Rotel RC-5000

A lavish and oversized enterprise, Rotel spared no expense to make it THE control amp - in upper case.
In fact, this powerhouse is named the CONTROL amp - it says so on the faceplate, as in "there is nor ever will be another one worth this exclusive language tag".

The RC-5000 is somewhat...crowded... but was built like a high-end integrated amplifier :
two power transformers plus a third for control circuitry and relays, XLR inputs and outputs, sensibility / impedance / pF trim for the three phono inputs, DC all-around with Class A phono stage.
Also dubbing all ways for the three tape loops, three filters and a FET-charged 10-band graphic EQ.

The phono stage is a 2-stage DC differential input circuit with a single-ended Class A push-pull output ; its first stage has a super-low-noise FET in a cascode-bootstrap circuit.

The MC stage is 2-stage differential circuit with 4 pairs of super-low-noise transistors in perfect symmetry ; output is agaon Class A symmetrical push-pull.

The flat amp, again, a 2-stage differential cascode bootstrap input circuit and a Class A single-end push-pull output.

The Octave equalizer is a 5-stage DC circuit with a FET first stage.

The 4-gang volume attenuator is split in two between the input and the output of the flat amplifier : 0dB to -40dB on one side, -40dB to infinity on the other. This allows a low residual noise of 5,6mV.


The first units officially rolled out of the factory in february 1978, a few months before the RC-5000 but these were and still are very rare : a few were sold in France, quite a few in Italy, very few elsewhere and almost none in Japan as this was mostly export-only.

Only two ads were published in Japan in july 1978 and september 1979 for the original black versions, but Rotel kept them available until 1980/81.
Color was only very light champagne at first then black for the end of the production run - the opposite of those in Japan.

There were two production runs and therefore two serial number starts for the RC-5000 : the 1st run starts with serial #833NB58581, the second with #833R32532, where "833" is the product code for the 5000 combo.
Some of its componentry upgraded in late 1979 (like the yellow caps) which is probably when the second run started... The total production run is anybody's guess but is probably around 200 combos.


Optionally, certain markets could deliver an optional big box named RZ-8, aka the PLAY MIXER.