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.
Missing an 8-track player. Not sure if Sony ever made one, but I imagine they might have.
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
they must still do that? i have a denon receiver thats maybe 7 years old that turns when you change volume
My Onkyo solved it by removing the marking on the volume knob.
Pfft. I had one of these.
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.
Cd player? Oh you sweet summer child
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.
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.
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.
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.
I had a victrola. My grandma raised me.
Those all-in-one audio systems were fantastic, I will not hear any more of this slander
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 😁
They’re the same color!
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.
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.
You could spin it up like a fly wheel. It’d move after you let go.
All the way to 11.
It was great!
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.
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.
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.
That has a frigging CD player in it. Ours had an 8-track.
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.
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
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.
Separate Tuner, Cassette Deck, Amplifier, CD player, Equalizer, and Turntable?
I am old enough and if that system were in good shape I would set it up in my living room right now. Would probably leave the cassette deck and CD player in storage though.
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”.
