Left At The Thrift - Technics SA-EX140

Sometimes I'll see a piece of gear at a thrift/pawn shop/flee market/garage sale that may be a overlooked jem and I decided to pass on it and leave it for someone else but would still like to throw a little spot light on it. 

So for the inaugural post in this series we are looking at the Technics SA-EX140 from 2001

The EX-140 in it's natural habitat...a goodwill

Introduced as Technics new entry level AV receiver the EX140 featured an updated front front panel that was more contemporary and less clunky than is predecessor the EX120. It also boasted 20 extra watts per channel bringing it to a impressive 100wpc though THD rose .3% going from .5% to .8%.


Internally it was based off of the more expensive H-Class DA series receivers and for it's price point sports a fairly decent build. It also has a good compliment of inputs, Phone, CD, Tape, and Video. Internally you can see that Technics was transitioning from single layer pcbs with through hole devices to multi-layer pcbs with surface mount devices and the quality looks solid enough. Though that's where the positives end.


While it looks much more attractive than is predecessor it's still very obviously a late 90's early 2000's affair and perfectly embodies the visual look of BPC (Black Plastic Crap) all the button are made of a flimsy plastic with mushy feeling digital buttons beneath. The knobs from volume, balance, and tone controls are all made of similarly cheap feeling plastic; though the pots behind them feel decent enough.

 While this is acceptable when you consider it's price point at the time it's a harder argument to make almost 20 years later where people are trying to sell it online  for $60-$80 (goodwill wanted $35) and for only $40 more you can get Technics Flagship SA-DX1040 (which is the receiver in my header image).  While I can't say it's a fair comparison since the EX140 was around $150 when new and the DA1040 was just shy of $600 on launch the fact that you can get a DA1040 for about the same price as a EX140 these days makes it a no brainier in my book.


Summary: If you can get it cheap (sub 30 bucks) and you need a decent 100wpc receiver and are ok with the rather pedestrian looks I would say pick it up but other wise there are much nicer components out there for the same price if not less.
 
                                                                       It's not even fair:

SA-EX140

SX-DA1040