We had this in my house growing up
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
Pfft. I had one of these.
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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.
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They are*, plenty of them still around and pretty much all of them superior to soundbars.
Soundbars are cute, but they are form over function. You just cannot expect good sound out of cheap single-driver applications where the tiny amplifier, power supply and electronics are all shoved into the same package with no regard for anything but keeping it slim. They need a separate subwoofer at a minimum.
Most people dont seem to own a stereo anymore. I know so few people who have anything more than an amazon echo or something similar. Sound quality is impressive for the size, but not at all good. They all use the same cheap 2" single speaker that has to produce high and low frequencies at the same time, so the sound is always muddy.
If you get an inexpensive (and tiny) class d amplifier from Fosi and a modest pair of bookshelf speakers, the sound is far better than smart speakers that cost 5x the price.
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You can still buy brand new HIFI gear with buttons and VU meters, for example: https://nadelectronics.com/product/c-3050-stereophonic-amplifier/
The above unit has a ton more additional functionality such as room correction, streaming support, digital connectivity, a DAC, multi room support, and far better audio quality.
Sure, not all of it is cheap, however neither was a full stack like the OPs picture.
I'm referring more to floor space and somewhere to put that stuff. An iPad is multi-functional, so in a one-bedroom apartment where space is at a premium, it's better than the full hi-fi setup.
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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.
I was given one of these by my brother when I was about 10yrs old, as he'd just bought some new fangled Pioneer with multi CD changer.
I had it for a few years before getting my own system with CD player... the innards were removed as they were failing, and I used it on it's side to keep all my records in with my stereo on top.
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Do you want to hear about my homelab?
Heck yes
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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.
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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.
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I was given one of these by my brother when I was about 10yrs old, as he'd just bought some new fangled Pioneer with multi CD changer.
I had it for a few years before getting my own system with CD player... the innards were removed as they were failing, and I used it on it's side to keep all my records in with my stereo on top.
wrote last edited by [email protected]That was the stack my dad had in the 80s! I can distinctively remember the dial layout on the amp, the feeling of the switches when they changed position on my fingers and the heft of the volume dial in the middle.
I don't know what happened to them; i'm a little bit sad about that now.
Later on he built his own amp. He never had a formal education in electronics, but he taught himself quite a lot, including fixing TV's with bad solder spots.
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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
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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.
they must still do that? i have a denon receiver thats maybe 7 years old that turns when you change volume
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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?
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.
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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.
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.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]That EQ is worth its weight in gold.
And I would literally kill somebody for that record player and by literally killing I mean figuratively so not really at all.
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Did you have to hide from the T Rex on your way to school?
I kid. I started out buying records and cassettes, but 8 tracks were "outdated" by the time I was a kid. Though our huge old school "console"* could play 8 tracks and when I was 13 I found my mom's box of old tapes. She had Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Queen etc. It was quite the musical education.
- A console was a giant piece of furniture only slightly smaller than a coffin that had a radio, record player, and speakers built in. It's what got replaced by the "sleek, modern" units like the one in OPs picture.
We had one of the giant console things but it was just a radio tuner and turntable. The radio tuner had short wave in addition to Am and FM which was pretty cool at the time. One of my uncle's was more into hifi back then had a reel to reel machine which was rare then and really rare now.
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We had one of the giant console things but it was just a radio tuner and turntable. The radio tuner had short wave in addition to Am and FM which was pretty cool at the time. One of my uncle's was more into hifi back then had a reel to reel machine which was rare then and really rare now.
wrote last edited by [email protected]The radio tuner had short wave in addition to Am and FM which was pretty cool at the time.
Hell, I still think that is pretty damn cool.
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they must still do that? i have a denon receiver thats maybe 7 years old that turns when you change volume
wrote last edited by [email protected]My Onkyo solved it by removing the marking on the volume knob.
