Anyone into vintage stereos? It's a new hobby that I've recently gotten into. The pic below is not actually my receiver but a pic I found online of the same receiver that I recently picked up on ebay. The vintage stuff with all those meters, lamps, rotary dial and silver casing is so much sexier than the modern stuff. Sounds better a lot of times too.
My Grandfather had the same unit. We grew up with a Marantz stereo- I loved the blue glow behind the lit orange tuning needle. I still have my parents RS speakers- from back when they BUILT stuff gooder. I'll try to get a pic later.
Not my hobby, but I so could enjoy that. In my younger days I had a few old radios, AM with tubes. No idea what happened to those, I guess I lost them somewhere. Probably my Mom discarded them after I left home.
I don't have a stereo, but last Christmas I bought a 1930's radio for my wife because our home decore is the 1930's look. (Its not ideally the 1930's look, but close). You can see the radio in the far left corner of our living room sitting on an antique dining room bureau.
I bought a Sansui super compo (not mispelled) system in the late 70's while overseas. Still works great and I guess maybe its vintage. Looks similar to this but larger speakers.
If it were up to me I'd have a vintage receiver and a pair of bookshelf speakers in every room in the house. We cancelled the cable about seven years ago and had no TV service for the longest time but last fall we got an roof mounted antenna for the local stuff because my wife likes to watch some of the local news and shows but I still don't watch more than maybe an hour a week tops of TV and most weeks not even that. But I love having music playing in the background no matter what I'm doing around the house. I've gotten my five year old son into classical music. His favorite is Bach's organ tocatta. Sometimes when we're in the car he asks daddy to play "the scary halloween music."
Dana...that could have been me typing that. I think I am one of the last three guys in the USA to get a cell phone, never watch TV, have no cable or satellite, and other then going on a few forums, am pretty much a workaholic. That is ironic since I just retired and I am now busier then I have ever been before. But when I told a young whipper-snapper that I did not have a cell phone, he said, "You must be bored a lot?" Nope, I don't rely on an electronic gizmo for entertainment. I get things done instead of staring at facebook all day. As for clasical music...nice, but I draw the line on Rap and Country music; regarding the latter, I would rather listen to static.
You don't even like the old school country? The new country isn't really country; it's just annoying pop trash sung with a twang but who doesn't like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, or Marty Robbins....c'mon!
Hmmm, what is the word that I am thinking of here...NOPE! As I said once before, I am pretty sure ever since being drunk and crashing his plane, I am pretty Sure John Denver is with Lucifer playing music to make those in Hades squirm just a wee bit more in torment.
For a deep unrestricted low end reproduction Tubes Rule, but for a clean high end solid state is better. Solid state will clip peaks in the low end ( that is where all the power is needed) making it sound choked on lot of units. Note: I sold and repaired high end Audio and everything in between back in the 70's. Exciting times in audio back then - much like the computer revolution some 10 years later. Most equipment from back then will need to have the big output capacitors replaced, they age and lose their grip as it were. Volume controls also get kind of poor not always anything you can do there- as a lot of these were item specific. Allied Radio, prior to the take over by Tandy corp( radio shack), all audio equipment with their name was made by Pioneer, just the front bezels were mirror images. Knight Kits not Pioneer, do not remember supplier. Allied speakers were Altec Lansing designed sometimes same componets as Altec was a sister company in the Corp. fold- Ling Temco Vaught ( yep air craft mfg.).
He had just bought the experimental plane he was flying. A Long EZ. Part of a pilot's job while on long distance flights is to switch fuel tanks (from the near empty one to a full one) and the valve to do this in Denver's plane was in a hard to reach location behind him. The NTSB report I read a while back says he was probably trying to switch tanks and, while twisted around, he moved the stick just enough to roll the plane so much that it was unrecoverable at the low altitude he was flying at. The plane apparently went straight into the water. Sad...
