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1970 - 1985 Pioneer Hi-Fi Audio
Equipment Specifications Bible 5th Edition
We have had this Pioneer Spec Bible page on the Silver Pioneer Reference Site since the 1st Edition was published in the spring of 2003. Over the past few years we have had an ongoing friendship with the publisher. So before we get to the 5th Edition Spec Bible particulars, it's past time that we updated this page as some background is in order. Perhaps the consistently finest source for Pioneer silver era User Manuals, Service Manuals, and Sales Brochures is Stout and Associates's www.stereomanuals.com. A diehard silver era Pioneer fan and enthusiast, Rick Stout saw a real need several years ago for high quality manuals and brochures for owners and collectors of vintage Pioneer stereo equipment. His particular interest initially was to provide literature to cover those special years from the early 1970s through the mid 1980s, the same as the focus of this site. At the time, there were various people selling copies of manuals on eBay, but he felt that the quality of most of them were generally only fair to good at best, and truly horrid at worst. Even worse... many were almost always (mis) represented as excellent quality. Calling the fair-to-good ones excellent was one thing, but even the terrible ones were usually called good (or had no description at all).
He has a How StereoManuals Got Started page on his site which tells how his interest in vintage Pioneer Silver gear began primarily due to a walk through a shopping mall in 1979. It also includes an interesting story about his connection to the owner and brains behind the WXIL FM radio station which attained the highest Arbitron market share of any FM station in America... ever, plus has pictures of the Pioneer THE RACK which was supplied to a select group of Pioneer dealers in the late 70s..
So he began with one lonely Pioneer RT-707 Service Manual and gradually built up to having a few hundred manuals for various companies, then a few hundred more for primarily Pioneer and Marantz respectively. During the first year of successful part-time sales on eBay, he began to put a bit of a web site together. As a budding vintage audio aficionado, it didn't take long to discover his 70s Audio and The Receiver Wars article. And as one who has authored and published several books about collectible American muscle cars, I found the article interesting. I immediately introduced myself to him via an email regarding his article, asked about purchasing an SA-9500 User Manual, and mentioned my then brand new Phase Linear History and Silver Pioneer Reference sites. We hit it off immediately and the very next day, I wrote the Classic Cars, Classic Audio and the State of Things Today article which has been on his site since May, 2002.
During the collaborative period for the 1st Edition, Rick was in the midst of gradually shutting down sales on eBay and trying to prepare his site to sell directly from it. Precisely as the 1st Edition was being published, he acquired 3 TONS of additional original audio service literature which covered around 50,000 - 75,000 models by numerous companies including loads of additional Pioneer manuals (and of course, he and David knew a 2nd Edition would be coming). During the final months of collaborative efforts with David, all hell was already breaking loose on him because word was getting out that he had a lot of literature available for reprints and was about to acquire a lot more. There were not a lot of manuals vendors at the time with literature for classic audio, so he soon began to get a good amount of emails, then a lot more emails, then scores per day asking about manuals. There were several problems that collectively caused an inability to even respond in any fashion to a large number of those emails that were pouring in and for some time afterwards. When selling on eBay, only a certain limited number of manuals were being offered that were already prepared and ready to ship, but now, everything (thousands) were supposedly available to whomever inquired. He was doing the manuals business by himself, but now didn't even know exactly what he actually had, and due to how they were stored, couldn't even physically access all of them for a time. Over the immediate ensuing few years, a good bit of time was diverted to dealing with sickness and various problems with elderly parents (whom have since passed). But all was not a tale of woe. 3 of his daughters got involved working with him on a daily basis and together they began to tackle the sorting, the cataloging, the describing, the pricing, etc. of 10's of thousands of manuals, plus developing work procedures and processes so that most folks can get a pretty quick and detailed reply, most of the time and shipping is usually ultra fast. As of spring 2009, Rick says that they now have several dozen filing cabinets full of original printed literature that collectively cover an estimated 100,000 - 150,000 models. Additionally, they have more than 100,000 PDF manuals that he estimates cover more than 150,000 models. He readily admits that their site has been mostly a wreck since inception and has never even listed 90% of what they have. But now enough has been accomplished so that unless something terribly unexpected happens, he believes that it's about to be cleaned up, and for the first time ever, updated with lists of all that they have. He also admits that around 4000-5000 (35MB) of those old unanswered emails remain archived. He says he intends to eventually reply to them one way or the other if he doesn't die first. From time to time, they pull out a 100 or so and send an apology. What is amazing to him is that some of those folks still have an interest in what they asked about years prior. The 2nd Edition Pioneer Spec Bible was published 3 months after the 1st and increased from 132 pages to 153 pages. A year and a half later, the 3rd Edition was published with 242 pages. Four months later, it was updated to the 4th Edition and hit 288 pages. In mid 2008, the 5th Edition (and what will surely be the final one) was published. The 1970 - 1985 Pioneer Hi-Fi Audio Equipment Specifications Bible 5th Edition now comes in at 396 pages. With exhaustive research and verification of details, it is certainly the definitive Pioneer spec reference and is LOADED with details and minutiae. Every serious vintage Pioneer collector or enthusiast will want to have this. At 2500+ models covered just for the years 1970 - 1985, the 5th Edition Pioneer Spec Bible cover nearly every piece of home audio consumer electronics equipment Pioneer manufactured during the period. The depth and detail is amazing. Here is the Table of Contents:
You can purchase one immediately with a couple of mouse clicks...
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