What I really hate is that electronic part ordering was almost exclusively relegated to mail via the internet. Sure, e-commerce is a great thing but I don't like the idea of having to wait and pay shipping for everything. In 1960 there were radio rows and junk shops that would have had just about all the stuff I could possibly want and then some. Some are still around but 99% are gone.
Then it would have simply been hop in the Plymouth and have it the same day. Now wait 1 week for reasonable shipping rates. Criminal! If I were in charge there would be a large network of automated, hybrid energy, UAV (and UGV) drones delivering the mail. On a good day, one would have their mail, groceries, and online orders in a few hours. On a bad day, perhaps 24 hours. Furthermore, the IRS would be replaced with a large Mainframe that audits all financial transactions. Each transaction will be taxed for 1/3 of a penny. Therefore, the gov will be paid 1c per three transactions. Do the math. No more "obvious taxation" of any kind.
Anyway, the European goods always appeared better, and often were better than US produced "quantity over quality" engineering.
Then it would have simply been hop in the Plymouth and have it the same day. Now wait 1 week for reasonable shipping rates. Criminal! If I were in charge there would be a large network of automated, hybrid energy, UAV (and UGV) drones delivering the mail. On a good day, one would have their mail, groceries, and online orders in a few hours. On a bad day, perhaps 24 hours. Furthermore, the IRS would be replaced with a large Mainframe that audits all financial transactions. Each transaction will be taxed for 1/3 of a penny. Therefore, the gov will be paid 1c per three transactions. Do the math. No more "obvious taxation" of any kind.
Anyway, the European goods always appeared better, and often were better than US produced "quantity over quality" engineering.
Yes, I would have to say the UK and Europe in general was different, separates were very common around here (Boston suburb) and stereo arrived on the scene quite early, we had separates and stereo in 1960. Many of our neighbors had much higher quality gear than the Radio Shack amp, and speakers with a Garrard RC-21 changer and M3D cartridge my dad bought for about $120 or roughly about $1000 in today's dollars.
Car culture here even then, and even with good public transportation it was not very unusual for every driving member of the household to have their own car.
We had one car, most of our neighbors had two. (My mom who is British did not drive in the 1960s, so there was no need of a second car.)
It does speak to the vast socio-economic differences that then existed between the US and UK. I suspect the gap is a great deal narrower today.
Have you seen what M3D cartridges go for these days?
Car culture here even then, and even with good public transportation it was not very unusual for every driving member of the household to have their own car.
We had one car, most of our neighbors had two. (My mom who is British did not drive in the 1960s, so there was no need of a second car.)
It does speak to the vast socio-economic differences that then existed between the US and UK. I suspect the gap is a great deal narrower today.
Have you seen what M3D cartridges go for these days?
Not sure how old you are..
Almost all of the diy stores were gone by the time I got really interested in this stuff in the mid 1970s, unlike Brussels and Milan where I spent my high school years there were no good electronic diy shops in Atlanta where I went to school, and only very limited choices in Boston when I returned here in 1978.. I have no problem waiting for parts ordered off the internet, the choice, quality, and costs are staggeringly in our favor as compared to when I first got involved in this hobby in the 1970s. I can now find almost anything I want sometimes even at a price I consider a bargain. (Not always of course) I think this is a great time to pursue a hobby, the availability of parts and supplies for the enthusiast has never been better in my life time.
I don't think American classic hifi (late 1950s to the advent of transistorized hifi) in any sense is a quantity over quality game, the gear made by McIntosh, Fisher, HH Scott, Marantz, JBL, Altec, University to name just a few was reflective of best practice in the day. Pilot, Dynaco, and Eico were much more budget friendly, but well engineered to a price point. Empire made nice turntables on par quality wise with Thorens and Garrard's best offerings. The UK became a source of a great deal of excellent hifi sold here as well, Quad, Avantic Beam Echo, and EMI come to mind.
The sort of gear I am referencing didn't. Magnetic cartridges by Shure, Stanton/Pickering, Grado, B&0, and Ortofon were common here. Deccas were less common, but I have seen early ones. Low output moving coils were primarily the SPU, and judging from the number of antique ones I have run across around here were quite common.
Ceramic and crystal cartridges were extremely common, but not in the sort of gear most of us would aspire to were we to suddenly find ourselves back then. Quite a bit of the sort of gear that used them has ended up in landfills I guess. I hardly ever see one..
I agree, its just that I have the ability to think outside the box and envision a trade/economic system that can trump both 1960 and 2014.
How popular was this gear relative to consumer brands line Philco, Magnovox, Zenith, etc? It was the creme of the crop. Nevertheless, I can find plenty of flukes in it. Take the phono stages for example. I am continually working to tinker with phono circuits to stop noise, achieve better EQ compliance, etc. All I found in many of the "high-end" phono units was a single 12AX7 and a couplate. Even the Dynaco preamps worked with very high impedances. My question is, why did the high end makers often not work like SY to design "His Master's Noise" type circuits? Or did they just not have the vision?
