| Trade You for an iPod: 1979 |
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Thursday, July 08, 2010
Bouncy Needles
8 comments:
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Unknown said...
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Damn! Is that one of those anti-static guns? I had one of those! And that brush you'd put a couple of drops of liquid on to clean the LPs.
Still have the amp, pre-amp, 10" reel, double cassette, DBX, tuner, turntable, etc. All still work, too!
Wanted to sell to make room but can't get anything for them so have to wait until they're antiques. -
7/8/10, 10:51 AM
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Hal of the hedgerows said...
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I used to have one of those brushes. After I ran out of the fluid it came with (probably isopropanol, but it was so long ago) I just used water, but I always used it. Clean records, clean needle. Very important.
I don't know what the VU meter on the bottom is for, but the one on the tape deck is important. Back in the days of analog tape, you had to record everything as hot as possible, just short of distortion. A VU meter was crucial. The reel-to-reel has them too, so he's got three. -
7/8/10, 11:21 AM
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Aggravated DocSurg said...
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You weren't a true audio geek unless you built this stuff from a Heathkit! I know....that was me!
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7/8/10, 11:43 AM
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Anonymous said...
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And you had to mount the speakers properly or the bass would make the stylus skip. (No real audiophile called it a needle.)
Tim -
7/8/10, 11:49 AM
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Anonymous said...
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I was in the stereo/tv business back in '79, and that year was the beginning of the end for elaborate home hi-fi. 1979 marked the year when VHS video recorder pricing fell to the $999.00 price point. Suddenly, everyone wanted one. The Atari and Magnavox consoles were stacked high, and we ordered cartridges by the gross, even enduring supplier rationing of hot titles. Computers came only a year or two later. In an amazingly short two years, stores that wanted to stay in business had chopped home stereo offerings to about 25% of floor space. Even with that cut, hi-fi was still over-represented on the sales floor Even car stereo outsold our dwindling hi-fi.
Rog, you remember those Pioneer separates were the height of mass-marketed hi-fi at that time. His LP collection could bring thousands today, if we could hop into a Wayback and fetch it in that condition.
That's just how it was, Hitler Channel revisionism be damned. I lived and loved that era. Thanks, Rog. -
7/8/10, 12:02 PM
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Rodger the Real King of France said...
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Absolutely true story Doc.
I bought a Heath kit amplifier when I was around 13. When I opened it and saw the 8000 pieces and tubes, I was afraid I wouldn't have it running by suppertime.
Instructions consisted of a schematic, and a chart that helped decode the colored stripes on all the little thingys. The only soldering iron I had was one my dad used to tin sheet metal gutters and stuff; the head was about the size of a golf ball. Tight quarters there.
After awhile I just stuck shit where it seemed to fit, popped in the vacuum tubes, said a Hail Mary and fully expected that luck would be on my side. I plugged it in.
I actually like the smell of burning circuitry, Good thing too. -
7/8/10, 12:03 PM
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DougM said...
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I think we can trace the beginning of the world going to hell as the point where they replaced analog-needle VU meters with the colored-lamp ladder thingies. All of a sudden, the peasants didn't need to understand quantity anymore, actual units of measurement and their relationship to performance. They were left with only the illusion of thinking. An undefined quality was presented, the work of anonymous "experts" who knew better than the proles. Educated, enlightened independent judgment by the commoners became unnecessary.
With the advent of the cassette and digital watches, not even the knowledge of clockwise vs counter-clockwise remained useful. [insert long exposition re: this and Genesis' Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil].
Reckon this here comment started out as a joke, but it really ain't no more, now that I actually thought it through.
Next time:
Consumer electronics and the rise of the nanny state. -
7/8/10, 12:48 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Fair enough, but when was that hairdoo a good idea?
Casca -
7/8/10, 1:42 PM
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