I thought it sounded good before, but now it has more clarity and depth. This isn't the most accurate, dynamic or powerful system you'll ever hear, but man does it sound good. The tuner section really benefited, and even with just a simple dipole antenna reception is terrific. Classical, jazz and bluegrass/folk especially shine.

There may be other22xx series Marantz receivers that are better - I haven't heard them all - but you can't go wrong with the 2270. The only downside is that it doesn't handle 4 ohm loads well; something about the power supply. Mine is pushing some Yamaha NS-690IIs, which are an excellent match: 8 ohms, 90db/watt, 80W max. The Yamahas have close to flat response curves; unlike many speakers of the era that over-emphasized the bass. The Yamahas let the rich tone of the Marantz shine while producing a balanced sound.

i found my marantz 2270 at my local thrift store. i had never heard of marantz,but i knew this thing was an old tube recciver. it was heavy as hell. my girlfriend thought i was crazy for spending 14.00 for it. i was pretty sure it wasnt going to work,so it went under my bed for a couple of months. then one day when i was bored i un hooked my current jvc recciver and put the 2270 in its place.all the lights came on and it worked perfectley. i was amazed how good this thing sounded. now i use it with a cd player and it pushes a pair of bose towers. i wont be getting rid of it any time soon.