Very interesting topic. As I’m getting older - 57 - nostalgia is kicking in so over the past 18 months I’ve been re-building my first all-Pioneer system, originally purchased in 1976.
Thanks to the Internet, I was able to find the PL 112D turntable, the SA-7500 II integrated, the TX-5500 II tuner and the HPM-60 speakers, all in excellent condiiton and in perfetc working order (all I needed to replace was the stylus of the Excel Cartridge.) Of course I had to drive lots of kilometers to get them but here they are.
The vintage system is now sitting in my music room and its mission is to 1) time travel to the 70’s and 2) play rock and dance music when I feel like it, ie a couple hours each week. In the 70’s Pioneer had excellent engineers and they knew what they were doing - the sound is surprising balanced and detailed, with that physical bass the Harbeths are just not able to do. Plus they were built in Japan with near military quality standards.
I cannot find any photos of the Zenith stereo “record player” that my parents had - I knew it sucked, but it was all I had to use. Then I saved up my money and got one of these (1977), and thought I was the king of all audio:
Thought I was the shizzle - I’ve had many better systems since then, but probably none that I’ve had as much fun as with that one. (Although most of that kind of fun would probably put me in a casket, so I guess it is just as well…being bullet-proof doesn’t last forever, does it?)
I used a long-gone Grundig Quadrophonie all-in-one system… It was capable of playing quadrophonic sound instead of stereo with proper records and four speakers. I had only two speakers from my dad’s old Blaupunkt Digita 503, so The Cure and The Smiths came in stereo in my room:
And my dad used this then-futuristic Blaupunkt Digital 503 system with the the weird cardboard-made Audioplay Charly speakers. I loved their bass performance, but could use it only when the parents were not at home
With my redundancy pay from my first job, I bought a pair these Wharfedale E45’s from Laskys in Kingston to replace the JVC speakers that came with the JVC rack system I had. The woofer cones faded over the next few years so I coloured them in with a black marker pen, I thought they were the bees knees. They stayed with me when I upgraded to Marantz PM40se amp and CD52se. All tibrary photos but I still have the CD player which was still going strong last time I used it.
sony wmd3 walkman recorder, i had in the 1985 to 1990. I was recording live concerts, in Nice jazz festival or Antibes and Paris. The sound was very good.
In 2003, i had this nice cd player made by Pierre Lurne of Audiomeca. But some problems with it too…
It was suggested by Russ Andrews HiFi in Edinburgh (great shop) where I bought my Rega Planar 2. I didn’t have the money to buy the Nytech at the time. Paired with Tangent TM1 speakers it lasted me many happy years at Uni.
I’m very impressed with forum members childhood [and teenage ] photos of their early beginnings of enjoying musical reproduction components. Unfortunately, no photos exist of my first audio kit: a typical 1950s suitcase record player, i think it was a PYE (like the one in picture below) which was given to me by my mother on one very eventful day [ see story below ]
I really wish i had the hindsight of vision for taken photos of my record player [and records] for future reference which obviously now - holds such fascination in later life… and although cameras were around in the 60s, even in my austere household, the developing and printing was an expensive palaver in those black and white days, so the practice was usually avoided by my parents.
One fine day, when i was about 7, at home & bored during the school summer holiday period, mad uncle Royston called to visit my poorly mum [ later to be diagnosed with MS ].
My uncle was on goodwill mission to gift my ‘housebound’ mum with a couple of boxes of LPs [ Shellac 78s mainly but some 33s too ]. It was a wonderful act of kindness from my mum’s estranged ‘brother in law’; a man who was a bit of a teddy-boy in his day + rough diamond at the best of times [ in my tender eyes my uncle was a really cool guy - but i was the only one who thought so ] …my mother was slightly overwhelmed, but very impressed, and very thankful to his kindness of thought.
However, after uncle had gone, unbeknown to him, my mother was totally uninterested in the music and the records, but due to her reduced capacity for mothering, she asked me to remove the LPs from the lounge and put them in my bedroom to play and keep me entertained - and out of her way because she often didn’t feel very well.
Lot of fantastic music in those boxes, classical mainly but some rock & roll too, loved 'em!
I’d like to say i treated those records with respect, and cared for them for years!
But let’s not be silly, i was a seven year old!
Same here. Before that there was a very old Garrard with a valve amp in a home made cabinet with just one enormous speaker in a home made cabinet. The hum from that used to shake the whole room and frightened the life out of me, I was only 3
[ see story below ]
