Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Sansui AU-20000

Sold my mint condition Sansui AU-20000 a number of years ago and did not have any photo's of it.

For those not familiar with the unit, please refer to http://www.classicaudio.com/value/san/AU20K.html for pictures.

From memory the unit weight about 22kg and was pretty retro looking with a lighted VU meter for both channels. Unfortunately you can not disable the lights, only the metering. Hence the VU lights can be quite distracting, especially in the night.

The AU-20000 was the top-of-line of the Professional Series, with had all the bells and whistles you can think off eg swap L-R channels. Operation was pretty straight forward but I prefer the ease of enabling the tuner from the AU-9900.

The buyer said it sounds like his newish MacIntosh. He was surprised the components were atleast 30years old! Inform him it would sound much better once he got it service and recapped. 

Why did I decide to sell this mint condition top-line unit, you ask?

The AU-20000 has an extremely fluid HF. Bass was acceptable but neither authoritative nor flabby, Would certain be improved after servicing. The AU-20000 was extremely gruntly as well - much much gruntier than I would ever require from it. However I did not find the AU-20000 reproduction to be as natural sounding as the AU-9900A. 

About a year after I sold my AU-20000, I met another seller (of his AU-20000) with similar feedback. Even so, the unit was sold within a day of posting.


FYI The following archive has details pictures of a AU-20000 restoration