This was Saul Marantz's first product which he began designing in 1947 for his own personal hi-fi system. The prototype was later demonstrated for his friends at Harvey Radio in Manhattan who were so impressed that they told Marantz that if he could build 100 of them, they would sell them. (The 100 were sold out before production was completed!)

The small power supply was built externally to keep hum and noise to a minimum. Please refer to the vintage test report and specifications pages for more details.

The value of a Model one Audio Consolette today is difficult to estimate. Obviously one of those first 100 would be almost priceless to a collector, but Model 1 production models would most likely require a major rebuild (especially in the tone and equalisation circuits) to make them able to process modern input signals, and of course, two would be required for stereo.

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Photographs courtesy of Barry Nachman