I also have a cosmetically poor, but electronically excellent Kenwood L-08C and L-08M pair in a mythical 110-220V configuration. Surprisingly, if I put my ear to a high efficiency tweeter, I can tell that the SNR is not as good as my Accuphase setup. At the listening position, I don’t hear any noise.
Kenwood was a big proponent of variable loudness and they actually had two dials to control the loudness; the frequency and the strength.[/QUOTE]
Kenwood (mostly thought of as not high end) made a # of products that were close to being high end (and probably a few that were, in fact, high end [with a few low cost modifications] if you were not name brand conscious). And they were innovative, such as the two dials to control the loudness (a sort of BASS BOOST Parametric EQ, if I remember correctly)