Hifi of Yesteryear vs Today's effort!

[WolfyWesty]

21 minutes ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

 

I remember those flooding eBay a few years back. I got one of the Osaka ones and it had already gone to **** in its box so never got to use it on the cassette.

 

... did get to rock the house with the mic in and an iPod though.

 

Yeah, I think it was a warehouse find or something along those lines. The box was pretty much landfill, but the system itself was fine. 

 

Never seen them since though. 

 

[AnnoyingPentium]

Just now, WolfyWesty said:

 

Yeah, I think it was a warehouse find or something along those lines. The box was pretty much landfill, but the system itself was fine. 

 

Never seen them since though. 

 

 

They all disappeared very quickly. It was bizarre.

[Lady Elanore]

2 hours ago, WolfyWesty said:

A few years ago I bought this off eBay (it was brand new, still had all the plastic wrapping on it) and it had the best sound of any speaker setup I've ever owned. It was so loud it was fantastic! The bass was nuts but not over-bearing.  

 

Selling it on was one of my biggest regrets. 

Detachable speakers. wow! 

 

The first thing I bought when I had my first proper job was a ghetto blaster, a Hitachi TRK 8290  (the link below is from a Boombox wiki, have fun  ) Very similar to the one in the link below

 

 

http://wikiboombox.com/tiki-index.php?page=Hitachi+TRK-8190

 

 

Edited 17 March, 2022 by Lady Elanore

[skomaz]

I had a Sony cfs210 when I started work...   But I was sharing a house with some mates and we had it in the kitchen and one of them managed to melt it! 

[Lady Elanore]

Haha, I found my first ever radio cassette!

 

Hitachi TRK 5030. lots of very happy memories  

 

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/268289766/1975-hitachi-portable-radio-trk-5030e?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details

 

Edited 18 March, 2022 by Lady Elanore

[Gaz]

19 hours ago, Lady Elanore said:

Haha, I found my first ever radio cassette!

 

Not exactly hifi, but certainly from yesteryear.  My first ever (and still working) Sony radio.  Circa 1973-ish:

 

[AnnoyingPentium]

I've got a mid-80s Sharp boombox/ghetto blaster kicking about in a wardrobe, but my "main" one is this, a fairly later Sony with a CD and cassette. SW radio too, which is neat. It's also rather dusty as it's been lying about and recently got disturbed to sit on that unit/get used.

 

[AnnoyingPentium]

That Sony is lovely and all, but this is better.

 

 

All £7.50 of it...

[mac11irl]

i get to join properly now...

father in law's set uo from his youth, MIL found someone who could fix it, arrived back the other day and set up today..

 

 

 

i have no additional info beyond the pics.. havnt seen it yet.

 

FIL reckons its about 51yrs old, he'll be 71 in August..

[Lady Elanore]

I love looking at old hifi. I remember a neighbour getting one of those new fangled 'music centres' when I was young and we all went round to stare, gawp and listen to it. The VU meters blew me away with their techy look. I soon found out that VU meters aren't really of much use and of no use at all in broadcasting  

[AnnoyingPentium]

11 minutes ago, Lady Elanore said:

I soon found out that VU meters aren't really of much use and of no use at all in broadcasting  

 

Aye true, but they look cool.

[skomaz]

22 minutes ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

 

Aye true, but they look cool.

 

Almost as good as flashy led leve meters in graphic equalisers from the 80s

[Lady Elanore]

Fluorescent meters were very scifi when I first saw them  

[B33fy]

Had a NAD tuner and Denon Cassette deck, couldn’t give them away ended up chucking them recently, which was a shame. Always fancied the top loading SLP 1200 technics CD player. £1500+ on the bay now.

[AnnoyingPentium]

I had this Denon setup for some time. Paired with my Fisher amp, Kenwood TT and the Sanyo speakers. All of the featured stuff is still up my loft.

 

The white clip on the tape deck was to hold the door shut as it got smashed up in the post. It's a DRM-700 with many electrical gremlins. It's a 3-head deck though.

 

[Lady Elanore]

2 hours ago, B33fy said:

 Always fancied the top loading SLP 1200 technics CD player. £1500+ on the bay now.

 

 

I used to use them in broadcast spec (very similar). They were super fast to load and find a track, or a specific part of a track. 

