Car Stereo's -- almost 50 years on

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
These weren't the Compact Cassettes that we remember from the 70's. The article talks about the Lear Jet "endless loop" tapes. All of us old farts will remember the 8 track and 4 track tapes of the 60's. How many did we toss out the window on the expressway in frustration because they jammed or got "eaten" by the player.

Mad man Muntz (cheap TV's) invented the 4 track system which had some commercial success. Lear (Lear jets) invented the 8 track with the built in capstan for aircraft use. Ford and Motorola licensed the technology and stuck it in cars.
 
I had a Roberts 808D. It was exactly the same as the Akai 808. The Roberts brand was created to circumvent the "fair trade" laws at the time.

There was also some lingering anti-Japanese sentiment at the time, so some manufacturers rebranded their equipment with names that they hoped would be more marketable in the US.
This same idea evolved into the purchase of marketing rights and “prestigious names” of defunct US consumer electronics companies. The name “Altec” is probably the most familiar example of this.
 
some manufacturers rebranded their equipment with names that they hoped would be more marketable in the US.

This is true in many cases. In other cases new names were invented to import product without the "fair trade" restrictions imposed by the manufacturer, or official importer. Often these minimum price restrictions were due to fear of anti-dumping law violations. Some Japanese and later, Korean products were seized by the FTC due to "dumping". This is where a low cost offshore manufacturer will sell product in the US at a loss to gain market share.

The Korean brand Goldstar got in trouble for "dumping" TV's and microwaves in the US. That brand disappeared from the US market, but lives on today as LG (Lucky Goldstar).

There were "fair trade" laws enacted during the great depression that allowed manufacturers (or importers) to set an absolute minimum price for selling their products. This essentially prevented or restricted the large discount stores from squeezing out small mom and pop stores. The fair trade laws were repealed in the mid 70's and Walmart took over the world!

I worked at the largest Olson Electronics store in the US in 1971 and 1972. We sold both Roberts and Akai products and there were several identical models. The Akai products were "fair traded" and could not be discounted or placed on sale below a certain price. A different importer brought in the same Akai products under the Roberts brand and didn't "fair trade" them. Often the model numbers were identical, or similar. They were usually about $10 cheaper than the same Akai.

There were Nakamichi cassette decks sold under the Concord brand. These were slightly restyled and heavily discounted.

The Trio brand from Japan became Kenwood in the US after Kenwood branded products began outselling the Trio units. The Kenwood name is now used world wide. Ditto Matsushita / National / Panasonic.
 
My first cassette deck was a Concord

My first one was a "portable" Panasonic mono unit. It took 8 "C" cell batteries weighed about 5 pounds and was about 10 inches square by 4 inches thick. It was 1970 and very useful for annoying teachers in high school. They didn't appreciate Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison in class.

I got my job at Olson Electronics by buying their broken stuff cheap and fixing it and selling it. One day the manager asked me what I was doing with all the broken stuff, so I told him. He said their tech told him it couldn't be fixed. I replied that their tech was stupid, so I became their tech!

I got a Concord cassette deck because it was broken, and therefore cheap. I found out it was Nakamichi when I took it apart. It became an addition to my home system. It ran internally off of 12 volts, so a second one eventually became the deck in my 70's van. It worked perfectly well hanging upside down in my overhead console.
 
I had to get a converter to go the other way. My first car was a 1949 Plymouth. It had a 6 volt electrical system. Tape decks require 12 volts. You could buy a crude push pull boost converter that used a pair of germanium TO-36 transistors in stereo stores. They blew up a lot in south Florida heat. I finally found a better way.

I replaced the 6 volt generator with an alternator from a 66 Chevy, added a two wire voltage regulator from a 65 Dodge Dart, swapped in a 12 volt battery, changed out every light bulb in the car, and wired a big resistor in series with the gas gauge. I then tossed the voltage converter in the trash and the whining sound that I had lived with for 3 years was gone forever.

After breaking the Bendix spring in the starter 3 times, I had the field coils rewound to lower its RPM on 12 volts.
 
