Yamaha CR-10
A model number that turns up on everything from a Marti broadcast receiver to a Belgian studio monitor — and almost nothing that pins it to a Yamaha receiver.
Overview
Here is the honest state of things: the Yamaha CR-10 is a model designation that appears in the archival record, but almost none of that record actually describes a Yamaha product. Collectors chasing a CR-10 will find the string attached to at least three unrelated pieces of gear, and the documentation assembled for this entry does not resolve which one — if any — is the intended subject.
The most substantial period reference to a "CR-10" in the review literature is not a Yamaha at all. A Marti rack-mount VHF or UHF base station receiver carried the CR-10 designation, listed at $930.00 in single-frequency form and $959.00 in dual-frequency form, according to the manufacturer's listing reproduced in Common Point. That is a broadcast remote receiver, not a home audio component, and it should not be confused with anything carrying the Yamaha name.
The remaining hits are noise rather than signal. One "CR10" is a component designation inside a JH-series tape transport's capstan control circuit. Another is a fragment of a Croydon postal code (CR10 1YD) in a subscription address. A third is a typo for "BPM CR10," an East Berlin condenser microphone. None of these describe a Yamaha receiver, and none should be presented as if they do.
What the archive cannot supply is any period documentation — manual, spec sheet, review, or advertisement — that identifies a Yamaha component as the CR-10. The Yamaha receiver advertising of the mid-1970s that does survive in the review corpus covers the CR-1000, CR-800, and CR-600, and makes a specific claim worth noting for context: that Yamaha built all its stereo receivers to a single distortion standard, with the least expensive model matching the most expensive. Audio (April 1976, p.19) reproduced the company's IM distortion comparison showing the CR-1000, CR-800, and CR-600 all at 0.1%, against rival brands ranging from 0.1% to 0.8%. That is a genuine, citable data point about Yamaha's receiver line of the period — but it concerns the CR-1000/800/600 family, not a CR-10, and should not be read across to a model the documents do not describe.
Until a manual, catalog page, or contemporary review surfaces that explicitly names a Yamaha CR-10 and states what it is, this entry stays deliberately thin. The model number is real enough to have been indexed; the Yamaha product behind it is not yet documented. Buyers who encounter a "Yamaha CR-10" for sale should ask the seller for photographs of the rear panel and any original paperwork before assuming it belongs to the receiver line — the designation has been used loosely enough elsewhere that provenance matters more than usual here.
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