Technics SA-500

Technics SA-500 Receiver

Professional restoration with audiophile modifications

Circa 1978, MSRP $430

(Cost Adjusted for inflation 2026 $2140)

S.N. FB9516F202

Asking $1277

FMI HiFiHealthCare@Gmail.com

The SA-500 was the top selling receiver in the Technics lineup in 1978.

Although it’s run only lasted a few years, more of this model were sold than perhaps any other in it’s SA-x00 lineup. Not only does it perform beyond it’s modest rating, it has the looks to back it up.

Technics was definitely forming it’s ‘Style’ in these early days of their emergence into the robust HiFi Market.

Technics spun out from it’s parent company, Panasonic, much in the way that high end automotive lines come from their humble parents to make their statement on the market. Think of Lexus / Toyota; Ford / Lincoln, Hyundai / Genesis etc.

 It’s handsome build and ample power made it a dream to own for many consumers of the age. 

At this time, it’s competition was the Pioneer SX-880 with an MSRP of $425 and the Sansui 7070 with MSRP of $520.

While Pioneer and Sansui were still putting out receivers in their classic ‘analog’ meters, Technics was making a forward vision statement by incorporating LED power meters that had selectable sensitivity and the ability to have them active or defeated. Seeing those classy sub miniature multi color lights bouncing to the music added a special ‘wow factor’.

The balanced layout of the knobs and switches along with the white dial face make the Technics SA-500 a clean and sophisticated looking unit. The knobs are done nicely with a brushed aluminum top and sides with a polished accent line along the outer top edge.

The ‘feel’ of the controls is precise and elegant. 

This is a receiver that glides effortlessly across the FM band with a heavy counterweight lending ample inertia to dial movement. The volume control is detented to a 40 step precision using an oversized knob cut out of solid aluminum that balances out the aesthetic juxtopposed to the Tuning Knob! Every switch has a very positive feeling of actuation lending a solid feedback to the operation of their intent.

All electrolytic capacitors in the Amp and Pre-Amp section have been replaced with the highest quality capacitors for the particular circuit involved including Nichicon Fine Gold series, UKA and extreme high quality Polypropylene Stacked Film capacitors!

In most ‘recaps’ you see, the main power capacitors are rarely replaced!...Why is that?...tech’s say “They tested fine so I didn’t replace”. I could go into a lot of dissertation on this but suffice it to say, they are the most expensive components in the receiver, other than the main drivers… AND, testing large value caps isn’t very effective with most capacitance testers due to the limitations of the frequency of the testing. Only when testing these caps over the broadness of the audio spectrum do you reveal the whole picture of how that device is behaving at say 30hz vs 1khz vs 10khz. Long story short, we always upgrade these caps, even though it’s expensive because our intent is to have the piece still working in 50 years and we feel the expense is worth it for the amount of overall labor in the restoration.

The Main Power Supply 10,000uF capacitors were refreshed with high quality Kemet ALC capacitors with a life expectancy of 18,000 hours and low ESR making them a ‘best in class’ choice for the application.

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 upgrade the outputs with SilPads that will last the life of the amplifier providing more reliable heat conduction than the original design.

All Power Supply Regulators and associated heatsinks were stripped down of old dried heatsink compound and new long life synthetic heat grease was applied.

Many of the failure of these output devices I have replaced in the past have exhibited similar issues of heat transfer paste degradation.

This problem is now eliminated thanks to technology and the replacement of transfer paste with high quality heat conductive silicone transfer pads.