Marantz MODEL-4220 (1973)
A 40-watt quad receiver that Marantz pitched as the cheapest way into four-channel sound, and the entry point to a line built around not going obsolete.
Overview
The Model 4220 was the bottom rung of Marantz's 1973 four-channel receiver lineup, and the company's own advertising said so. A period Marantz ad that ran across the audio press that year called the 4220 "the best way to get started" - add a turntable and four speakers and you were in. The same campaign listed the 4220 at $299.95, the least expensive of five Marantz four-channel receivers running up to $799.95.
According to Marantz's advertising, the $299.95 bought 40 watts delivered with what the company called Dual Power. All four discrete amplifier channels ran all the time. A two-channel listener could combine the four channels into the front pair for "more than twice the power for super stereo," then flip a switch and go four-channel when the other two speakers arrived. The same ad has fine print: the built-in Dolby noise reduction that Marantz touted for FM and tape was a feature of the Model 4230 and up, not the 4220. The entry model got the quad architecture and the price, not the Dolby.
The rest of the 4220's feature set, as Marantz described it in that 1973 campaign, was about future-proofing. The receivers took snap-in, snap-out matrix decoder modules, with the snap-in SQ module as the example given, so a buyer wouldn't be stranded when four-channel matrix technology moved on. A built-in Vari-Matrix circuit synthesized four-channel sound from ordinary stereo records and tapes, and decoded matrix-encoded four-channel discs and FM broadcasts. The modular decoder was a practical hedge in a format war that was still unresolved.
Audio (August 1973, p.67) carried the same Marantz four-channel campaign, and it is worth being clear about what that citation represents: the chunk is Marantz advertising copy, not an independent bench test. The 40-watt Dual Power figure, the $299.95 price, and the Vari-Matrix and snap-in decoder claims all trace to the manufacturer's own pitch. Collectors should treat them as the company's stated specifications rather than measured performance — no independent lab numbers for the 4220 appear in the available period material.
The 4220 is a first-generation quad receiver from the early 1970s. It is the cheap way into the Marantz four-channel family, the model the advertising itself framed as the starter unit. The usual caveats of period quad gear apply. The value of the snap-in decoder depends on whether a module is actually present, and the four-channel functionality is only as useful as the four-channel software and speakers on hand. The 40-watt rating is a Marantz figure, not an independently verified one, so read it as the manufacturer's claim.
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