Sony STR-V55

Mid-end receiver from when lineups got multiplied with frenzy.

The STR-V55 nevertheless holds what was high-tech and terribly expensive in 1977 : Pulse Power Supply, 50MHz Hi-fT transistors, X'Tal Lock Quartz-frequency PLL MPX tuning, Uni-Phase filters, low-TIM design and gold-plated phono terminals.

Also soft-touch buttons, 3-level auto-tuning selector with or without muting and eight tuning presets with pre-cut name cards plus side slider so that your memory doesn't fail.


Design-wise, this brings us back to the design iterations and prototypes made during the ES-II research in 1973/74 so there is some of the TA-F80 and some of the ST-P7J : you can't multiply without sharing some.

But if the name calls on the pretty and excellent TA-F55, there is no relation there, quality-wise, design-wise or price-wise - there's a limit to sharing if one want to keep high, mid and low-end fairly... distinct.

And as with 99,5% of the japanese-made receivers, all brands and timeframes included, this was export only.

So much so that Gradiente in Brazil even made a rebadge of the V55 named M-1660 with an obvious cosmetic parts sharing but completely different circuits and internals.

This "same-but-not-same" makes the financial advantage of the rebadge thing vanish entirely but multiplication was the 1980 trend so these share some but not all - very human in the end.