1970s Flashback: Furniture Masquarading as Stereos

My journey from some of the worst audio equpment of the 20th century to some of the best...

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Console Stereo

About the same time that Harvest Gold and Avocado Green became popular choices in home appliances, another piece of distinctly 70s furniture began showing up in homes: the "entertainment" console.  Those of us born in the 60s or earlier remember these things.  Rectangular altars upon which to sacrifice our vinyl disks, replete with four legs, little sliding doors to hide the speakers when not in use, and a hinged top from which to access the bowels of the beast.  In our home, the brick-shaped dispenser of audio was strategically placed so as to aim directly at the back of the couch, approximately 36 inches away.  This was so that the already mediocre sound quality could be more fully obliterated in coil springs, cotton batting, and paisley upholstery.

To better care for the vinyl, records were stacked on top of one another and then dropped to the spinning 33 - 1/3 RPM platter beneath, allowing the scratching and ruining of the records' surfaces to be accomplished automatically rather than via the stone-age mechanism of manually handling them.  This was the 1970s!  Automation was not just for washing dishes and clothes anymore - it was for ruining records. 

The entire design seems to have been aimed at one glorious, overarching purpose: the worst possible sound encased in an ugly piece of furniture.  

35 years later, apparently these things are worth quite a bit of money.  Proof positive that those paying top dollar on eBay have pocketbooks inversely proportional to their IQs.

I don't recall much about the day we got it, nor the day we sent it to that Zenith graveyard in the sky, but I do recall the day I was introduced to real audiophile-quality stereo.  I was 14 years old and the family had taken a long weekend to go shopping in Eugene, Oregon - home to the University of Oregon and about a 3-hour drive from our little hamlet of Ashland.  While the clothes horses of the family busied themselves making that hideous screeching sound that the metal hanger hooks make on the metal clothing racks as they perused the entire inventory of every department store in the downtown mall, my dad and I stepped into a little nook called Toad Hall Hi-Fi.  I can still smell that new electronics aroma those places used to have - similar to the new car smell, but with a distinctly different bouquet.  I'm sure the smell has been banned today - at least in California since they appear to be the only state in which it is known that every substance commonly used by man causes cancer.

But it wasn't the smell that transformed me.  It was the sound.  Sound unlike anything I'd ever heard. 

I knew from that moment that the old Zenith at home would be absolutely incapable of satisfying my ears any longer.  I returned home passionate to earn enough money to buy my own stereo, not a small undertaking since my dream system totaled something like $1,600 and I was making minimum wage working weekends and after school. 

Ultimately, I decided I couldn't wait a year and discovered something called "the installment plan."  Perhaps you've heard of it.  The concept is simple: don't let something as silly as money come between what you want and what you can afford.  I somehow managed to secure a loan at the local credit union (I'm sure my dad must have co-signed) and paid the the whole thing back in a year.  We won't talk about the financial wisdom of paying interest on a depreciating asset, although it's probably been enough years now that the stuff has achieved antique status and has actually increased in value. 

That was in 1976.  I've purchased a lot of things in the intervening 31 years, often with buyer's remorse of one kind or another, or just with a sense that the purchased item never quite lived up to its promises.  But I can honestly that my first stereo was one purchase that truly exceeded my expectations in every respect.

For you retro stereo enthusiasts for whom this list might actually make sense, here's what my hard-earned $1600 bought me:

• Integrated Amplifier: Sony TA-5650 with VFET power amps
• Turntable: Dual 502 belt-drive single play w/ Grace stylus cartridge
• Cassette Deck: Nakamichi 500 2-head cassette transport
• Speakers: Carlsson Sonab OD-11 "cubes"  
• Tuner: a vintage 1960s Harmon-Kardon ST-1500 given to me by a friend

I still have every piece of gear today and it is still in use, with the exception of the turntable which is gracefully aging along with my record collection somewhere in the attic.  When it comes to stereo equipment like this, they truly don't make 'em like they used to.  About five years ago when I finally had to break down and buy another amplifier for my home theater system (my original system above is used in my bedroom now), I was appalled at the sound quality of the new stuff.  Yeah, the user interfaces are slick and can switch audio and video, and they work with infrared remote controls, and they they look space-age, and they don't take up as much space - but there's that small matter of sound quality for those who care to listen to their stereo rather than just look at it.  Most of what is being sold today is junk.  The good old days of discrete components and the superior sound they could produce are gone, replaced by the stereo-on-a-chip.  For non-audiophiles, it's the difference between fast food and a 5-star restaurant.  Your ears are like your tastebuds - you CAN tell the difference. 

Sonab OD-11

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The centerpiece of the whole system always was, and has remained, my beloved Sonab speakers.  I cannot say enough good things about these little beauties.  To a person, everyone who has ever been in my house has marvelled over these, the same way I marvelled when I stepped into Toad Hall over the sound that could emerge from a pair of 12" cubes that sat on the floor and projected their acoustics upward rather than conventional speakers.  You can read more about the entire line of speakers developed by Stig Carlsson, the Swedish "enfant terrible" of the speaker design world, at Carlsson Planet, a website set up by his still-faithful following of enthusiasts.  His speakers show up from time to time on eBay.  One word of advice: snatch them up if I don't beat you to them.  They are unlike anthing you have ever heard and can be restored relatively easily with components true to his original designs, but which actually outperform his original choice of drivers.  Like fine wine, they have truly gotten better with age.

I bought a pair for my parents, as well as my sister and brother-in-law, and they absolutely love them.  I also bought the larger version of these speakers, the OA-12s, and they sit proudly in my family room.  When you have a decent pair of stereo speakers, those 5-way and 7-way speaker systems with subwoofers that are now the norm for home theater systems become passe.  Two really good speakers will beat five or seven or umpteen mediocre ones hands down, every time.

In a future blog, I'll right more about the amazing Sonab speakers and some of my other gear, including the reasons they don't make 'em like they used to when it comes to stereos. 

In the meantime, I'll continue to listen to my 30-year-old technology that outperforms 99% of the stuff being sold today, and I'll continue to watch jaws drop when people enter my home for the first time and listen to the sound of components that are antique in name only - not performance.