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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: What are your fondest audiophile memories? posted by mkuller on July 17, 2010 at 10:50:53:
How about going all the way back to the 1950's when I got started in this hobby (as a college student)."Component high fidelity", as it was called, was just starting to make inroads against the packaged systems offered by the likes of Magnavox, Philco, RCA Victor, and the prestige brands Capehart and Stromberg-Carlson. These things were often sold through appliance stores, with the better brands offered through department stores.
Audio was largely a DIY hobby back then, and Saturday morning would find the electronics supply stores buzzing with hobbyists - debating, exchanging ideas, and just enjoying good fellowship. It was quite marvelous. The nastiness and rancor one sees these days in audio discussions was non-existent. We were all in this together.
Soon the kit manufacturers (like Arkay, Dyna, Eico, Knight, Lafayette and later Heathkit) emerged to offer everything but the final assembly. Students like me found them a godsend, as they offered something affordable for those of us who didn't have the know-how to completely design and engineer our own amps and preamps, and couldn't afford to buy the real Rolls-Royce brands, Marantz and McIntosh.
Measurement reigned supreme back then, as measurements defined what was "high fidelity" and what wasn't. No raging debates about "what sounds good" versus "what measures well". Of course, all that changed in the 1970's when JGH and HP changed the rules of discourse as to what high-fidelity was all about (and I won't start a flame war here by speculating on whether that change was for the good or ill of high fidelity).
Back in those early days, big events in our young audiophile lives were the arrival each year of the new Allied Radio and Lafayette Radio catalogs. They were veritable treasure troves of what was available in turntables, cartridges, tonearms, electronics, speakers and accessories. My friends and I spent hours poring through these catalogs, dreaming of the great systems we would one day own.
Back then Consumers Reports offered credible testing of high-fidelity components, and they were quite influential. Their seminal 1959 report on loudspeakers was a bombshell. For they deemed only four loudspeakers worthy of being considered high-fidelity: the KLH Four, KLH Six, AR-1, and AR-2. All bookshelf-sized acoustic suspension boxes. They dissed many of the "big name" brands of the day (like University, Bozak, Electro-Voice, Jensen, Hartley, James B. Lansing). It caused an uproar in the industry. But it put AR and KLH on the map and forever changed the course of loudspeaker history.
Of course it helped that stereo was establishing itself, and small speakers were coming into demand, displacing the big horn-loaded corner systems that had been the derigueur dream systems of the day.
Later CR did a rave review of the Thorens TD 124, which helped establish that exotic Swiss brand as a force in the U.S. (now 50 years later Art Dudley lists a restored TD 124 as his reference turntable).
Yes, I know, I'm just some old fart reminiscing about the good old days. But they were good. I count it a privilege that I was around back when "high fidelity" was getting started. It got me started in a lifelong hobby (50+ years of spending entirely too much money, but god it has been fun!)
Before I sign off, my very first system (circa 1957) consisted of an el-cheapo Garrard changer, the GE VRII cartridge (a magnificent magnetic pickup, which at $19.95 helped put early lp playback on its feet), an EICO HF52 integrated amp (built from a kit) and an AR-2 speaker. It soon morphed into my first stereo system: a Thorens TD 124 turntable (I totally understand why AD likes this turntable), an Audio Empire arm, a Shure M3-D pickup (which CR also helped make famous), a Dyna PAS-2 preamp, a Dyna Stereo 70 amp (the Dyna units built from kits), and a pair of AR-2a speakers. You know, these first systems were like the first you-know-what.
Happy listening.
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Follow Ups
- RE: What are your fondest audiophile memories? - apollo66 07/19/1021:15:16 07/19/10 (1)
- I don't go back quite that far... - mkuller 10:11:00 07/20/10 (0)
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