A 20 year old amplifier I bought my dad with my highschool graduation/job money. Coupled with his mtx speakers.
It can shake the house with oldies. Pushes the bullshit out.
I have 2 old-school Yamahas. one is in the room with me but would have to clear a pile of Amz and Meh boxes to get to it. The Yamahas were not crazy-audiophile but were pretty damn good. Also you are right there was also magic to the front panel light but I’d still take an incandescent-lit tuner bar from an old classic Pioneer, my first I took to college. also what cassette player was that? Still can’t part with my college-era Nakamichi 480.
been busy with life for a few decades but would love to dig into classic audiophile-obsession/hell again.
My Yamahas are from 90s. these was my old Pioneer and tape deck; my Nakamichi was black metal though.:
@pmarin Just remembered my whole dorm stereo system was wired to a lo-fi clock radio which I wired to a relay that would turn the on receiver and cassette deck, if I set the clock radio alarm.
the cassette had a way to auto-play on power-on, and no digital controls so receiver would be on/off.
everybody said I had the best alarm clock in the dorm. Of course best was Pink Floyd « Time ».
[actually think my 1st year cassette deck might have been a mid-high end Sony; think I got the Naka the next year]
@PooltoyWolf@robson this brought back a memory I didn’t know was there (don’t worry; not traumatic)
Spinning that big tuner wheel on the Pioneer felt magical. It was “flywheel” tuning and so it had a weight to it but once you got good with it felt precise. Sorry, digital tuning, you ruined everything for us.
@unksol I see from image it was a Technics cassette deck (for some reason they were called a tape ‘deck’). Technics used to be a semi-high-end brand owned by Panasonic, I think.
I had a higher-end Technics FM tuner and preamp, But sold them back to audio shops when I was into the scene in 1980s.
I just bought a Technics turntable at a Goodwill store. reviews said it is mid-line and not the best. Others said good luck finding a good belt-drive turntable for under $1000. so for $39 it will be fun. Reminds me I only have a few days to try it with Goodwill 15-day return policy. but honestly stuff like that is usually always fixable, and even had a cartridge that appears to be intact. so yeah pretty sure I will keep it and fix/upgrade someday if needed.
@pmarin Whoever told you it’s hard to find a good belt drive TT under a grand must have been smoking something. Turntables can get freaky expensive, but for all but the most discerning audiophile ears, it’s easy to find nice ones for around a tenth of that if you know where to look. (Obviously this excludes new purchases!)
@pmarin@PooltoyWolf I was actually trying to getit to read the amp output but it got blurry and I said screw it. But yeah it is a recording tape deck and next to it in both sides are a 3 wide set of cassette trays with a 2 wide on top and those tdk cassette car bags that hold like 20 from vacations on top of that. I think they would have just let them go to the dump if I hadn’t wanted them. And there are still more.
I mean to go through them and it’s not like cassettes are vintage. People took the record players. I can’t get another tape deck to work and it’s not the belt but that one definitely does. He recorded this stuff probably from the library. Or radio. IDK.
I wasn’t actually using it though I was just. Turning it up as far as it I thought it could go playing oldies from YouTube. Lame I know. Then further Wondering if he ever really cranked it. When we were gone. I’m guessing not but kinda hoping… IDK.
@pmarin From a thread on Reddit- “As etymonline puts it, “Tape-deck (1949) is in reference to the flat surface of old reel-to-reel tape recorders.” The term naturally extended to the whole apparatus (the board, heads, spindles, etc), and was preserved after it assumed a generally upright form.”
@PooltoyWolf at the time I think it was like $400 and I was looking for a decent one. His old receiver used to make the speakers crackle. Idk. Was a thing. it still goes lound. What’s unfortunate was it was like 2004 right before HDMI was a thing. But tvs for some reason all still have optical TOSLINK so I have that set up to feed back from the tv.
Just for curiosity I just checked the downstairs hallway.
Looks like another Yamaha receiver, a Kenwood straight 2-channel amp with Goodwill sticker still on it, and a super-classic JVC super-VHS (gotta go JVC for that stuff).
