We had this in my house growing up
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Yeah I found this which was more like what we had.
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.
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Honestly, aging capacitors and cracked motor drive belts aside, a complete hi-fi is a thing of beauty. And it's supposed to be, hence the showy front and glass case to keep the dust off.
I'm no audiophile, but with refurbished power supplies, updated noise reduction* & EQ, and modern speaker technology, that setup would be an old media blasting beast.
* - for the uninitiated, or if you're old enough to smell OP's photo, the way tape-hiss intrudes on music is just hot garbage by today's standards. So, having a way to mitigate it would be strongly advised.
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?
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I grew up with vacuum tube TV, (we got one channel, maybe a second if the weather was right), and reel to reel tape players.
I still remember the TV not working and my Father pulling it away from the wall and removing the back to look for the burnt out tube. Then since this generally happened on a Friday evening, (no Saturday cartoons), we had to wait until Monday to drive into town and go to the drug store to test and search for a replacement tube.
When I got to be a teen, I remember listening to the local am rock radio station and waiting for hours for the latest hit to come on so we could record it on a portable cassette recorder. Both my sisters spent many evenings doing that. We were sailing the high seas of piracy before it even existed.
Ahhh, those were the days. I'm so glad we don't need to do that shit anymore.
I have some bad news for you, your Dad didn't want you watching those cartoons...
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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.
Dude write that book.
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To be clear, I think homelabs are great!
Do you want to hear about my homelab?
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My best friend had this (1980s) and he also had something I've never seen before or since: an 8-track recorder. We would make mix tapes on the thing and take them to parties - where we were extremely, extremely unpopular because our 8-track mix tapes had shit like Laurie Anderson and Ultravox and Jon and Vangelis songs on them. Also the tapes played back at 125% speed so everybody sounded a bit like the Chipmunks.
Personally, I find the current vinyl craze kind of amusing. I spent the first ten years of my listening life with LPs and the moment I got my first CD player that was the end of that shit forever. The clicks and pops and the physical PITA of taking records out of their sleeves and setting the stylus down somewhere to hear a particular song and then cleaning the record and putting it back was just so incredibly annoying. The only good thing about LPs was (is) the cover art; as a huge Yes fan growing up I should perhaps appreciate that more, but it wasn't enough to offset the negatives.
we had some classical LPs - gershwin, copeland, holst etc., and I remember getting them on CD and hooking that to the high fi. no flutter. no dust. no pops and hiss..... and all played at the right time, apparently our record player was 10-15% slow and no one knew.... blew my mind.
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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.
Buttons are an reminder of the luxury of space we used to have.
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Definitely going for this setup next month when I move ..just going Vinyl and speakers was too little. (I know it's sacrilegious to say this but Bluetooth speakers for the record player also let me connect my phone and gives me the other sources... Is it high Fidelity it's fine... I'm an audio engineer I can say that.)
It's the battery driven stuff that drives me nuts, nothing beats the "just push the button and it all works" kind of thing.
CDs are so small though, I'm tinkering with "USB stick playlists".
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Buttons are an reminder of the luxury of space we used to have.
The absolute smoothness of the giant volume knob and heft to it as you turned it.
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Buttons are an reminder of the luxury of space we used to have.
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.
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Dude write that book.
I second it. Iām an amateur woodworker myself.
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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.
Those all-in-one audio systems were fantastic, I will not hear any more of this slander
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Those all-in-one audio systems were fantastic, I will not hear any more of this slander
wrote last edited by [email protected]All in one
You are looking at 6 separate pieces of equipment in a purpose built cabinet.
Idk what you mean all in one.
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The absolute smoothness of the giant volume knob and heft to it as you turned it.
wrote last edited by [email protected]You could spin it up like a fly wheel. It'd move after you let go.
All the way to 11.
It was great!
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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.
My ex had this. You can crank an astonishing amount of noise out of these things in a way a Bluetooth speaker paired to a device cannot. The first time I was over and he put it on as I was leaving, we were then outside his place and I still couldn't hear him talking.
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All in one
You are looking at 6 separate pieces of equipment in a purpose built cabinet.
Idk what you mean all in one.
They mean All the Things in One cabinet
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I have some bad news for you, your Dad didn't want you watching those cartoons...
So that explains all the getting up at 5am to milk cows, feed calves and steers and pigs, (my sisters fed the chickens, ducks and geese), shoveling shit, picking rocks, and pulling weeds..........
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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'd have to ask how old this system is. Ours was black, made by Kenwood, and had a wooden cabinet. Tinted glass door. Tape player was a dual front loader. That looks like a CD cartridge loader. We had that too. Our cartridges held six discs and they swiveled out.
Wasn't mine, it was my mother's, and she still has it. It still works. The doors on the tape deck have snapped off (we were rough with them) but you can still snap tapes into it and they play.
I remember when my mother got it. She'd just gotten divorced, had a bit of money, walked into a Circuit City (this woulda been like 1989?) and asked for the best stereo they had. And I think either she or I asked about Sony, because I remember the guy saying Sony was for people who want people to think they have an expensive stereo. Kenwood was for people who wanted a good stereo. I don't know how true it was. Maybe he just wanted to make a commission. I think she paid a couple grand for it. I don't recall. I didn't pay for it. I bought my Super NES from that same Circuit City though, and I paid for that out of my allowance. $150. I didn't bring the tax though. My mother did cover the tax. But anyway.
But while it wasn't mine, I was the one who put it together, because back then you didn't have Geek Squad (which is Best Buy, but you get the idea). I think they might have had "professional home installation" but that has never been cheap or affordable. Plus, my mother's oldest son (me) was a computer guy. She figured, if he could put together a computer (that is, connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to a computer and turn it on ā I wouldn't start building them for another 15 years ā I could assemble a stereo. Which just meant stacking them on the shelves, and connecting them via the wires in the back. Two wires ā one red, one white ā connected to each component and plugged into the... switcher? Whatever it was called. Pretty easy. Did it again when we moved. And then again when it came from the garage, which was like a family room, to the living room when we turned the garage into a granny unit for family who would move in. And then, when I did that, I was able to connect the TV to it, which greatly improved our sound.
Oh yeah, OP doesn't show the speakers. Did that Sony kit include them? I'm sure it must have. My mother's Kenwood came with speakers as tall as the cabinets! Two of them. The speakers only lasted maybe 20, 30 years though? My brother, then grown, found her better, more modern speakers to hook up to it.
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Fun fact, recording stuff from the radio is not piracy. There's actually an exemption for broadcast recordings specifically.
Also, I have similar memories.
I too am old.
Now that you mention it, yeah I remember that now. You ain't old yet. Just getting your second wind.
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So that explains all the getting up at 5am to milk cows, feed calves and steers and pigs, (my sisters fed the chickens, ducks and geese), shoveling shit, picking rocks, and pulling weeds..........
Vacuum tubes hate that, so that's probably why they lost their vacuum on Fridays like clockwork...
