I bought this amp in 1978. It cost $ 360.00 at the time which was a lot of $ for me. I had it now for 21 years, It's still going strong.

Versatile controls, reliability. Great tape recording capability. Nice quality switches--no digital displays and phony plastic buttons.

Spring-loaded speaker wire connections, light-duty power cord, old-fashioned outlets on back that don't accept wide-prong or three-prong plugs. Only one "aux" input for a CD player.

I've owned the CA-610 since 1979, and have put hundreds of hours on it. Expect to pay $100 or so for a used one. Worth up to $160 if thoroughly serviced and repaired. My amp needed a $150 tuneup in the late '80s, but still works fine.

The overall design and egineering is really nice. The watt meters on the front are useful. Sensible features such as a main/direct switch, bass and treble with two ranges and an off setting, a headphone jack and speaker off position, loudness contour that boosts the bass at lower volumes, and a large volume knob are superior to many other receivers and intergrated amps. There are small details that are missing on so many other electronics, like a small red dot on the volume control to visually indicate the setting. I have yet to find a low-cost integrated amp that I like as well.

This amp was designed when people recorded played vinyl and recorded cassette tapes. Features like the ability to record from one source while listening to another or dub from Tape 1 to Tape 2 are obsolete for most people.

tone controls are bypassable and have switchable corner frequencies, dual range meters, good MM phono, most versatile conrols I've seen, non-conductive heatsinks to avoid any possible effects of eddy currents

&%@$# spring-loaded speaker quick-connects, RCAs are not gold plated and require occasional cleaning.

This is the CA-610-II @ 50wpc. Loudness control needed a squirt of contact cleaner about 2 years ago and I never bothered to replace the meter lamp when it went out about 6 years ago, but other than that, it is running strong and will still trounce any current AV reciever under a grand. Managed to drive Maggie 1.6's but is a bit underpowered for them (mainly worried the required volume setting would allow some sources to cause it to clip). Have gone to separates now, but couldn't part with this so I now use it and a couple of small bookshelf speakers for a nice computer sound system. Giving it 5 stars because it was a darn good value for it's time ('78 I believe) and because I've used it constantly for 20 years (kept it cool and never turned it off for more than a week... probably why the electrolytics haven't given up the ghost yet) and the old codger can still walk all over a lot of modern mid-fi stuff.

Good soundstage, fine bass.

Out of production, and there are only few competitors.
Too bad that most of nowaday's consumer amps are bad amps.

Here's a short review;
I didn't expect this amp to produce such a terrific sound. For so far I always thought that Marantz was my type of amp becouse of it's splendid sound, but the Marantz were blown away by this Yamaha amp.
If you meet an amp like this one, please take a moment to listen. The don't make them like this do they?
I hope mine wil survive another 20 years.
It's THE amp for playing old-fashioned music.
Oh, before I forget; My speakers are JM'-Lab's TTantal 507

Similar Products Used:

Marantz model 1080, 1060, 1040 and many other Marantz amnplifiers. I've heard many Pioneers, Yamahas, TEACs and many other brands and types, but I forgot them.