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Showing posts with label Stereo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stereo. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 09, 2019

Portable And Car Audio Demonstration Cassettes


In the early days of portable cassette machines, late 1960s and early 1970s cassette decks often came with demonstration tapes. These were mostly public domain songs, such as "Little Brown Jug" and "Michael Row The Boat Ashore" or specially composed material, often with the second side blank for the customer or purchaser to test the recorder with. But several manufacturers from National/Panasonic, Sanyo and Sony made these cassettes.


Listen here
Below is a later '70s version, featuring a disco rendition of Mozart's 40th Symphony.

Listen here
Most Sanyo as well as other makes of portables had cheap top control mechanisms, which required the cassette to be loaded upside down. So Sanyo issued their '70s demonstration cassettes with upside down labels, a practice rarely used outside of children's tapes (the Fisher Price, Superscope Storyteller and Teddy Ruxpin cassettes all had upside down labels.)

Listen here
Listen here All images above: Internet Archive



By the 1980s, the focus shifted from '60s J-Pop renditions of "Red River Valley" to exciting ambient stereo sound with personal cassette players like the Sony Walkman.



As the 1980s rolled on, fewer electronics manufacturers were including demonstration cassettes with their portable decks. But there was one sector of the electronics market that not only embraced the demonstration cassette, but almost made it a science; The car stereo sector.

The GM Delco/Bose car audio systems were especially ambitious. They were the gold standard of 1980s car audio and their demonstration cassettes often came on premium normal or chrome tape. The music selections were varied, but mostly non-rock.




These auto demonstration cassettes were also made by Ford for their car stereos. The heyday of the car stereo demonstration cassette ended as CDs had began to become the audiophile standard and the last car stereo demonstration cassettes were made in the 1990s.

1992 Chrysler Audio System. Image:: eBay

Friday, September 06, 2019

"Ruby Tuesday" Freakout Guitars (Spin-O-Rama,1967)

Freakout!!: The Great New Guitar Sounds Freakout Guitars (Spin-O-Rama, 1967)




This super-cheesy whammy-bar fueled version of the Rolling Stones classic has always been a personal guilty pleasure of mine. In fact both sides of this album are worth a listen (it's department store budget albums like this one that also have some of the most kickass talk-over music for your community LPFM radio show.)

I think this was as close to a psychedelic album as Spin-O-Rama Records ever got. 



Friday, November 02, 2018

KIRO-TV's Telephonic Happening



On Saturday nights at 11:15pm in early 1971, after the 11PM evening newscast was over and the older folks were likely going to bed or watching the last late movies on other channels. KIRO TV & Radio in Seattle, Washington got psychedelic with their briefly run locally produced live music TV show series Telephonic Happening.


With then contemporary rock hits such as "Black Magic Woman/Gyspy Queen" Santana, "My Sweet Lord" George Harrison and "Honey Tonk Women" Rolling Stones and Matthews Southern Comfort's rendition of "Woodstock" (not heard on this clip) and guest appearances on this surviving episode by local acts Adam Wind and Cold Trane, Telephonic Happening was presented in experimental 4 channel Quadraphonic sound with color psychedelic visuals, filters, imagery and garden gnomes courtesy of local psychedelic light show producers, Retina Circus on the TV screen for freaky visuals.

It was a bold and overlooked first in broadcasting because unlike the pioneering Quad radio broadcasts, which began at Classical stations WGBH and WCRB in Boston in 1969, used the Stereo signals of the two FM radio stations, thus requiring two costly FM stereo receivers to hear the full program in Quad sound.

The experimental KIRO Quad system in Seattle for this program used all three of their AM/FM and TV signals. And it was awkward and uneven sounding. But it was simple, had a visual component and used equipment you already had; Your TV tuned to KIRO-TV 7 in front of you for a mono front-center channel and visual stage. An FM Stereo radio with separating speakers (tuned to KIRO-FM's then-frequency of 100.7 MHz) with the speakers placed directly at your left and right sides. And for the rear speaker, your AM tabletop or portable radio set to KIRO-AM (710 kHz) for Quad sound in an unusual diamond shaped pattern that probably would have impressed Pink Floyd if they saw it.

And at the very birth of the home theater experience, you took whatever you could get.


