Sansui TA-500 Tuner / Amplifier
Professional Restoration with Audiophile Modifications
SN 019053352
Circa 1979 MSRP $465
Cost adjusted for inflation (2025) $2075
Old School Sansui has a significant following for good reason, quality!
The TA-500 is a very handsome Tuner Amplifier combination with distinct stylistic appearance in line with the very popular x17 series such as the TU-717 and AU-717.
Here in one package you get the aesthetics of one of the most popular Sansui series ever made at significantly less cost than buying separate’s. The creamy white dials on classic matte black has a character that is undeniably Sansui.
As an added bonus, this particular piece has the very handsome Rack Handle Option!
In 1979 the TA-500 was Sansui’s top dog in their “Tuner Amplifier” line…from Sansui’s promotional literature they describe the TA line as follows…
” SANSUI'S NEW TA-300 AND TA-500 : MORE THAN JUST RECEIVERS... We indeed prefer to call them both integrated tuner/amplifier instead of just receiver. Their performances - from the tuner as well as from the amp section - excel most other conventional receivers' performances. They indeed feature impressive static and dynamic characteristics. A complete new look in receivers.”
A manufacture is somewhat bound to the bean counters to produce a product that is competitive as well as desired. As part of the compromise, often it is the capacitor choices that lead to a significant part of cost savings, not to mention the advancements in capacitor technology that has transpired in the last 50 years bringing better options for less money with higher reliability as a bonus.
Having the freedom to choose the best capacitors for the particular circuit allows us to make the engineers proud, knowing full well that their design intent was the strong point but often compromised by the realities of staying economically competitive.
In this restoration we used the Gold line “Audio” from Nichicon for the main Power Supply.
All problematic fusible resistors were upgraded with modern metal film equivalent’s.
The one thing that kills old amps more-so than anything else is the failure of heatsink compound over time. This leads to avalanche effect when the power transistors are not able to transfer their heat away to the heatsink effectively, causing them to give up the white smoke.
As part of our restoration, we completely remove the heatsinks and all output transistors in order to clean the surfaces of the old dried heatsink compound and and refresh with modern thermal paste
Contacts on the output relay can become damaged over the years, especially when the amp is turned on inadvertently with the volume up high.
We always remove the relay and inspect the contacts and refresh them when needed.
The contacts were removed and cleaned with contact cleaner and synthetic rubber pad. DeOxit D100 applied to contact points for better contact performance and as a deterent to Oxidation.
Every audiophile would like the ability to use 5 way binding posts for speaker interconnection and as such we have modified the “A” speaker outputs to high quality Gold Plated binding posts!
Although the tuner was not recapped, a complete tuner alignment on the FM band was performed including...
- IF Coil Adjustment
- Discriminator Coil Adjustment
- Tuning Meter Calibration
- Tuning Scale Linearity Adjustment
- Signal Meter Calibration
- PLL Alignment
- Channel Separation Adjustment
A significant amount of work was performed to lubricate all bearings and roller guides of the tuning mechanics to restore that classic fluid Sansui feel
The analog tuning is mechanically smooth and fluid with a nice counterbalance system helping to sweep through the band with ease and finesse.
24hr burn in of new components and final adjustment of Amplifier DC offset and Bias were performed. Bias was adjusted exactly to the manufacturers specification of 20mv across emitter resistors.
DC offset was adjusted to less than +-5mv!
Amplifier performance evaluation was performed with 1khz reference sinewave into
8 ohms = 55 Watts
4 ohms = 85 Watts