Panasonic SA-4000 (1968)
A thousand-dollar receiver with no tuning knob - Panasonic's opening bid for the component crowd.
Overview
Panasonic's own advertising put the number right up front: one thousand dollars for an FM/FM stereo receiver. That was the SA-4000, the flagship of the four receivers Panasonic launched to mark its entry into the stereo hi-fi component field. High Fidelity (December 1968, p.44) reported on the line. The top of that range was rated at 160 watts. The feature list was long: automatic motor tuning as well as manual motor tuning, a five-station pre-selection pushbutton system, four FETs, and six ICs.
The tuning is the part collectors still talk about. The SA-4000 has no tuning knob at all. It uses fully automatic two-speed motor tuning - fast motion for sweeping across the band, slow motion for the final approach. Panasonic shipped an accessory remote control tuning unit with the receiver, so the whole thing could be driven from across the room. Add electronic memory tuning for presetting up to five stations, and you have a receiver that, in 1968, was doing digitally-adjacent things with analog hardware. High Fidelity (December 1968, p.44) also noted the black-out tuning dial, the FET front end, and an integrated-circuit IF section. The first production run reportedly went straight to audio laboratories rather than dealers.
The front panel is packed with controls, even by late-'sixties standards. The power figures don't agree. Panasonic's launch material called it a 160-watt unit, while the later survey lists 60 W per channel. "160 watts" in 1968 advertising and "60 W per channel" in a 1972 spec table are not the same measurement, so treat the power figure as a rated-at-some-condition number. The $919.00 price in that same survey sits just under the round thousand the ads shouted.
Around the back and through the chassis, the SA-4000 carries bass and treble switches, input level controls, and a three-position muting selector. The black-out dial glass, which Panasonic called "LuminaBand Tuning," replaces conventional dial pointers entirely. It reads as a gimmick on paper and as useful in a dark listening room. Whether the motor tuning holds calibration after five decades is another matter. These are mechanical systems with belts and sense circuits, and a unit that tunes sluggishly or overshoots is showing its age rather than its design.
The SA-4000 was Panasonic's first serious swing at the separates market. The company's advertising framed it as the union of the best preamp, power amp, and tuner in one chassis, backed by a manufacturing operation the copy boasted about at length.
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