Has anyone seen or owned these before? The Music System I bought back in 1973 a d it's this system that started my interest in music. What was your very first music system? Does not have to be complete systems, just the very first piece of equipment you remember buying. The Cassette- Corder I bought in Malatsia back in 1978.
Cyrus sounded very 'my-way' when I auditioned it, but I opted for Rega and Naim gear simply because I had some extra $$ to spend. Here is my preamp with active speakers from before I defected from Russia and fell into the rabbit-hole of Hi-End: going down the memory lane when memory itself is getting Bad: as an intermediate step I had HK Festival for a few years (original HK speakers for this compo were horrible!!!!) This might be an interesting thread: how did your stereo evolved over the years? Personally, I do not think I will ever be able to get something similar to what I had during my productive years: TOTL Naim Audio 'olive series' with Naim SBLs and ProAc sub, Wadia 781i for SACD replay, Naim-ed, Keel-ed LP12 Sondek... Shunyata Research power cords and conditioner (no-no for Naim gear but living at the very end of the power line neutralized all the crap that was dumped in there)
I was broke most of my life, living care-free going to college but I always had a Walkman and boombox to get me moving. My friends always had the nice Sansui's and Pioneers, our home stereo was a tube Bogen and and a pretty nice TT with a built in mono speaker. I moved up to a Sony System in the early 90's, while still in school, I really like most of it and still own the parts but when the great culling of all cool stereos started in the early 2000's I started picking up a crap-load of bargains. Unfortunately for the last few years I haven't been able to set up a cool system but I'm starting to round the corner where I don't need to protect the stuff anymore. I love stacks of equipment and I picked up a ton of components that were headed for the crusher, the really odd-ball stuff. I don't care if it makes the sound strange, most of it does, but it came from a wonderful time when these guys were trying everything to find a new angle on sound reproduction. As a kid, any cassette recorder was cool, it was so much fun to record everything. We also had the small portable TT/Radios but nothing exciting. One of the neighbors that was my age had really progressive parents, they had a super-cool boombox in 78, maybe JVC, they also had a nice TT and stereo set-up. And the cream of the crop, they had a Tom Sims Snowboard, one of his first, it had a real 10" skateboard with bungie cords, mounted to a plastic sled. Try to find that one on the internet, I bet he only made a few dozen.
Derek might not have seen it but I did something like this on the old forum http://www.stereo2go.com/topic/index.php?content_oid=499377108813478439&board_oid=193392314111653326 Surprisingly I could now go further back in time as over in my storage locker I now have the Grundig "International DC series" cassette recorder my late Father bought in about 1968. Unfortunately just the one tape (which was in it). Like many other items I will never know what happened to the rest (most likely their dustbin). The same thing would have probably happened to the recorder if it hadn't been forgotten about on top of a wardrobe. In fact the tapes probably got binned because they thought they didn't have anything to play them on. Being an obscure format that didn't catch on it Techmoan made a video about it Over to HiFi, for fifteen years, six of which were when I only bought vinyl, my Akai FD-3L was my only means of playing records and got used several times a week. I actually lusted over that system from 1983 where I saw it Dixons at £400 in 1983 to 1984 when Richer Sounds (who then only had two shops) were advertising catalogue returns for £200 and I drove the 100 miles to Birmingham to get one. A rather grainy photo of my lounge, five houses ago in the early 1990s, all tidied up ready for a visit from my parents. I still have the FD-3L, but up in the loft, as a couple of years in storage caused the batteries to leak in the remote and the cassette deck to stop working. I do wonder if I should try an resurrect it. Thanks to Ebay and Radio Rallies, I was counting up and now have ten record decks / players but none set up (three are under my bed !). The four that to my knowledge are full working order aren't the ones I want to use. I resisted the temptation to buy an Akai FD-5L (the next model up) when one appeared on Ebay earlier this year but admit I was tempted. There is a paradox in that the more money you have to buy things the less time you seem have to enjoy them. Just looking at the shelves where when I intend to set up a turntable when I get "A Round Tuit" (a Radio 1 reference there) there is a Blu Ray writer that I bought at least five years ago and has never been fitted in the computer and two model railway locomotives I have never tried. Then there is the problem, often noted on this forum, that the things you wanted but couldn't afford in the past are now usually worn out with perished belts and other mechanical problems. Even a New Old Stock item may have problems and is unlikely to come with a warrantee. Maybe I spend too much time on internet forums and Youtube p.s Not only did the Toshiba TV shown cost £440 back in 1989, affording it was one of the reasons I changed jobs and moved house ! To put things in context the house cost me £65000 and by 1995 was worth £48000, back when a Sony 27" TV cost £700.
