Jonathan, I think that was true with the less expensive Sony's.

The deck I have is the "ES" line and comes standard with a 3 year warrantee on it.

It was close to $500 also, so I think the high end Sony line did not have some of the problems the lower ones did.

I do know that MP70 deck I want has some pretty good reviews on it.

Reapur on the board here is really upto date on all this stuff, and knows which decks had problems.
Corey