I was 4 years old, listening to a record on headphones connected to this rig. Leaned too far back, and caught the 1/4 inch input jack on the headphones right in my fucking eyeball.
The coolest thing ever was when those old receivers had a motorized volume knob that would move when you used the remote. I’m a simple man, but that always made me happy.
You just unlocked an ancient memory in me
they must still do that? i have a denon receiver thats maybe 7 years old that turns when you change volume
My Onkyo solved it by removing the marking on the volume knob.
Pfft. I had one of these.
That one appears to have a CD player, which most certainly wasn’t included in the one I grew up with.
My parents’ cabinet (console) didn’t even have the cassette tape unit, just turntable and reel-to-reel.
Ours has an 8 track, but no real to real, a later one has a cassette and 8-track (long after 8-tracks were obsolete.
No problem, since it’s all modular, you could always add one later
I am that old, we just were never that rich.
My dad did splurge on a CD player that came in a self-contained one-off unit that also had a dual deck tape player pretty early on in 1989. He bought it off a encyclopaedia seller and it came with a huge collection of classical music CDs and a bunch of books. Pretty decent purchase, in the end, given the financing. None of my friends had an easy way to copy CDs to tape for years after that, so even that was ahead of the curve.
I dumped the CDs from that collection that haven’t died to disc rot last year, too.
Honestly, aging capacitors and cracked motor drive belts aside, a complete hi-fi is a thing of beauty. And it’s supposed to be, hence the showy front and glass case to keep the dust off.
I’m no audiophile, but with refurbished power supplies, updated noise reduction* & EQ, and modern speaker technology, that setup would be an old media blasting beast.
* - for the uninitiated, or if you’re old enough to smell OP’s photo, the way tape-hiss intrudes on music is just hot garbage by today’s standards. So, having a way to mitigate it would be strongly advised.
Yes, but how does Huey Lewis sound on it?
LOL.
On CD? Almost as good as a new drug.
I’ve got news for you
So, having a way to mitigate it would be strongly advised.
oldReliable.jpg : Aux cord connected to digital music
The market for a “nice stereo” kind of died, didn’t it?
Audiophiles get ridiculously high end gear that is intentionally fiddly. Like fully manual turntables where to change the speed you have to move the actual belt to a different pulley. Or you get a sound bar for your TV.
Boom boxes aren’t a thing anymore. Like, is that a symptom of a dying society?
intentionally fiddly. Like fully manual turntables
To be fair, the whole act of playing music on LP’s and 45’s is just… fiddly. Sleeves, cleaning the vinyl, occasionally replacing the needle, and flipping the album over after 20-30 minutes. It’s like reading a book - you dedicate time to fuss with all this stuff. So, futzing with the turntable itself is kind of like a “while I’m already here” sort of thing.
Boom boxes aren’t a thing anymore. Like, is that a symptom of a dying society?
Maybe just a changing one. Boomboxes were the combination of conspicuous consumption (yet down-market-ish), ready to party on the go (aspirationally), and building space for yourself with music (loud, annoying). The form-factor was also a product of its time: all the parts couldn’t be miniaturized any further than what you typically got. Portable bluetooth speakers do most of that work these days, while letting your phone do the heavy lifting of playing media, and the battery life is WAY better. If that was available back in 1984, everyone would have used that instead.
Honestly, has there been any progress of high end speakers? On the low end sure, high end not so sure.
Progress has been steady as far as I can tell. We have a much better understanding of the physics now and much better material engineering.
The problem is that anything “high end” in the audio space is either for professional use, or for audiophiles, aka, expensive as all heck.
You’ll probably need another mortgage to get a setup like this working in modern days with all the up to date bells and whistles.
Don’t get me wrong, if you spend the cash, it will sound amazing. There’s some question as to what actually helps with sound quality and what is audiophile snake oil, but even with the snake oil, it sounds great; it just costs more than it would without the snake oil, and separating the snake oil from the stuff that actually improves the sound is a nightmare.