You guys had some very impressive gear. My first system(If you can call it that) was very basic but at the time it meant the world to me a d to my ears sounded good. It wasn't until the 80's a d 90's that I was able to advance on omore serious setups as technology improved. Longman, sorry was not aware that you had started a similar thread.
I think it depends on peoples age (I grew up in the 1970s) My parents were content with the Dansette type record players. I still recall my Father saying that a newly purchased one should be much better as it had four transistors, while the previous one only had two valves . I also recall taping LPs for friends, using the Sanyo with its microphone placed in front of the Dansette, quietly shutting the lounge door and hoping the Milk Lorry wouldn't go up the road during the recording. Nowadays kids are probably sharing Spotify playlists on their Smartphones. Back in the 1970s other families we knew did get music centres similar to the one you posted but my Mother said she couldn't understand why they wanted to clutter up their lounges with separate speakers etc. She relented in 1979 when my college project was a Practical Wireless "Texan" stereo amplifier. To go with it I bought a Garrard SP25MK6 record deck (£50 - two weeks wages) and some Realistic Speakers for about £40 in one of Tandy's (Radio Shack) half price sales. A classmate built a stereo tuner as his project and when we hooked the two up together to do a demonstration the college lecturer said he "would be proud to have such a system at home". I wonder how many sixteen year olds are soldering together their own HiFi components these days ? At home my Sony CFS45L acted as both tape deck and tuner, until I got the FD3L five years later. That was on the old Forum so I don't think it would be possible to add to it. Thanks for starting this one, and lets see more shoebox cassette recorders and Amstrad or Fisher stack systems or even better systems you built yourself. p.s Your Sony system was in the 1973 Lasky's catalogue £131 in 1973 is the equivalent of £1596 in 2019, and more than any of my friends paid for their stereos back in 1978. I would expect some serious sound quality for that especially from Sony.
Hi Longman. I can relate to what you are saying. Back in the late sixties and seventies I used to repair TV's and radios plus quite a few Dansette a d Garrard record decks plus some open reel tape decks. Some were relatively easy but some were a real pain in the butt to fault trace a d we spent a lot of time ringing up the manufacturers for service manuals and technical advice. I had the same problem when I brought my system back home. Could only put it in the lounge where my parents liked to watch TV. Solution- I bought some Koss headphones to listen to my lp's. Still love listening to my music through headphones to this day. At that time we had both Tandys and Dixons in town and use to love browsing through those shops.
I think some of you have seen some systems up close like these I've fixed some of them over the years... I personally started with this grundig radio in the 77 given to me by an uncle, it wasn't the best, but for me it was all
Hi Silver965. Those are nice looking systems. The inside of that portable beings back some memories. Had quite a few problems with that ferrite rod. Cannot remember the exact name now. Nice one.
Did Grundig ever make a radio that wasn't a something Boy ? Attached is picture of an Alba radio I had in the early 1970s. Back then you could buy sets like this, dating from the 1950s for less than £1 at Jumble sales. Everyone was buying transistor radios, which could run for weeks of a cheap battery and getting rid of the old valve / tube ones whose expensive 90V batteries were becoming unobtainable. Having been on a buying spree of old tube radios when I got my own house I got fed up with them after my first house move and sold most of them at a vintage wireless collectors fair. Without FM they were becoming less useful. I did keep the Philips on the left of this photo having paid £20 for it as a treat for myself when I finished my exams in 1983. This is the sort of thing people were collecting back then when Walkmans, Boomboxes, and Home Computers were the latest thing, and available in all electronics shops. That reminds me. Somewhere, probably in the garage I have a great sounding Ferranti Valve / tube set in a White Plastic case back from when that was the height of modernity. None of the sets of that vintage are really going up in value these days and are only worth the same as thirty years ago. I wonder if the same will happen to Walkman's and M90s when the only people who remember them new are in their eighties.
