The Pioneer SX-850 is one of those silver-face icons from the peak of the Japanese receiver wars — a mid-line offering that was never meant to be the biggest, but turned out to be one of the most musical. Sixty-five honest watts through a beautifully tuned amplifier section, backed by a phono stage so quiet and RIAA-accurate it still comes up in conversations about the best MM inputs in vintage gear. The sound is warm but never muddy — instruments carry genuine body, voices have real presence and texture, and the FM section is something else entirely, built around a dual-gate MOS FET and four-gang tuning capacitor that pulls stations in with a composure other receivers simply can't match. Over forty years on, the SX-850 remains exactly the kind of receiver that makes you forget you were only going to put on one record.

S/N: WK3623079S