@pmarin I did not attempt to salvage the VHS. There was a lot of that too when I was a kid. But he eventually moved to DVDRW DVR and a lot was recorded off tv. But he also had two stacked decks. Recording time/helping program them. Etc. Was a thing. I think his last one died at some point and I gave him my VHS/DVD combo. Panasonic lol. They got used a lot and he killed a few. I definitely took a few apart and tried to fix them as a kid.
@pmarin and he was using my Netflix at the end. I still have that bombshell kinda sitting in there. I could go see what he was watching if its kept the history. Which. Is it’s own level of. Weird.
Since people asked. Its a technics M218. I don’t know anything about them. Knowing Dad. It was probably a middle of the road or low end option that did what he wanted. Grandpa recorded tapes too…
The expedition has a tape deck although it won’t work. Have to yank that out again and see what’s up. The Metro has a tape deck. There’s nostalgia attached. Obviously I know tapes kinda suck qualify wise. Once we got a computer he started writing CDs. I have those too. Oddly the only car that had a CD player was my Saturn cause after market I had put in. In my teens. When CDs were… IDK.
I was thinking of that first Sony cassette and I think it was this one. Sold it to someone in the dorm because it had mic inputs for their band music
/image Sony tc-k65
Yeah that was it; the slide switch on the left was to make it automatically play or record unattended when power went on… my dorm alarm clock! (Sorry to people in adjacent rooms…)
I definitely like the old school with the dials and the buttons and the indicators.
I’m clearly not an audiophile. I have not owned a real speaker, a receiver, or an AMP until inheriting these. Although I could build a decent AMP at one point. Not even a big music guy. I just put on the radio in the car or at work if I’m not in constant calls. I probably couldn’t tell you if they sound good. Relative to anything else.
What I do remember is Dad stacking TDK cassete bags and spending all of summer vacation playing then through the station wagon. Driving hundreds of miles.
But I also remember some painful memories.
And idk if it was these speakers back then but when we were old enough to be left home alone. And were never supposed to touch things. I definitely never turned them on so watching new hope on VHS sounded like xwings attacking the death star at the theater.
And then I’m helping him with AMD K6 and cd burners and fixing the car instead of scrambling for sockets. And im working. And then I’m going be gone. And that crappy basically radio with one input from the VCR on bad wire and a built in crap amp still makes those speakers crackle.
These might have actually been the good ones he got on sale/bought an an auction and just never used/sat in the basement in boxes when I was a kid. He had a habit of that. Granted that radio amp crap thing probably would have ruined the speakers. So. I made a… Slight … adjustment… Graduation and fathers Day tend to overlap… So…
Idk. I don’t really talk to people without a defined subject. There’s not much to say. I stood in the room with him for an hour on his birthday over a year ago just before he died and he didn’t say anything really. I didn’t have anything to tell him…
Honestly I probably was blasting Megan Moreny/OMG am I OK/YouTube music videos. Or something else out of it. Right before I took that. Cause just the volume can help clear your head of stress.
But YouTube has Johnny Cash and johnny Horton and cw mcall and Loretta Lyn and Patsy cline. And every other song I can remember.
The damn thing packs a payload that comes back and hits you. And I’m sure I’d be better off just putting a tape in every night, closing my eyes and falling asleep than doom scrolling YouTube.
OK, just catching up on this thread. Really love the vintage audio. I just missed a set of unknown functionality Walsh Ohm 2’s at the side if the road.
I did grab this at GW
Used it in my office for a bit with my vintage Realistic Minimus 7s, but ended up selling them both. Had a beautiful warm sound. I replaced the lights with LEDs. They are actually much whiter than the picture shows.
Liking some Loretta lyn
Loving this
I have 2 old-school Yamahas. one is in the room with me but would have to clear a pile of Amz and Meh boxes to get to it. The Yamahas were not crazy-audiophile but were pretty damn good. Also you are right there was also magic to the front panel light but I’d still take an incandescent-lit tuner bar from an old classic Pioneer, my first I took to college. also what cassette player was that? Still can’t part with my college-era Nakamichi 480.
been busy with life for a few decades but would love to dig into classic audiophile-obsession/hell again.
