Denon and overheating is pretty typical. Pity. Probably wasn't a bad amplifier.
I'm not sure how expensive it would be to send it overhere. You have 230v there, don't you? :D.

About the speakers; They're pretty nice for their size, but it's not even close to a set of little bookshelfs. Often, these speakers work without power (or at least the one that hasn't got an amplifier in it). Might come in handy some time, I don't know.

the Denon was one of these things, a DRA-335R (from 1991-92), which was the first amplifier I bought.

http://gallery.audioreview.com/data/..._DRA-335R_.jpg

I've no idea if it was worth anything today, but I figured proably not :p:

Ah, it's a receiver. They're usually worth a bit less than seperate amplifiers.
Eitherway, I'm not sure what it's worth. Probably about 40 - 50 euro's here.
Which is err... 308 norwegian err... We call them "kronen" here. What's it called there?
It's a nice thing though. Add a CD player and a set of little wharfedale diamonds or such and you've got yourself a nice bedroom stereo for almost no money.
Ah well, getting carried away again :)

Too late now, it got tossed into an electronics dumpster when me and the GF had an early spring cleanup recently .. But yeah, it did hurt a bit. :(

We call them kroner by the way. One krone, many kroner!

One Kroon, many Kronen :).

Eitherway, it probably wasn't worth fixing. But still, your first amplifier...
I'd never throw away my first 'big' (10" reels) tapedeck. But than this has just been revised (overhauled is the word I believe?) and goes like new again. You won't believe how old these things get without losing much of their original quality. It's built to last :)

What make the signal one receiver puts out better than another?

Design and quality componants

Exactly Batty. I wanted to answer this one.
Buit you won't believe how much build quality and quality components matter.
Every transistor, every condensator has it's own sound.

But no amplifier is worth anything without a steady power supply.
Your speakers are nothing but big magnets, electric motors really. They use up a lot of energy. If your woofer has to travel a huge distance to create a lot of bass, it will build op some resistance. When your amplifier hasn't got the power to cope with that, the power supply will give up and the entire thing won't have enough power to work properly. In some cases you can even see the lights flickering at high volumes. In most cases you just hear a lack of bass, the sound going really thin, losing al it's dynamics.

And then there's the simple fact of matching.
A very good amplifier can sound horrid on good speakers, just because the damn things won't match.
It's not just 1+1. An amplifier that you would describe as sounding 'sharp', can still sound really dull and wooly on some speakers that you also would describe as sounding 'sharp'. It's really weird sometime.

Oh, yeah, ontopic:

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...udio/gains.jpg
I know! I just keep running into things.
The two Minidisc decks (a very nice little one and a pretty serious big one) are working perfectly and were €10 (about 8 USD) together.
The amplifier is my testing amp. It's there for testing the BNS speakers which were about 5 USD together. BNS is usually pretty nice, but I expected more from these speakers. Ah well, for that money I'll definitely get rid of them.
Then there's two secondhand (like new) 7" professional reel to reel tapes from Basf, a brand new (sealed and all) Scotch 7" reel to reel tape, two sealed cassettes.
Marc (a friend) found a power supply for a Spirit Folio mixing console. We both have a Spirit F1, so this might come in handy some time.

So... I went out to pick up a tapedeck for a friend.
And I came back with... Well... this:

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n..._3209Small.jpg
Looks like a heap of junk and most of it probably is, but there's some real rarities there! The Ghettoblaster is a massive one. Worth an awful lot of money.
Then somewhere on this picture is the first ever portable CD player. Bag, battery pack and power supply included. ****ing rare. Worth about $250. Insane :D

And there's a set of very nice Philips electret microphones too
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n..._3216Small.jpg
I actually made a test recording with those.
Want to hear me speak dutch?
click here!.

I could make a profit out of this and still keep one mixer, the microphones, the ghettoblaster and the CD player. But I'll just play even. I have an address for the tapedecks already :).