OT a bit perhaps, but wasn't Nakamichi also a big OEM of tape, and later optical transports? They did save some of their better engineering for their own name plate

The first "high end" car audio I can recall hearing was around the same vintage as the video -Lear Jet 8track in a late 60's Chrysler 300 white convertible that my 20 yr old neighbour up the street cruised Douglas Street in. The car was much more impressive than the sound:D , and he was certainly never at a loss for female company. Perhaps my association with hormonal lust and audio gear germinated around that time? Hmmmm

I drove my mom's 64 Valiant slant 6 for a couple of years while saving for my own first car - I can't remember how many chewed up cartridges got tossed in the garbage - or out the window "at speed" :rolleyes: Led Zep 1, Beatles, Guess Who, Steve Miller Band, Jethro Tull, FleetwoodMac- ah the golden days of our youth . My first car cassette player was Sony TC 20 , followed a few years later by Pioneer KP500 - that was a pretty nice rig for the day(mid 70s). Both of those were under dash, which when mounted in the centre position could sometimes interfere with watching the submarine races


Some of us in this hobby long enough will have owned favorite "albums" in at least 4 different formats - before subdividing digital into its current confusion of subsets

I'll see your Superscope and raise you Elcaset - had close to a dozen tape machines, cassette and open reel over the years, but that's a format I missed.
 
Last edited:
I will see your Elcaset and raise you Cartrivision. Video cartridges before Betamax was a dream. Poorly marketed, and only available inside a $1600 (in 1972) color TV, it failed in the marketplace within a year. The electronics and blank tapes were sold off cheap at Olson's in 1973. There were only raw video inputs and outputs, which were designed for their own TV set. There were no schematics and that internet thing.....yeah it WAS 1973.

I got one set of electronics and several tapes and successfully interfaced it with my hot chassis RCA XL-100 solid state TV. The video quality was about as good as the early VHS deck that replaced it a few years later.


Cartrivision - The First VCR with Prerecorded Sale/Rental Tapes in 1972
 
WAS a good idea....it was 1974 and all of the amplifiers had silicon under the hood. There were six modified single channel Plastic Tigers each feeding its own speaker and one modified Universal Tiger feeding the subwoofer (a 15 inch guitar speaker). My van was LOUD. I had that van and its stereo system until about 1982 when the doors rusted off.

My first amp in that van was a Fisher 601 quadraphonic receiver mounted upside down right next to the Concord. I ran it on an old Tripp Lite 120 volt inverter. The stereo was too heavy to be hanging from the van roof and it blew up two or 3 times, so I built the multi-Tiger. I think it was the Florida heat that killed the Fisher because the tuner drifted around with the temp.

More recently I had my SE 845 tube amp running from an inverter in the trunk of a Mustang convertible. I learned that the DHT filaments in Chinese 845 tubes can not handle the potholes in Florida roads. Tubes are microphonic on those roads. Audiophile quality sound is wasted while trying to listen in a convertible with the top down in a 5PM traffic jam.
 
Last edited:
I've been very impressed by several car sounds systems

I was infatuated with auto sound when I got my first car. It was a 1949 Plymouth with an AM radio. The radio had tubes, lots of them. The audio output section ran a pair of 6V6GT's in push pull for about 8 watts. I wired my Panasonic mono tape deck into it so I could play tapes.

I got an identical radio from a junkyard and wired a stereo cassette deck through both amps and into a pair of DIY speaker cabinets in the back seat. I had that car for over 20 years and it went through several stereos, including the quadraphonic system. I remember driving that car on the day the Challenger exploded and watching it happen through the windshield from the Motorola parking lot. You don't forget those moments. Sometime in the 90's I traded that car for a Scott tube stereo. The car was still running.

My interest in car HiFi has slowly dwindled to the point that my Honda Element LX (base version) still has the factory radio and speakers.

The Mustang I mentioned above was bought used, and it came with the "Mach 460" stereo system. 460 Ford watts.....250 RMS watts, LOUD, but rather lifeless. After the stock amp got wet (left the top down in the rain) and died, I tried the tube amp experiment. That lasted about a week. I cleaned up the Ford amp with WD40 and put it back in the car. It was still annoying the neighbors when I sold the car after 7 years.
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.