Compared with the 1980’s? IMO, absolutely, yes. At the very least we have stronger stationary magnets (neodymium) that make for more compact designs. They also need to hold up for higher and lower-end frequencies, due to how music has changed. I think the media used to make speaker cones uses more composites these days, instead of just stiff paper.
I assume engineering and materials used on higher end speakers today are better, but most are still hand made like their older counterparts. The reason why low-end mass produced speakers are much better today is because the manufacturing process is more automated. Usually handmade for mass produced stuff isn’t going to be as high quality as mass produced stuff made by a machine. This is me just speculating because I don’t work in that industry.
Holy shit, that exact Sony EQ is right beside me! It’s an SEH-310, made in Japan, 1981. I’m old enough to remember racks like that, was far too poor for stack of Sony gear. My shit has always been a random mess of cobbled together gear.
This was common. I didn’t know anyone who actually went out and bought everything all the same brand right out of the gate.
There was always that one family in the neighborhood.
That was my dad, sorry. He was 100% the crabass who had the system and never let anybody touch it, and, worst of all, barely ever used it himself. It was just as fun being his daughter as it sounds. Plbbbt!
Lol, this comment at least makes up for it some 😂
Also, i love the aesthetic of these old stereos. Kinda makes me want to hunt one down now. Of course with my luck the market is probably hot for them these days so it’s probably not as cheap as it would have been 10-15 years ago and given the age there’s a chance they’ll need some TLC to get them working properly again… Then i would probably plug my phone in through the Aux and just end up using it that way like 90% of the time if I’m being real, lol 😅
The phone-aux concern is real. An old system like that is nice for decor if you like the look, but having a physical collection of music is so inconvenient when you’re used to streaming and mp3s, I fucking feel that.
If you do want one for the aesthetic, though, I’d recommend checking brick and mortar thrift stores or garage/estate sales. My nearby charity shop always has a few components stacked up on a shelf, same corner as the pandemic breadmakers, haha.
That’s a very good suggestion!! Next time I’m cruising past the goodwill or thrift store I’m gonna have to do a little exploring…
I have a mismatched stack of ancient shit as pictured and run my PC audio through the EQ and amp. Could use some tightening up for hiss, but good enough. Haven’t wired the tape deck yet, no CD player.
Getting matching gear together will cost ya. If you’re willing to take some time and mix and match, the thrifts and FB Marketplace have deals now and again.
We were decidedly middle class. My dad pounded tin for a living. He just liked music I guess.
I remember dorking around the EQ sliders, though having to reach a bit to get at them. This thing (black eye excluded) is probably why I’m hugely into music to this day. Some core memory forming shit or something
Separate Tuner, Cassette Deck, Amplifier, CD player, Equalizer, and Turntable?
I am old enough and if that system were in good shape I would set it up in my living room right now. Would probably leave the cassette deck and CD player in storage though.
Definitely going for this setup next month when I move …just going Vinyl and speakers was too little. (I know it’s sacrilegious to say this but Bluetooth speakers for the record player also let me connect my phone and gives me the other sources… Is it high Fidelity it’s fine… I’m an audio engineer I can say that.)
It’s the battery driven stuff that drives me nuts, nothing beats the “just push the button and it all works” kind of thing.
CDs are so small though, I’m tinkering with “USB stick playlists”.
Yes, I am that old. Yes, I miss physical buttons to play and rewind, along with a decent wheel to adjust volume without fixed steps.
I also miss when placing the speakers separate of each other was the normal and expected behavior. The idea of Stereo.
But above all, I miss dynamic range. And that’s not because of the gear, but of the recordings.
The scary part is people are conditioned to like 0 dynamic range now. Dynamics scare them.
Thank goodness we have old recordings where the sound actually mattered and engineers took it seriously!
Have you ever heard of the ‘loudness wars’ of the end of the 90’s.
