Pioneer SX-1280

If the SX-1250 retains the "original monster receiver flavor", the SX-1280 has "end of an era" written inside it : some savings on build-quality and some parts nowadays difficult to find.

What it makes up with is a much welcome visual lifting and rarity : while SX-1250 s abound, 1280s were and still are rare - end of an era indeed.

Inside, despite less shielding, smaller caps (4x 22,000µF vs. 4x 15,000µF) is a 3-stage Darlington p-p output stage with Star Quad wiring (which oppose magnetic flux to cancel each other out), a bigga toroidal transformer, pure copper busses, Pioneer ICs (PA3004 for protection, PA1001A, PA1002A & PA3001A for the IF, muting and PLL & demod tuning sections), twin logarithmic power meters, FET drain follower/buffer amp for the MOS-Fet RF stage, junction FET in the mixing buffer, low-noise 3-stage DC SEPP phono stage with 4-step capacitance load setting and twin tone controls for 3000 possible tonal changes.
Also, crucial, a proper 32-step precision attenuator.

The enclosure is based on the same slant : wood front, sides and top cut to show the large heatsinks making the back - if the term existed, one could call that "muscular class". The rest is all chrome and shiny aluminium, shining all by itself.

The SX-1280 is very similar to the original SX-1250 and even if its build-quality is a slight step down... it IS the most desirable of the two !

The 1280 coexisted with the later and over-the-top SX-1980 for a while before being withdrawn along with the latter.
As for 95% of the receivers produced by japanese brands (G-33000, SX-1980, CR-3020, CR-2020, CR-1020, STR-V7, Model 2500 etc), the SX series was entirely export-only.