Pioneer Elite

[Howard Simmons]

Sorry if this thread has been posted before but don't have time to look thru all the thread. But anyway I'm looking into buying a Pioneer Elite Receiver and was wondering if anyone has had problems with Pioneer products. The names been around for decades and I had a Pioneer receiver back in the 70's (back when they weighed 20-25 lbs.) with no problems. Any answers would be helpful but don't say I need to buy this or that. Thank you.

 

[Ganthet]

I've always liked Pioneer products. I currently use their speakers in my 5.1 Atmos setup. I have used their receivers in the past without issue, but it has been a few years. For my current AV receiver I chose Denon, but the Pioneers are well reviewed. If they had not exited the TV market I'm sure I'd have one now.

My Pioneer Laserdisc player is running solid at the ripe old age of 21.

Overall I've had good experience with Pioneer

 

[harshness]

Pioneer (non-Japanese AV products) was bought out by the parent company (Gibson guitars money?) of Onkyo four years ago and the whole lot (including Philips) was recently considered for acquisition by TCL. As far as I know, the products are still good as they seem to hold up at rtings.com.

Acquisitions and mergers are how things are these days. Marantz and Denon were brought under the same umbrella (Sound United) with Polk Audio, Definitive and Boston Accoustics. Another series of acquisitions brought AKG, Bang & Olufsen, Crown (amplifiers), Harman Kardon, Infinity, JBL, Lexicon, Mark Levinson and Revel into Harman International, a subsidiary of Samsung.

Sony and Yamaha are perhaps the only companies large enough to avoid acquisition while some other former name brands (Hitachi, Toshiba, JVC) are built in China and being marketed under license. LG bought Zenith many years ago.

In the big picture, most everything is built in either some part of Southeast Asia (not including Japan) or Mexico.

Look for the features you want and don't get hung up in the name-dropping.