We had this in my house growing up
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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 — I wouldn't start building them for another 15 years — I could assemble a stereo. Which just meant stacking them on the shelves, and connecting them via the wires in the back. Two wires — one red, one white — 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...
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I was likely in uni when this came out. I am cassette, 8-track and LP old. The CD came out when I was in uni. I remember having to decide whether to get a Betamax or VHS tape player when they came out.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.
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Vacuum tubes hate that, so that's probably why they lost their vacuum on Fridays like clockwork...
Them cows were getting milked TV or not. Dead or alive, there weren't no days off.
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My parents' cabinet (console) didn't even have the cassette tape unit, just turntable and reel-to-reel.
Ours has an 8 track, but no real to real, a later one has a cassette and 8-track (long after 8-tracks were obsolete.
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Those all-in-one audio systems were fantastic, I will not hear any more of this slander
They are*, plenty of them still around and pretty much all of them superior to soundbars.
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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.
That has a frigging CD player in it. Ours had an 8-track.
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Yeah I found this which was more like what we had.
I have an Electrohome turntable cabinet much like this one holding up my TV.
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That one appears to have a CD player, which most certainly wasn't included in the one I grew up with.
No problem, since it's all modular, you could always add one later
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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 had a victrola. My grandma raised me.
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Them cows were getting milked TV or not. Dead or alive, there weren't no days off.
Then the vacuum tubes failing on Friday evenings is truly a miracle of the modern age.
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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.
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.
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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're the same color!
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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 — I wouldn't start building them for another 15 years — I could assemble a stereo. Which just meant stacking them on the shelves, and connecting them via the wires in the back. Two wires — one red, one white — 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.
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.
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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.