As CD players became standard in cars, they decided the best way to counter road noise, was the max out the levels on new releases… which created a horrible sound… but worse still, then then applied this to re-releases of older albums too.
I had originals (still do) of a lot of 90’s bands, especially grunge, metal and indie bands… and I was round a friends once and they played an album I had and it sounded awful. So I went and got my copy from the car and played it on their system and the difference was ridiculous.
Of course, im well versed in it! Been recording and mixing for 15 years.
I hate squashed dynamic range. But it’s sad the young generation cant even hear it or they PREFER 2 db of DR. Luckily we still have old school mixers and masterers but once they die off we will see a huge quality decline.
Which speakers?
My dad had a set-up like this because my mom and him used to be DJs. I was forbidden to touch it but, in the 90s, when we had cassette players and CD players as part of a separate cabinet, those were hard to mess up.
So, as a compromise, my dad showed me how to power up all of the amps and receivers to get the cassette or CD player working. At the time we had a massive subwoofer next to our CRT TV and, when the subwoofer magnet messed with the TV coloring, my dad blamed it on our Sega Genesis instead of the sub.
Good times.
I’d have to ask how old this system is. Ours was black, made by Kenwood, and had a wooden cabinet. Tinted glass door. Tape player was a dual front loader. That looks like a CD cartridge loader. We had that too. Our cartridges held six discs and they swiveled out.
Wasn’t mine, it was my mother’s, and she still has it. It still works. The doors on the tape deck have snapped off (we were rough with them) but you can still snap tapes into it and they play.
I remember when my mother got it. She’d just gotten divorced, had a bit of money, walked into a Circuit City (this woulda been like 1989?) and asked for the best stereo they had. And I think either she or I asked about Sony, because I remember the guy saying Sony was for people who want people to think they have an expensive stereo. Kenwood was for people who wanted a good stereo. I don’t know how true it was. Maybe he just wanted to make a commission. I think she paid a couple grand for it. I don’t recall. I didn’t pay for it. I bought my Super NES from that same Circuit City though, and I paid for that out of my allowance. $150. I didn’t bring the tax though. My mother did cover the tax. But anyway.
But while it wasn’t mine, I was the one who put it together, because back then you didn’t have Geek Squad (which is Best Buy, but you get the idea). I think they might have had “professional home installation” but that has never been cheap or affordable. Plus, my mother’s oldest son (me) was a computer guy. She figured, if he could put together a computer (that is, connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to a computer and turn it on — I wouldn’t start building them for another 15 years — I could assemble a stereo. Which just meant stacking them on the shelves, and connecting them via the wires in the back. Two wires — one red, one white — connected to each component and plugged into the… switcher? Whatever it was called. Pretty easy. Did it again when we moved. And then again when it came from the garage, which was like a family room, to the living room when we turned the garage into a granny unit for family who would move in. And then, when I did that, I was able to connect the TV to it, which greatly improved our sound.
Oh yeah, OP doesn’t show the speakers. Did that Sony kit include them? I’m sure it must have. My mother’s Kenwood came with speakers as tall as the cabinets! Two of them. The speakers only lasted maybe 20, 30 years though? My brother, then grown, found her better, more modern speakers to hook up to it.
We had very a similar home audio system, except the CD player for mine could pull out, it had ports for a headphone jack and power, and when you pulled it out the main system just had the headphone male and power male sticking out. It was such a an odd design to have it be portable. It was most definitely not meant to be a walkman because it had zero skip protection, it just played CDs. It was bulky too, a square that was larger in length and width than a CD case, and depth was about four or five CD cases.
The double deck tape player was huge for making mixtapes, that was always so much fun.
And as for SNES, my brother and I saved up to drop the $150 on that as well. You may be a little older than me, I was born in '87, my brother '86.
The '90s were good.
A little, but none of us are young anymore. ‘79 here. Love being able to claim the 70s though I don’t remember them.