My Yamahas are from 90s. these was my old Pioneer and tape deck; my Nakamichi was black metal though.:
/image Pioneer SX-780 illuminated in dark room
/image Nakamichi 480
@pmarin Thought that looked familiar! I have an SX-780, along with a newer brother, the Fluroscan (VFD) equipped SX-3600.
@pmarin Just remembered my whole dorm stereo system was wired to a lo-fi clock radio which I wired to a relay that would turn the on receiver and cassette deck, if I set the clock radio alarm.
the cassette had a way to auto-play on power-on, and no digital controls so receiver would be on/off.
everybody said I had the best alarm clock in the dorm. Of course best was Pink Floyd « Time ».
[actually think my 1st year cassette deck might have been a mid-high end Sony; think I got the Naka the next year]
@pmarin That was some really good schiit in its day, and still!
The demand for vintage hifi is very strong.
@PooltoyWolf @robson this brought back a memory I didn’t know was there (don’t worry; not traumatic)
Spinning that big tuner wheel on the Pioneer felt magical. It was “flywheel” tuning and so it had a weight to it but once you got good with it felt precise. Sorry, digital tuning, you ruined everything for us.
@pmarin @robson Hardcore agree! Nothing feels like flywheel tuning. My STR-V5 Sony has it, as does the SX-3600.
@unksol I see from image it was a Technics cassette deck (for some reason they were called a tape ‘deck’). Technics used to be a semi-high-end brand owned by Panasonic, I think.
I had a higher-end Technics FM tuner and preamp, But sold them back to audio shops when I was into the scene in 1980s.
I just bought a Technics turntable at a Goodwill store. reviews said it is mid-line and not the best. Others said good luck finding a good belt-drive turntable for under $1000. so for $39 it will be fun. Reminds me I only have a few days to try it with Goodwill 15-day return policy. but honestly stuff like that is usually always fixable, and even had a cartridge that appears to be intact. so yeah pretty sure I will keep it and fix/upgrade someday if needed.
@pmarin Technics and Panasonic we both brands under Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd which changed their name to Panasonic in 2008.
For just casual playback a belt drive turntable does not need to be super expensive.
@pmarin Whoever told you it’s hard to find a good belt drive TT under a grand must have been smoking something. Turntables can get freaky expensive, but for all but the most discerning audiophile ears, it’s easy to find nice ones for around a tenth of that if you know where to look. (Obviously this excludes new purchases!)
@pmarin @PooltoyWolf I was actually trying to getit to read the amp output but it got blurry and I said screw it. But yeah it is a recording tape deck and next to it in both sides are a 3 wide set of cassette trays with a 2 wide on top and those tdk cassette car bags that hold like 20 from vacations on top of that. I think they would have just let them go to the dump if I hadn’t wanted them. And there are still more.
I mean to go through them and it’s not like cassettes are vintage. People took the record players. I can’t get another tape deck to work and it’s not the belt but that one definitely does. He recorded this stuff probably from the library. Or radio. IDK.
I wasn’t actually using it though I was just. Turning it up as far as it I thought it could go playing oldies from YouTube. Lame I know. Then further Wondering if he ever really cranked it. When we were gone. I’m guessing not but kinda hoping… IDK.
Was having a moment. And shaking the house.
@pmarin From a thread on Reddit- “As etymonline puts it, “Tape-deck (1949) is in reference to the flat surface of old reel-to-reel tape recorders.” The term naturally extended to the whole apparatus (the board, heads, spindles, etc), and was preserved after it assumed a generally upright form.”
Oooh, Yamaha HTR-series, that’s a good one. Always loved VFD displays, too.
@PooltoyWolf at the time I think it was like $400 and I was looking for a decent one. His old receiver used to make the speakers crackle. Idk. Was a thing. it still goes lound. What’s unfortunate was it was like 2004 right before HDMI was a thing. But tvs for some reason all still have optical TOSLINK so I have that set up to feed back from the tv.
