• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Stereos

Share this page

There is something tactile and real about the vinyl that is lost with the CD's. I love the big album cover artwork and listening to an LP is a deliberate act, not unlike an audio tea ceremony. It has intent and purpose, not just background sound.
 
In our teen years, hearing "The Doors" thru those for the first time was AMAZING... though the Old Man was a bit less-than pleased. :p:p
 
Kind of a twofer today - LBC's and records - got caught in some clickbait this am (stores that are no longer with us - in Canada)

saw this

1622636509560.png
 
DrEntropy said:
In our teen years, hearing "The Doors" thru those for the first time was AMAZING... though the Old Man was a bit less-than pleased. :p:p
Click to expand...
Later than teen years, but in '78 or so, good friend of mine and I were in the den enjoying a "spirited" listening to "Fire on the Mountain" by Marshall Tucker Band. Had the volume cranked up, since Janet wasn't home. She came back earlier than anticipated and proceeded to impress Bryce with her... um... comments, in a not-so-quiet voice. Bryce still talks about it to this day - never expected so much animation from her! Said she could hear it out in the driveway.
 
For some reason I can't quite explain, I've had this urge lately to combine two of my long time loves, high performance audio and mid-century modern furniture, by building a classically styled console cabinet with up to date electronics fitted into it.

I shouldn't want to. Electronics combined with "it's nice furniture" was the bane of my existence for many years. My parents met, married and built a life in the mid-century. They weren't into hi-fi or anything like that. They were the sort to go to a nice department store and buy something that looked nice. And console entertainment systems were the norm. And there's nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, decades later, when the electronics contained in those pieces were long dead and long past serviceable they continued to sit in our house, monolithic lumps of uselessness providing nothing more than a top surface to pile junk on. Any time I suggested removing them I was met with "it's nice furniture." I couldn't even modify them into something useful because the form factor of old electronics was so far removed from the modern.

My father went to his grave maneuvering around those useless lumps under piles of junk. And my mom held on to them until we finally convinced her to move out of the house to a seniors' apartment complex near us.

So I really should just want to see electronics simply put on basic shelves. Maybe I just want to see it done well. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment.

I don't know. Maybe I just want to see a nice, high quality turntable built into a cabinet instead of those awful ones that always were. And some speakers with decent drivers and actual engineered enclosures instead of rejects from a '63 Buick's dashboard would be nice. If you want to be able to really crank it up it'd be best to build the speakers outside the cabinet (matching the wood grain, of course).
 
PC said:
For some reason I can't quite explain, I've had this urge lately to combine two of my long time loves, high performance audio and mid-century modern furniture, by building a classically styled console cabinet with up to date electronics fitted into it.

I shouldn't want to. Electronics combined with "it's nice furniture" was the bane of my existence for many years. My parents met, married and built a life in the mid-century. They weren't into hi-fi or anything like that. They were the sort to go to a nice department store and buy something that looked nice. And console entertainment systems were the norm. And there's nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, decades later, when the electronics contained in those pieces were long dead and long past serviceable they continued to sit in our house, monolithic lumps of uselessness providing nothing more than a top surface to pile junk on. Any time I suggested removing them I was met with "it's nice furniture." I couldn't even modify them into something useful because the form factor of old electronics was so far removed from the modern.

My father went to his grave maneuvering around those useless lumps under piles of junk. And my mom held on to them until we finally convinced her to move out of the house to a seniors' apartment complex near us.

So I really should just want to see electronics simply put on basic shelves. Maybe I just want to see it done well. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment.

I don't know. Maybe I just want to see a nice, high quality turntable built into a cabinet instead of those awful ones that always were. And some speakers with decent drivers and actual engineered enclosures instead of rejects from a '63 Buick's dashboard would be nice. If you want to be able to really crank it up it'd be best to build the speakers outside the cabinet (matching the wood grain, of course).
Click to expand...

I hear ya. Couple the generic hi-fi with a television and you have a huge piece of "nice" furniture that soon becomes useless.

With regard to your last comment about speakers, Klipsch sorta had that in mind with their speaker designs. Years ago I sold industrial/commercial ventilation equipment, and we had a line of dust collectors. The Klipsch home office/manufacturing facility is in Hope, Ark., part of my sales territory. I had the good fortune to sell them some equipment and was given quite a tour of the place. Not only did they put out some great speakers, but their woodworking was outstanding. Way above my pay grade!

But having been a Radio Shack store manager previously, I was pretty impressed with the cabinetry of most of the speaker line - walnut veneer rather than vinyl applique like competitors. And the T-100 speakers I still have have a removable grille cloth for a different look.

Here's my setup - other speaker's on the other side of the fireplace, and there is also a surround sound throughout the den.
 

Attachments

  • PXL_20210604_110911644.jpg
    PXL_20210604_110911644.jpg
    3.3 MB · Views: 54
mikephillips said:
Glad you guys had fathers who could build things like that. Good guy that he was, the fixit/buildit gene skipped my dad. I got it from my grandfathers instead.
Click to expand...
Not so much how ya got it, rather that ya got it!

We lived next door to my paternal grandparents, my grandfather a skilled and intelligent machinist and millwright. His first born, my dad, managed the quality control, destructive testing and instrument repair portions of a metallurgical laboratory (he joked that his main job for the company was to produce scrap). I had benefit of two generations of diverse experience as I grew up. I think I'v posted previously that some of the first ultrasonic materials testing equipment was developed in our living room from the time I was a pre-teen. Had the fortune of being "mentored"" by PhD's in physics, metallurgy and electronics. I consider myself very fortunate for all of that.
 