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I'm a child of the 70s but have had an interest in vintage amplifiers ever since I heard/saw a McIntosh 240 driving a pair of Quad ESL-63s. When I first got into this hobby, vintage tube amplifiers, except for a small, small minority, were just not wanted. I got a chance to hear most of the Mac amps - they were only a few hundred bucks -e Grommes, Western Electric, Harman-Kardon, the Dynaco line - paid $99 for my first Dynaco 70, Ionovac Plasma tweeters, and Altec speakers and amps. The Eico line was really rare in comparison to Mac amps, while the Marantz stuff was considered "top o' line" and cost more than the other gear - at least around here.
Since the gear was so much cheaper, I saw re-designed and hacked gear that would make a Mac enthusiast cry: like a McIntosh 240 changed to run KT88s with outboard power supplies and a redesigned front-end. Or a C-20 completely gutted to use as a basis as a new design.
Buying tubes and gear was done through a small circle of friends or through Audio Trader. This was all pre-internet. When I went to the local electronic stores and asked for tubes, I would get the strangest looks, even from the old-timers. Of course I was a college student, so they seemed rather confused and often assumed I was fixing up a guitar amplifier.
Anyway, some of the anecdotes I heard from the older audiophiles who were there in the 60s: most source components from the era, excluding good reel to reel, were pretty much junk - except for tuners playing live music. And the same, with some minor exceptions like the H-K Citation line, was true for the preamplifiers. The best vintage components - and the ones that hold up best over time, are the amplifiers - but even these are a minority. It was usually the manufacturer's "top of the line" that were the best bet since they usually had the best output transformers. As for the speakers, most of them suffered from poor crossover design and required some work to sound their best.
My own amplifier is a pair of Eico HF-60 monoblocks, modified with battery bias on the EF86 driver, and a power supply choke added instead of just the stock 40mfd (!) bucket. At least in the 60WPC (more like 50) class, I haven't heard much better. My speakers are UREI 813As, using Altec 604 with a time-aligned crossover. My other components, are thankfully newer since I'm not a zealot about vintage gear.
Since the gear was so much cheaper, I saw re-designed and hacked gear that would make a Mac enthusiast cry: like a McIntosh 240 changed to run KT88s with outboard power supplies and a redesigned front-end. Or a C-20 completely gutted to use as a basis as a new design.
Buying tubes and gear was done through a small circle of friends or through Audio Trader. This was all pre-internet. When I went to the local electronic stores and asked for tubes, I would get the strangest looks, even from the old-timers. Of course I was a college student, so they seemed rather confused and often assumed I was fixing up a guitar amplifier.
Anyway, some of the anecdotes I heard from the older audiophiles who were there in the 60s: most source components from the era, excluding good reel to reel, were pretty much junk - except for tuners playing live music. And the same, with some minor exceptions like the H-K Citation line, was true for the preamplifiers. The best vintage components - and the ones that hold up best over time, are the amplifiers - but even these are a minority. It was usually the manufacturer's "top of the line" that were the best bet since they usually had the best output transformers. As for the speakers, most of them suffered from poor crossover design and required some work to sound their best.
My own amplifier is a pair of Eico HF-60 monoblocks, modified with battery bias on the EF86 driver, and a power supply choke added instead of just the stock 40mfd (!) bucket. At least in the 60WPC (more like 50) class, I haven't heard much better. My speakers are UREI 813As, using Altec 604 with a time-aligned crossover. My other components, are thankfully newer since I'm not a zealot about vintage gear.
Funny you should mention that... My living room system consists of a home built ST70 and Bowers & Wilkins 685s. The tube driven preamp and the ST70 were built for me by my brother. I've got Gold Lion KT66 tubes on it now and I love the sound. I'm usually running UL.
My system is probably more 70s than 60s. The turntable is a Technics SL-10 from 1980.
I would hope that I was into DIY back in the 60s (I was born in the 70s, though). However, I've always thought the Grundig Majestic 9078 was sexy as hell. I think they were about $4,000 in today's dollars, so they weren't within everyone's means.
It seemed to me in the 1960's that the average consumer record player and changers had a ceramic cartridge.
Did a consumer usually have to go out of their way to purchase a magnetic unit and a properly equalized phono stage? All the so called higher end units had both a magnetic and ceramic input. The magnetic input more often than not was just two 12AX7s actively equalized. Pretty noisy.
Its funny, even many of the ceramic cart units were labeled as "Hi-Fi". I understand why. A preamp is not needed. They can withstand more physical abuse. Yet they track at heavy forces and do not produce high fidelity sound. In my mind, this type of advertising has a heavy fallacious component to it, like Carver.
