A receiver for compensating the deterioration of transmission characteristics, in which a transmission path estimation circuit (5) estimates the impulse response of the transmission path from the received signal. Bases upon the estimated impulse response, a switch (7) outputs selectively one of the outputs of an adaptative equalizing circuit (10) which adaptively equalize the received signal, and of a sign judging circuit (9) which is output only by judging the sign of the received signal. Then, a variable number-of-tap adaptive filter is used for the adaptive equalization of the received signal. Based on the estimated impulse response, the number-of-tap setting means controls the number of taps of the adaptive filter. Also, for the adaptive equalization of the received signal, there are used a transversal type matching filter, and a status estimation circuit which estimates the maximum likelihood of the transmission symbol string by the output from the matching filter. The number-of-tap setting means controls the number of statuses to be considered in accordance with the estimated impulse response.