Great rig, Mickey. I especially like that you're still rockin' the reel-2-reel.

Yup, Klipsch definitely holds up both ends, great performance and excellent cabinetry.
 
My grandparents had some of those console hi-fi units. I don't ever recall any of them being operational but they were older than me in most cases and I don't have much childhood memory so if they were in use when I was a little kid I wouldn't know. My only memory of them was being used as record storage and end tables. They were not low-end units though - there was at least one imported Grundig unit there which I remember looking at as an adult. If I had room in my house now I'd consider finding one in cosemetic good condition (even if all the internals were gone) and retrofitting it.
 
PC said:
Great rig, Mickey. I especially like that you're still rockin' the reel-2-reel.

Yup, Klipsch definitely holds up both ends, great performance and excellent cabinetry.
Click to expand...
Thanks - still prefer analog over digital. That reel-to-reel needs some work, but still plays. And the receiver is digital, but with the surround sound does a pretty good job. I have my old Realistic receiver in the garage with a CD changer and another reel-to-reel, hooked up to a couple of Pioneer speakers (with the aforementioned vinyl "wood" finish). Got to entertain the bears around here...

And I'd love to have a couple of old-school Klipsch Heresy, or better yet, La Scala, speakers!
 
PC said:
For some reason I can't quite explain, I've had this urge lately to combine two of my long time loves, high performance audio and mid-century modern furniture, by building a classically styled console cabinet with up to date electronics fitted into it.

I shouldn't want to. Electronics combined with "it's nice furniture" was the bane of my existence for many years. My parents met, married and built a life in the mid-century. They weren't into hi-fi or anything like that. They were the sort to go to a nice department store and buy something that looked nice. And console entertainment systems were the norm. And there's nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, decades later, when the electronics contained in those pieces were long dead and long past serviceable they continued to sit in our house, monolithic lumps of uselessness providing nothing more than a top surface to pile junk on. Any time I suggested removing them I was met with "it's nice furniture." I couldn't even modify them into something useful because the form factor of old electronics was so far removed from the modern.

My father went to his grave maneuvering around those useless lumps under piles of junk. And my mom held on to them until we finally convinced her to move out of the house to a seniors' apartment complex near us.

So I really should just want to see electronics simply put on basic shelves. Maybe I just want to see it done well. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment.

I don't know. Maybe I just want to see a nice, high quality turntable built into a cabinet instead of those awful ones that always were. And some speakers with decent drivers and actual engineered enclosures instead of rejects from a '63 Buick's dashboard would be nice. If you want to be able to really crank it up it'd be best to build the speakers outside the cabinet (matching the wood grain, of course).
Click to expand...
I built my stereo cabinet from my family's old TV we had when I was a kid. It's a large study piece of furniture with roll back doors. I simply gutted it, made a solid floor for it and a shelf.
 
waltesefalcon said:
I built my stereo cabinet from my family's old TV we had when I was a kid. It's a large study piece of furniture with roll back doors. I simply gutted it, made a solid floor for it and a shelf.
Click to expand...
Awesome. When it works it's great. I wish I could have made it work with ours.

Ours was similar to this one (pic randomly snitched from the interwebs) but larger. Same manufacturer. Same style. Ours had the turntable under a lift-up panel on the top to the right of the TV.

Everything about it was wrong for reuse. Of course it was completely useless for modern video. The turntable bay was too small for a modern deck and rebuilding it would require rebuilding the entire top.

It was built at a time when it would be the centerpiece of a room. Really needed to be in a corner unless the room was huge. That was OK in my parents' 1956 apartment. but in our houses it needed to be against a wall and was too deep. It just stuck into the room too much. Could have gutted it and put in audio component shelves and record slots. But there would have been a lot of dead space and still be too deep.

At best I could have replaced the innards with drawers and had an oversized monolith that was always in the way but had some useful storage.

So, it just sat in the way for half a century.

1938770_1_x.jpg
 
I went a completely different direction with audio. Made my own speakers for a 5.1 system. In researching speaker designs, I learned about the Golden Ratio where the hxwxd relation dated back to Greek theater. Without a P.A. system they figured out how to amplify the human voice by using the walls of the theater. By adjusting the walls, they could tune the theater to the human voice. In my mind that isn't good for speakers because music has much more range in frequency. It colors the music from its original recording.
So what did I do? Torture myself. There could be no two walls that were parallel to each other, instead of six sides, I made it with eight. The center speaker has eleven sides. Made from birch plywood, all the edges are mitered. Each edge has a different angle. IIRC, the sharpest angle was 63 degrees.
 

Attachments

  • 20210604_185933.jpg
    20210604_185933.jpg
    326.6 KB · Views: 45
GregW said:
I went a completely different direction with audio. Made my own speakers for a 5.1 system. In researching speaker designs, I learned about the Golden Ratio where the hxwxd relation dated back to Greek theater. Without a P.A. system they figured out how to amplify the human voice by using the walls of the theater. By adjusting the walls, they could tune the theater to the human voice. In my mind that isn't good for speakers because music has much more range in frequency. It colors the music from its original recording.
So what did I do? Torture myself. There could be no two walls that were parallel to each other, instead of six sides, I made it with eight. The center speaker has eleven sides. Made from birch plywood, all the edges are mitered. Each edge has a different angle. IIRC, the sharpest angle was 63 degrees.
Click to expand...
Neat!!!
 
Back
Top