Just for curiosity I just checked the downstairs hallway.
Looks like another Yamaha receiver, a Kenwood straight 2-channel amp with Goodwill sticker still on it, and a super-classic JVC super-VHS (gotta go JVC for that stuff).
@pmarin I did not attempt to salvage the VHS. There was a lot of that too when I was a kid. But he eventually moved to DVDRW DVR and a lot was recorded off tv. But he also had two stacked decks. Recording time/helping program them. Etc. Was a thing. I think his last one died at some point and I gave him my VHS/DVD combo. Panasonic lol. They got used a lot and he killed a few. I definitely took a few apart and tried to fix them as a kid.
@pmarin and he was using my Netflix at the end. I still have that bombshell kinda sitting in there. I could go see what he was watching if its kept the history. Which. Is it’s own level of. Weird.
@pmarin Good stuff there!
Since people asked. Its a technics M218. I don’t know anything about them. Knowing Dad. It was probably a middle of the road or low end option that did what he wanted. Grandpa recorded tapes too…
The expedition has a tape deck although it won’t work. Have to yank that out again and see what’s up. The Metro has a tape deck. There’s nostalgia attached. Obviously I know tapes kinda suck qualify wise. Once we got a computer he started writing CDs. I have those too. Oddly the only car that had a CD player was my Saturn cause after market I had put in. In my teens. When CDs were… IDK.
@unksol a better look at the controls
I was thinking of that first Sony cassette and I think it was this one. Sold it to someone in the dorm because it had mic inputs for their band music
/image Sony tc-k65
Yeah that was it; the slide switch on the left was to make it automatically play or record unattended when power went on… my dorm alarm clock! (Sorry to people in adjacent rooms…)
I definitely like the old school with the dials and the buttons and the indicators.
I’m clearly not an audiophile. I have not owned a real speaker, a receiver, or an AMP until inheriting these. Although I could build a decent AMP at one point. Not even a big music guy. I just put on the radio in the car or at work if I’m not in constant calls. I probably couldn’t tell you if they sound good. Relative to anything else.
What I do remember is Dad stacking TDK cassete bags and spending all of summer vacation playing then through the station wagon. Driving hundreds of miles.
But I also remember some painful memories.
And idk if it was these speakers back then but when we were old enough to be left home alone. And were never supposed to touch things. I definitely never turned them on so watching new hope on VHS sounded like xwings attacking the death star at the theater.
And then I’m helping him with AMD K6 and cd burners and fixing the car instead of scrambling for sockets. And im working. And then I’m going be gone. And that crappy basically radio with one input from the VCR on bad wire and a built in crap amp still makes those speakers crackle.
These might have actually been the good ones he got on sale/bought an an auction and just never used/sat in the basement in boxes when I was a kid. He had a habit of that. Granted that radio amp crap thing probably would have ruined the speakers. So. I made a… Slight … adjustment… Graduation and fathers Day tend to overlap… So…
Idk. I don’t really talk to people without a defined subject. There’s not much to say. I stood in the room with him for an hour on his birthday over a year ago just before he died and he didn’t say anything really. I didn’t have anything to tell him…
Honestly I probably was blasting Megan Moreny/OMG am I OK/YouTube music videos. Or something else out of it. Right before I took that. Cause just the volume can help clear your head of stress.
But YouTube has Johnny Cash and johnny Horton and cw mcall and Loretta Lyn and Patsy cline. And every other song I can remember.
The damn thing packs a payload that comes back and hits you. And I’m sure I’d be better off just putting a tape in every night, closing my eyes and falling asleep than doom scrolling YouTube.
OK, just catching up on this thread. Really love the vintage audio. I just missed a set of unknown functionality Walsh Ohm 2’s at the side if the road.
I did grab this at GW
Used it in my office for a bit with my vintage Realistic Minimus 7s, but ended up selling them both. Had a beautiful warm sound. I replaced the lights with LEDs. They are actually much whiter than the picture shows.
@ybmuG Nice. What road should I drive by to find audio stuff?