Marantz Project T1

Cost-no-object with a vanishingly low production run, the Project T-1 was a return to the 1950s roots for Marantz Japan which, in 1995, still was six years away from being reunited with itself in buying back from Philips the entire Marantz brand, copyright, patents and global trade.

After two years of real independance (2001...2002 - a first since Superscope came in in 1964 !), Marantz went with Denon in 2003 under the D&M.
A move which however stopped in 2008 when D&M decided to let all of its high-end audio brands & activities go elsewhere...
Marantz, alongwith Denon, Boston Acoustics and McIntosh, is now owned by Bain Intl.

Anyway -
The Project T-1 project was initiated in 1989, six years before its launch at the Japan Audio Fair in october 1995, by the famed Ken Ishiwata - among others.

The project was meant to be of the "absolute" kind : no restraints due to this or that part not being available or being too expensive or being too long to develop. This explains the final price tag : about 50,000€ - per channel !

The Project T-1 uses four 845 output triodes with four 300B triodes for the input and driver stages ; a supplementary 5U54G rectifying valve feeds the latter stages.

Four transformers are used, all manufactured by UTC (United Transformers Corporation) in the USA - a company which seems to have closed since.

The input transformer is an LS-10X, inter-stage is LXS-2, driver is LS-56 and output transformer is LS-6L4 ; all are symmetrical to comply with the 100% symmetrical circuit of the Project T-1.

Componentry is also superlative : Aerovox film and oiled paper caps, polypropylene caps for the PS, Dale resistors, Johnson tube sockets, point-to-point wiring and no PCBs at all.

The chassis is made of diecast aluminium slabs, steel sub-frames and copper plating in a big way and everywhere.
Unlike the slightly later reissues of the Model 8B, Model 9 and Model 7C, the Project T-1 was made in Japan.


Contemporary of this award-winning monster are the sc-5 / bb-5 and sm-5 pre/power combo which also won the Stereo Sound Component of the Year award.
Two years after, the CD-7 went exactly the same way.
Three years after, it was the turn of the Project D-1 to not win awards (can't win 'em all) but to wave a last goodbye to the famed Philips TDA1541A S2 conversion system which made a lot for Marantz (and many others) throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

I can't help thinking that Marantz' last "golden age" happened during Philips' later ownership...