Edited 3 April, 2022 by Lady Elanore

[VWD]

Problem is, Amanda that as we age, our hearing band narrows. I remember 50 years ago trying this out with 18/19 year old apprentices in a Post Office repeater station, where we had broadcast spec speakers. I as a 25 year old could hear tones up to 18/20K, and sense higher frequencies, but the teenagers could hear well beyond this.

[Lady Elanore]

Sound has been mixed and balanced by middle-aged men (and sometimes women) for decades, Lord knows what has been lost in the mix  I was once called into the truck (I was quite young) to listen to an alleged high frequency tone on the desk output. I could hear it, but none of the middle-aged peeps could, what worried them was they could see it on the meters though  

Edited 6 April, 2022 by Lady Elanore

[PetrolDave]

18 hours ago, VWD said:

Problem is, Amanda that as we age, our hearing band narrows. I remember 50 years ago trying this out with 18/19 year old apprentices in a Post Office repeater station, where we had broadcast spec speakers. I as a 25 year old could hear tones up to 18/20K, and sense higher frequencies, but the teenagers could hear well beyond this.

In 2015 I was testing a new design of a variable frequency SMPS in the lab with it running at 10kHz which I, as a 60 year old, couldn't hear but when my 40 year old boss walked into the lab the first thing he said was "can't you hear that"?

 

In a recent hearing test my hearing was more sensitive than 'normal' up to 8kHz but dropped off rapidly above that.

[VWD]

That's was our findings some 50 years ago. These days I'm finding I'm more susceptible to lower frequency problems, but I put that down to dust in ear problems , caused by years on track watching ballast being dropped and dust rising. It might a word of warning ,MAC. Get those ear plugs in and keep the dust out.

[AnnoyingPentium]

Used to have a pair of beige ones which are now consigned to the big box of spare bits. However, I fair fancied having a black one and when one came up for a tenner I bought it.

 

[skomaz]

On 29/01/2022 at 19:15, skomaz said:

 

Fixed it!!  😀 

 

Finally got round to taking it apart and noticed that the ribbon cable to the laser head seemed to be kinked and felt cracked.  So I took it off, straightened it out and used a bit of sellotape to strengthen it and hold it together.  Reassembled it all and it now works perfectly.

 

New ribbon cable on order though just in case.

 

Well the sellotape hack lasted 4 months but it gave up again earlier this week.

 

10 minutes today and it's up and running again with a new ribbon cable from laser head to circuit board 😀

[AnnoyingPentium]

Received this delightful Bush MTT1 for £20 from a member of another forum. Arrived today and is a lovely wee bit of kit.

 

 

Also included were some free LPs... including this Genesis one. I've never heard it before, good so far.

 

[AnnoyingPentium]

Currently sitting on the opposite end of the room from my Hi-Fi. Which is now on and being used for the first time in ages. Recording a mix tape for my trip away tomorrow. Forgot how bassy Erase/Rewind by the Cardigans was... I'm feeling it through the bloody armchair.

[Lady Elanore]

  Spent the day (actually the last couple of days) testing loudspeakers. Having only had a couple of days off in the last eight weeks and nearly all of those days were well over 12 hour long ...and saying in shoddy hotels 😡 I have treated myself, or rather, (cough cough) my business has acquired some new monitors. There is a small chance I may listen to them in a personal situation rather than a professional one of course  . But it was great to listen to the differences in some of the last bit of truly analogue kit left - speakers (Obviously vinyl and tape still exist, but there isn't as much of it about and pretty much all new recordings are done as digital masters these days). The great thing was I could listen to a recording I actually helped make!! It wasn't my ears that made the magic happen on those recordings, I was just the hired help for rigging and editing annotations with the orchestral score, but I was there when it was created, so it was interesting to see (or hear) how close I could get to the original sound.

 

  Ended up driving to Carlisle to listen to some today and wanted to buy an opened box set, which this morning I had asked to hear. When I got there, I was told they were sold!!!!! Luckily, they did a great deal on a brand-new pair of the same model for only a small increase in price. I did still try some other speakers and Peter Tysons were kind enough to even open a brand-new set of Monitor Audio 300 Golds for me to listen to (I didn't buy them in the end). The open box set of those M.A.s that I had also was interested in, had just been sold that  morning too and once again Peter Tysons offered to match the price of the opened box set if I wanted them.

 

  Excellent pricing and they were super easy to deal with. Thoroughly recommend them at their Carlisle branch.  

 

 

Edited 24 August, 2022 by Lady Elanore