But psychedelia, rock music and experimental visual and audio voodoo in diamond patterns were not things KIRO was particularly known for back then. Owned then by Bonneville, the media division of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, neither KIRO-AM or FM even played rock music either in 1971. Which makes this all the more interesting an artifact.

Unfortunately, the audio on this clip is in mono.

The elegant sounding announcer you hear on this clip is the late Hal Willard. For decades, he was "Mr. Announcer Man" at KIRO-TV who read the weather reports during the J.P. Patches morning show.

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Listen at the end of the Telephonic Happening program where he recommends you send a postcard to the station telling them your requests and suggestions for future Telephonic Happening programs, but "suggest gently"....

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

1970s Magnavox Drum Console Stereo



These are very rare today, Magnavox Drum Consoles were designed to blend in as an end table as well as match the popular octagon shaped living room furniture of that time.








Monday, January 19, 2015

White Van Speaker Scam


They lurk around shopping centers and box stores....Shady people, usually young men (but sometimes young women) in vans and SUVs.

They look at you and lick their chops as they pull over to you and make you a deal you just can't refuse; a brand new set of surround sound speakers and subwoofer for $200.

And this wasn't just any run of the mill surround sound set-up. This one is from a super boutique audiophile brand, renowned all over Europe; Olin Ross. Only the super snobs can afford this stuff. But by some strange ordering fluke, today is your lucky day and they just happened to have this Olin Ross surround sound thing that retails for $5,000 in a high-end audio shop, but if you act quick and run to the ATM and pull out $200 cash, you can get this thing off their hands and be the envy of everyone on your block...

Who is Olin Ross? you ask?

He/She then whips out a glossy brochure and even reviews in an audiophile magazine. And you begin to salivate at the superlative filled testimonials and reviews by audio experts who were left breathless by the performance of this thing.

So....You give them $200 and even an extra $20 for beer money because they were so cool. You race home and begin to set this thing up.

And it's right there you find out you've been had.

You got speakers, but really crummy and tinny sounding ones. The subwoofer is particleboard slapped together with glue. The volume control has static and overall, it's garbage. The magazine with the glowing reviews? Fake. The brochure? Fake. The company web address on the brochure? Fake too. And you wouldn't have bought this at all if you knew what it really was.

You my friend, have fallen victim to the White Van Speaker Scam, aka "The Speaker Guys"



It's not a new scam, it goes way back into the early '70s. And it isn't just speakers or even exclusively white vans the cons use. But any fishy sounding person who sells any kind of stuff from the back of a van or SUV in the parking lot of a Walmart, Home Depot or a supermarket.  I have heard many stories from people who got screwed already so when I was first approached by these cons in the '80s, I was able to fend them off (but not easily, they just don't know the meaning of give up.) But in recent years, the scam has really been on the rise.

You can find more details here.

And it's not just in America. You can find these scammers all over the world.


Protecting yourself is easy; Buy A/V equipment only from reputable dealers and not from vans.

Here's a list of some of the brands associated with this scam. Also be aware many of these brands are also being sold on eBay as well. So buyer beware:

Olin Ross

Marc Vincent

Divinci

iCinema

DOGG

Hermann

Nexis Audio

Jonsson

Eliese

Paramax

Hauffmann

ProTechnika

Maclaren

Kinetic


Sunday, December 28, 2014

Pierre Cardin Electronics, circa 1980s








 From that strange time Pierre Cardin was into cheap, Chinese made electronics....

Also see Reader's Digest......Electronics?                         

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Brother Charisma II Stereo


I found this on eBay. It's a SUPER rare Brother Charisma II stereo.




 


Sunday, June 29, 2014

Reader's Digest......Electronics?


You probably don't instantly think of your grandma's favourite magazine when it comes to audio equipment. But it is true. Reader's Digest really did sell stereos, radios and tape machines under their own brand name in the '60s, '70s and '80s.







Tuesday, April 29, 2014

How To Blow Your Mind And Have A Freak Out Party


I remember encountering this record at a vintage record shop I worked in back in the '80s. How To Blow Your Mind And Have A Freak Out Party (in that order?) is one of the very first records that I suspect was deliberately targeted towards the "chemically altered". And as you would expect, the stereo left/right panning is used codependently. And to extremes.

Nothing else is known about The Unfolding and it's not clear if they were an actual group or a one-off assembling of studio musicians.

But without the psychoactive drugs, this record doesn't induce much more than a headache. But if you got 'em (or just curious), you can hear it here.