Did a consumer usually have to go out of their way to purchase a magnetic unit and a properly equalized phono stage? All the so called higher end units had both a magnetic and ceramic input. The magnetic input more often than not was just two 12AX7s actively equalized. Pretty noisy.
Its funny, even many of the ceramic cart units were labeled as "Hi-Fi". I understand why. A preamp is not needed. They can withstand more physical abuse. Yet they track at heavy forces and do not produce high fidelity sound. In my mind, this type of advertising has a heavy fallacious component to it, like Carver.
Here in the Boston area good hifi was pretty readily available in the early 1960s from Allied Radio Shack, etc. My dad purchased a Garrard RC121 with a Shure M3D magnetic cartridge that tracked at around 4gms in 1960 at the Radio Shack in Kenmore Square. A number of our neighbors had quite ambitious stereo systems with JBL, KHL, AR, Wharfedale, Altec and Heathkit speaker systems. Amps from the like of Scott, Fisher, McIntosh, Dynaco, Eico and Pilot. Tape recorders, changers, and Garrard or Thorens transcription motors were relatively common. This was a very affluent suburb west of Boston so perhaps not too surprising. That RS in Kenmore Square was pretty amazing, this was well before Tandy Corp acquired them.. Their late 1950s and early 1960s catalogs are quite interesting.
I wish more young people will take up the hobby of building their own Hi-Fi equipment and circuits. From what I am garnering from this thread, many of the folks are baby boomers, gen-Xers, and older. One of the reasons I started this thread was to see who will pay the most attention. Us millennials simply are not interested. I take electronic engineering, especially hardware design, very seriously. We are living in an age where it is all the more critical to have highly technically competent (even just on a casual basis) persons.
One may argue that the average person is more technically competent than ever. I feel that technical competency in many ways just cheapened like the overpriced Chinese made IPods and smartphones. Yes, many folks can operate a computer or an iPad, but do they really know what goes on under the hood? Do they know how to code or know the theory behind the workings of microprocessors? Do they know how to fix a computer when it breaks?
In the 1950's and 60s it was not uncommon to find many folks whom were very into Hi-Fi, Amateur Radio, Kit Building, etc and yet we thought the Russians were ahead. It took real, virgin technical competency to work with that stuff. The boomers are aging and I hope the legacy of technical competency, persistence, and work ethic will not die with them. Engineers (and good workers period) are in demand. If my generation cannot supply enough of them, who will do the work? I am just one man
One may argue that the average person is more technically competent than ever. I feel that technical competency in many ways just cheapened like the overpriced Chinese made IPods and smartphones. Yes, many folks can operate a computer or an iPad, but do they really know what goes on under the hood? Do they know how to code or know the theory behind the workings of microprocessors? Do they know how to fix a computer when it breaks?
In the 1950's and 60s it was not uncommon to find many folks whom were very into Hi-Fi, Amateur Radio, Kit Building, etc and yet we thought the Russians
were ahead. It took real, virgin technical competency to work with that stuff. The boomers are aging and I hope the legacy of technical competency, persistence, and work ethic will not die with them. Engineers (and good workers period) are in demand. If my generation cannot supply enough of them, who will do the work? I am just one man I don't know about technology in general, but I can tell you he flame of Vaccuum Tubes willl be carried by some southeast Asian countries and ...Greeks (source : Google Trends), You can actually see that in ths forum too.
Google Trends
Little known fact: Greece was possibly the only cintry in the world LP production never stopped.
Google Trends
Little known fact: Greece was possibly the only cintry in the world LP production never stopped.
I was only 3 in 1960 and I only have some flash memories, but at the time Dad bought a stereo Grundig radiogram - it must have costed him a lot, it was more expensive than a small Fiat of that era - with the tube receiver in the middle, the record changer on the left and room for a tape deck on the right. It was only stereo in audio frequency by the way. The space on the right was filled two years later, with a Grundig TM27 stereo tape deck. Back in 1960, we had a b&w TV, a portable transistor radio (BC only) in the kitchen, a Zenith T.O. 1000 - another luxury item that Dad chose for practice of English, as he worked for Singer -, and a small Geloso tape recorder for voice only, not hifi at all. Oh yes also a Philips amplified turntable, I'm not sure if it was before or after 1960.
That was really much more than average in Italy by then - most families didn't even have an FM radio in 1960 - and the very few - US or German - HiFi separates were only owned by orchestra leaders and other music professionals.
I'm happy to say that all our sets, except the TV, are still existing and in working order. The radiogram is now in my living room, making me always feel young !
That was really much more than average in Italy by then - most families didn't even have an FM radio in 1960 - and the very few - US or German - HiFi separates were only owned by orchestra leaders and other music professionals.
I'm happy to say that all our sets, except the TV, are still existing and in working order. The radiogram is now in my living room, making me always feel young !
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