Technics SA-225

This Technics SA-225 receiver was made during the transition from the analog era to the digital era in the early 1980’s. Similar to other receivers of that time it has both analog and digital features. As you can see it utilizes both an analog dial and a digital display for tuning. It looks to be kind of a half hearted attempt with the analog dial as it’s really too small to be of real use. Obviously Technics wanted to make the move away from analog but didn’t seem to want to shock customers too badly by making the transition too quickly.

Similar in many ways to the SA-222 the SA-225 puts out 35 watts per channel. Certainly not a top of the line model from Technics but it does have some nice features including a Quartz Lock tuner, push button tuning and separate Bass and Treble controls.

The SA-225 also has 7 memory preset buttons to store your favorite stations. This, of course, became a mainstay of many future digital receivers. The Auto Scan feature is another aspect of the digital revolution that became ingrained in later receivers. Simply turn the Auto Scan on and the tuner will automatically scroll through stations until it finds one with good signal strength.

Red and Green LED’s were favorites of the transition era receivers. As you can see Technics used them on the SA-225 signal strength meter. Volume, Balance, and the Tone controls are all controlled with a knob while the rest of the controls are push button. Inside the unit it’s pretty sparse. The battle over who could produce the biggest baddest receiver were coming to an end and consumers were looking more for value, features and compact size.

The Technics SA-225 is not top of the line but there are collectors who favor that generation of receivers. They’re easy to find and definitely reasonably priced.