In Reply to: RE: Is this worth the cost? posted by akltam on September 7, 2009 at 08:28:14:
The 8260 suffered from a design defect which leads to eventual difficulties reading the TOC of discs. This is easily corrected by any Marantz Service Center. However, some service centers don't do the full correction, and the problem resurfaces in a few months, which tends to leave listeners fuming, myself included. However, this too is easily corrected.
The "fix" involves soldering a resistor on the transport-servo board under the transport unit. Some service centers fail to do this. Once this resistor is installed, everything works fine.
The unit that replaced the 8260, the SA-8001 had a design correction and no difficulties like the 8260.
For the record, I have 2 systems and 2 players, with another player for spare parts. Two players went bad and got fixed, one correctly and the other only partially correct, which I corrected. The third player, from same vintage has had no transport issues at all.......yet.
A lot of 8260's were sold, and always are up for sale somewhere. I have no idea the percentage of transport faulty players, but I think it's pretty high, as in maybe half or so, if not more.
The SA-8001 is a more reliable platform, for sure, and sells used for about the same as 8260 plus Service Center repair cost.
I bought my first 8260 in 2003 when 8260's were in production.
The 8260 and 8001 are virtually identical inside and the mods I did work in 8001 exactly the same.
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Follow Ups
- SA-8260 Reliability - stvnharr 12:50:13 09/07/09 (0)