I’m the same way about the '80s. I got a little more of them but don’t remember anything obviously. I’m sure your '80s are my '90s, there was something special about the time that I really started to get into music.
It’s funny, because when you’re a kid, a fan of 8 years is a lot, but 38-46 is essentially the same these days, just some not-so-young kids.
Yep. The kids born in the late 80s/early 90s were my little buddies, kids, who kids my age, would look after. Just like the kids born in the late 60s/early 70s would look after us. But now, I work with people that age, and we’re all just old. Like you’re still young in your 20s, you hit 30 it starts to be over for you as far as doing young people stuff. I have friends in their 30s, 40s, and 50s and I identify with all of them age-wise. 60-65 and up I respect but I think of them as “older and wiser.” Younger people (20s) seem like they’re too young to relate to. We’re cool, but they’re a generation apart.
As far as generations go, I’m technically GenX, but I identify with most of GenX and older Millennials. I feel like we had a lot of the same experiences. I don’t really buy into generational divides anyway. They’re fine if you’re in the middle. When you get closer to the edge and start mashing the names together, I feel like you’re admitting the groups are not that distinct after all.
I grew up with vacuum tube TV, (we got one channel, maybe a second if the weather was right), and reel to reel tape players.
I still remember the TV not working and my Father pulling it away from the wall and removing the back to look for the burnt out tube. Then since this generally happened on a Friday evening, (no Saturday cartoons), we had to wait until Monday to drive into town and go to the drug store to test and search for a replacement tube.
When I got to be a teen, I remember listening to the local am rock radio station and waiting for hours for the latest hit to come on so we could record it on a portable cassette recorder. Both my sisters spent many evenings doing that. We were sailing the high seas of piracy before it even existed.
Ahhh, those were the days. I’m so glad we don’t need to do that shit anymore.
Fun fact, recording stuff from the radio is not piracy. There’s actually an exemption for broadcast recordings specifically.
Also, I have similar memories.
I too am old.
Now that you mention it, yeah I remember that now. You ain’t old yet. Just getting your second wind.
I grew up on crt as well, but that’s because my parent’s kept working until like 2015 when they swapped it for a 4k lcd with dimming zones
I have some bad news for you, your Dad didn’t want you watching those cartoons…
So that explains all the getting up at 5am to milk cows, feed calves and steers and pigs, (my sisters fed the chickens, ducks and geese), shoveling shit, picking rocks, and pulling weeds…
Vacuum tubes hate that, so that’s probably why they lost their vacuum on Fridays like clockwork…
Them cows were getting milked TV or not. Dead or alive, there weren’t no days off.
Then the vacuum tubes failing on Friday evenings is truly a miracle of the modern age.
Not to mention that the advent of touchscreens on literally everything makes accessibility a lot harder for a lot of people.
Apple used to sell all this shit as accessible. Now it’s barely an afterthought. Pisses me off.
Then I forked an app, to fix the text so I could read it and added a bunch of additional accessibility features and settings. Apple’s App Store rejected the submission under the grounds that it was “spam” I.e. too similar to an existing app.
Even older, huzzah!
Yeah I found this which was more like what we had.
I keep threatening to write a book about this.
I have a theory that the craft of furniture making died in the 1940’s or so, when furniture became fully industrial and commodified. Which is why craftsmen build 100 year old designs, and things like these console TVs and stereos were manufactured. We went from not having radios, to war, to radios as furniture, to particle board TV stands.
Proper craftsman built furniture is stuck 100 years ago, somebody somewhere built a Morris chair this afternoon, I’ve got a dining room hutch 90% finished on my workbench right now, but furniture designed for the electronics age is all factory manufactured.
A typical episode of the New Yankee Workshop would have Norm go to some location to look at an antique piece of furniture, and then he’d build “our version” in the shop. In episodes where he built coffee tables, he would point out that there is no such thing as an antique coffee table, the term arose in the 20th century. In a similar vein, I don’t think there’s going to be such a thing as an antique computer desk.
