Who can remember stereo chains from the 1990s?

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#42
Mark Johnson said:
The address is significant because that very building previously housed Shockley Semiconductor, the first semiconductor company in Silicon Valley. William Shockley was one of the 3 Bell Labs scientists who won a Nobel Prize for inventing the transistor. Then "the tratiorous eight" (link) quit Shockley en masse, and founded Fairchild. Shockley's company sputtered out and vanished.
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Up until a couple months ago, I would walk past the first Fairchild Semiconductor building on Charleston on the way to my job at the time. There’s a plaque out front for the curious.
 
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#44
Shot in the dark here. Is this even close to what you are referring to?
 

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#45
Mark Johnson said:
I bought speakers from Pacific Stereo's Mountain View store at 391 San Antonio Road.

The address is significant because that very building previously housed Shockley Semiconductor, the first semiconductor company in Silicon Valley. William Shockley was one of the 3 Bell Labs scientists who won a Nobel Prize for inventing the transistor. Then "the tratiorous eight" (link) quit Shockley en masse, and founded Fairchild. Shockley's company sputtered out and vanished.
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I used to work in that store! This was after Pacific Stereo went out of business. I was working for a local audio store, Sound Goods. The owner of Sound Goods had roots with Pacific Stereo, and scooped up the lease.

At Pacific Stereo's peak, MT View store was #1 in the chain.

People would come in that were former employees of Shockley labs. "You do want to know what dumped in that parking lot."
 
#46
Ixnay said:
Is this even close to what you are referring to?
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I dont think so. It was definitely a linear scale with a dial pointer. On the pointer was a small digital readout. As the pointer traveled along the 88 - 108 scale, the digits on the small indicator attached to it would correspondingly change. I swear I really saw it on that guy's receiver. I suppose it could have been somewhere else, but something has that. Dial pointer attached digital readout.
 
#50
"United Audio" and "Musicraft" in the Chicago western suburbs.
Hmmm, maybe Musicraft wasn't a chain; I'm not sure ....
"Quintessence Audio" and "Stereo Studio" for the high end stuff the first 2 didn't carry.
 
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#51
stellavox said:
In the 70's in Boston area there was Tech HiFi. Had all the area's original's - AR, KLH, Bose. Was another small chain in the CT area whose name I can't remember. Had a Radio Shack in West Hartford that sold a lot of nice stuff. EVEN a Heathkit store out in Simsbury (W of Hftd)
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I remember them!

In my area of New England we had Best Buy (still around) and Circuit City (still around in Canada?), but my favorite around here was Tweeter, etc.

Really knowledgeable staff, and great lineup of products. I still have my Boston Acoustics and Pinnacle speakers I bought from them in the 90's! Unfortunately, I think BB and CC put them out of business.
 
#55
There were like hi-fi stores and stuff, but of the time I remember the appliance store that had TVs and refrigerators and washing machines, and maybe VCRs and even laserdisks, and you could go back into the section with the stereo stuff and have the wall of receivers and the big selection of speakers and you hit the button and the music would come out of the speakers you chose. And someone had always pushed in the tweeters. I was a kid and didn't have the money to go to Ovation, but I got my first bits of kit (that weren't hand-me-down) from HH Gregg, and when I was in college I got some stuff from American TV and Appliance.
 
#56
Mark Johnson said:
My NYC-born spouse thinks of E. J. Korvette as a discount department store, and so does Wikipedia (link) . She delights in letting people know that the company name discloses the founding owners: Eight Jewish Korean war Veterans.
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That's a myth. The "Korvette" was originally "Corvette" (a Naval warship), but they were unable to use that name.
Founders E (Eugene) and J (Joe) were WWII veterans, and intended to destroy competitors like the ship destroyed enemies. The company was founded and named years before the US became involved in Korea.
 
#59
Anyone remember JAFCO in the Pacific Northwest? I worked there in the mid-80s. Their high end was Phase Linear and ESS, also carried Pioneer and Kenwood. I remember selling the first Pioneer laser disc players.

I’m still using the Phase Linear Amp I purchased using my employee discount.

Jafco changed their name to Best Products a few years later.
 
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