Sherwood 8800 (circa 1966–1968)

Little is documented about the Sherwood 8800 beyond its period advertisements. Here is what the record shows. It was an all-silicon transistor FM stereo receiver, marketed heavily between 1966 and 1968 in Audio, HiFI/Stereo, and High Fidelity.

Audio (July 1966, p.20) ran a full-page Sherwood ad for the S-8800, billing it as a receiver with "all-silicon reliability." The feature list is long: noise-threshold-gated automatic FM stereo/mono switching, a zero-center tuning meter, an FM stereo light, a front-panel mono/stereo switch, a stereo headphone jack, and rocker-action switches for tape monitor, noise filter, and main/remote speaker disconnect. The ad claimed music power of 190 watts at 4 ohms with 0.6% harmonic distortion, IM distortion of 0.1% at 10 watts or less, and a power bandwidth of 12-35,000 Hz. Phono sensitivity was rated at 1.8 mV, and hum and noise at -70 dB. FM sensitivity (IHF) was 1.6 µV for 30 dB quieting, FM signal-to-noise 70 dB, capture ratio 2.2 dB, and drift ±0.01%. The component count was given as 92 silicon transistors and 19 silicon diodes.

Earlier ads list slightly different numbers. One ran in HiFI/Stereo (June 1966, p.41) and another in Audio (September 1966, p.18). They give 140 watts music power at 4 ohms, with 42 silicon transistors and 14 silicon diodes. The surviving record doesn't say whether that was a running specification change, an error in the earlier copy, or different testing conditions. By the time High Fidelity (March 1968, p.130) called the S-8800 "our most honored receiver," it had been on the market for roughly two years. No service manual, schematic, or detailed review has surfaced in the Archive's holdings.