I have seen some outfits like Vermont Woods selling “Credenzas” which are nominally intended to be media centers, but there’s a kind of pigheaded approach where they’ll maybe size shelves, drawers and doors kind of appropriately but they add no space for wiring, power management, accessory devices, so when installed it’s always a mess. And I want to fix that.
When you write your book, do not confuse ‘craftsmanship’ with the modern materials, design needs, and modern aesthetics. Craftsmanship is merely the act of building something. It might be good or bad or somewhere in between.
One thing that often annoys me about woodworkers who enjoy cabinetry or furniture, is that they are often trying to copy old designs and ideas. I have a Son in Law that is really skilled at woodworking and he just copies things. Like Norm going to a museum to study an old piece of furniture, it’s very often about copying something old and not about trying your own new ideas. Maybe you fail, maybe you don’t. Now, I do understand that there are only so many ways you can design and build a kitchen cabinet or coffee table. But I’m not sure Norm ever had an original idea. He just copied things and encouraged others to copy him.
Not sure what the problem is with that approach, I’m looking for a kitchen cabinet, not a personal expression of the artist’s lived experience as a trans-disabled Iberian who grew up as the only rich kid in the holler in the Appalachians, just build me a kitchen cabinet.
It’s not about the “Artisan’s lived experience.” It’s about designing and building those cabinets to fit modern day needs. Like that computer desk that doesn’t quite fit your setup. Or not being able to get that air fryer or food processor on that shelf because it’s literally 1/2"/12mm too tall. Unless you custom build everything, more often than not, those older designs are difficult to smoothly integrate into how we live today.
I think you’re on the same track that I am. It feels to me that the craft of woodworking is kind of stagnant and mostly in a state of reinactment at this point.
Woodworking is a very old craft, we’ve had a long time to establish what works and what doesn’t through trial and error. And yet. The village carpenter in the year 1800 would have made furniture that did what the customer needed it to do, a writing desk was well suited to the task of writing as it existed at the time, with a place for the ink well and such. Sometime in the 20th century, furniture design ossified, and now we get “It’s a low cabinet that’s 3 feet wide” for a TV stand or “It’s a table” for a computer desk.
There was an episode of the New Yankee Workshop where Norm built a computer desk. His approach was to make it look like any old two pillar desk with very large drawers that slid out, housing the PC tower itself on one side and a printer or scanner on the other, with the monitor and speakers plunked on the desktop. I’ve seen the exact same approach from commercial flat pack furniture, with desks designed to look like old fashioned paperwork desks, dining room cabinets or even armoires.
I will say, Norm would build a “new antique” using more modern methods (correcting for the show being made in the 90s). He was fond of power tools, biscuit joinery, made significant use of plywood and other manufactured materials, but his design work is rather…conservative.
Dude write that book.
I second it. I’m an amateur woodworker myself.
I have an Electrohome turntable cabinet much like this one holding up my TV.
This is what we had, with no TV. You could store records in the center section.
Yep totally remember the record slot part. I would love to take one of these and modernize it. Not sure how but it would be cool anachronistic tech.
I’ve thought of that, too, but they take up so much space. I can create a much better performing and sounding audio system in a much smaller space. This much floor real estate could house a shelf that could hold hundreds of LPs (or CDS).
Yeah they were quite huge.
My grandparents had one like that! Eventually the built-in TV broke so they put a newer one on top but just left the whole thing there for years.
Cd player? Oh you sweet summer child
Old? Buddy not only did I have an RCA system like that with surround sound as a kid, I have a Technics one in my living room now that I literally found on the side of the road. Full cabinet system with the floor speakers and everything. Radio tuner, cassette player, 6 disk CD player, phono preamp for my record player as well. I use it instead of a shitty sound bar or the tv speakers because it was free and sounds loads better.
