Tuesday, February 13, 2007

1970s Flashback: Furniture Masquarading as Stereos

My journey from some of the worst audio equpment of the 20th century to some of the best...

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About the same time that Harvest Gold and Avocado Green became popular choices in home appliances, another piece of distinctly 70s furniture began showing up in homes: the "entertainment" console. Those of us born in the 60s or earlier remember these things. Rectangular altars upon which to sacrifice our vinyl disks, replete with four legs, little sliding doors to hide the speakers when not in use, and a hinged top from which to access the bowels of the beast. In our home, the brick-shaped dispenser of audio was strategically placed so as to aim directly at the back of the couch, approximately 36 inches away. This was so that the already mediocre sound quality could be more fully obliterated in coil springs, cotton batting, and paisley upholstery.

To better care for the vinyl, records were stacked on top of one another and then dropped to the spinning 33 - 1/3 RPM platter beneath, allowing the scratching and ruining of the records' surfaces to be accomplished automatically rather than via the stone-age mechanism of manually handling them. This was the 1970s! Automation was not just for washing dishes and clothes anymore - it was for ruining records.

The entire design seems to have been aimed at one glorious, overarching purpose: the worst possible sound encased in an ugly piece of furniture.

35 years later, apparently these things are worth quite a bit of money. Proof positive that those paying top dollar on eBay have pocketbooks inversely proportional to their IQs.

I don't recall much about the day we got it, nor the day we sent it to that Zenith graveyard in the sky, but I do recall the day I was introduced to real audiophile-quality stereo. I was 14 years old and the family had taken a long weekend to go shopping in Eugene, Oregon - home to the University of Oregon and about a 3-hour drive from our little hamlet of Ashland. While the clothes horses of the family busied themselves making that hideous screeching sound that the metal hanger hooks make on the metal clothing racks as they perused the entire inventory of every department store in the downtown mall, my dad and I stepped into a little nook called Toad Hall Hi-Fi. I can still smell that new electronics aroma those places used to have - similar to the new car smell, but with a distinctly different bouquet. I'm sure the smell has been banned today - at least in California since they appear to be the only state in which it is known that every substance commonly used by man causes cancer.

But it wasn't the smell that transformed me. It was the sound. Sound unlike anything I'd ever heard.

I knew from that moment that the old Zenith at home would be absolutely incapable of satisfying my ears any longer. I returned home passionate to earn enough money to buy my own stereo, not a small undertaking since my dream system totaled something like $1,600 and I was making minimum wage working weekends and after school.

Ultimately, I decided I couldn't wait a year and discovered something called "the installment plan." Perhaps you've heard of it. The concept is simple: don't let something as silly as money come between what you want and what you can afford. I somehow managed to secure a loan at the local credit union (I'm sure my dad must have co-signed) and paid the the whole thing back in a year. We won't talk about the financial wisdom of paying interest on a depreciating asset, although it's probably been enough years now that the stuff has achieved antique status and has actually increased in value.

That was in 1976. I've purchased a lot of things in the intervening 31 years, often with buyer's remorse of one kind or another, or just with a sense that the purchased item never quite lived up to its promises. But I can honestly that my first stereo was one purchase that truly exceeded my expectations in every respect.



For you retro stereo enthusiasts for whom this list might actually make sense, here's what my hard-earned $1600 bought me:

  • Integrated Amplifier: Sony TA-5650 with VFET power amps
  • Turntable: Dual 502 belt-drive single play w/ Grace stylus cartridge
  • Cassette Deck: Nakamichi 500 2-head cassette transport
  • Speakers: Carlsson Sonab OD-11 "cubes"
  • Tuner: a vintage 1960s Harmon-Kardon ST-1500 given to me by a friend

I still have every piece of gear today and it is still in use, with the exception of the turntable which is gracefully aging along with my record collection somewhere in the attic. When it comes to stereo equipment like this, they truly don't make 'em like they used to. About five years ago when I finally had to break down and buy another amplifier for my home theater system (my original system above is used in my bedroom now), I was appalled at the sound quality of the new stuff. Yeah, the user interfaces are slick and can switch audio and video, and they work with infrared remote controls, and they they look space-age, and they don't take up as much space - but there's that small matter of sound quality for those who care to listen to their stereo rather than just look at it. Most of what is being sold today is junk. The good old days of discrete components and the superior sound they could produce are gone, replaced by the stereo-on-a-chip. For non-audiophiles, it's the difference between fast food and a 5-star restaurant. Your ears are like your tastebuds - you CAN tell the difference.

The centerpiece of the whole system always was, and has remained, my beloved Sonab speakers. I cannot say enough good things about these little beauties. To a person, everyone who has ever been in my house has marvelled over these, the same way I marvelled when I stepped into Toad Hall over the sound that could emerge from a pair of 12" cubes that sat on the floor and projected their acoustics upward rather than conventional speakers. You can read more about the entire line of speakers developed by Stig Carlsson, the Swedish "enfant terrible" of the speaker design world, at Carlsson Planet, a website set up by his still-faithful following of enthusiasts. His speakers show up from time to time on eBay. One word of advice: snatch them up if I don't beat you to them. They are unlike anthing you have ever heard and can be restored relatively easily with components true to his original designs, but which actually outperform his original choice of drivers. Like fine wine, they have truly gotten better with age.

I bought a pair for my parents, as well as my sister and brother-in-law, and they absolutely love them. I also bought the larger version of these speakers, the OA-12s, and they sit proudly in my family room. When you have a decent pair of stereo speakers, those 5-way and 7-way speaker systems with subwoofers that are now the norm for home theater systems become passe. Two really good speakers will beat five or seven or umpteen mediocre ones hands down, every time.

In a future blog, I'll right more about the amazing Sonab speakers and some of my other gear, including the reasons they don't make 'em like they used to when it comes to stereos.

In the meantime, I'll continue to listen to my 30-year-old technology that outperforms 99% of the stuff being sold today, and I'll continue to watch jaws drop when people enter my home for the first time and listen to the sound of components that are antique in name only - not performance.

John Edwards' Blog Team: The Lunatic Fringe

Presidential aspirant John Edwards managed to choose some of the most vulgar, radical, and intolerant voices in all of liberal blogosphere to head up his online campaign: Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. Apparently these two screedmistresses have checked their old ways at the door. Yeah, right...
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I long ago stopped counting the number of times conservatives in this country have been accused of "intolerance." So I decided recently to take a stroll through a few left-wing blogs to see if they practice what they preach. What I found were cheerful references to killing Dubya, the f-bomb dropped at least twice in every sentence, and rants that would reserve WMDs exclusively for use on conservative christians. Yes, it was positively oozing with tolerance and civility.

So I suppose it shouldn't have come as any surprise that when John Edwards decided to draw from the deep well of tolerant, intellectual, and articulate inhabitants of the liberal blogosphere, his bucket came up with the likes of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, two MTV-generation members of the pajama-clad media to lead his online communications efforts in his bid for the US presidency. Their primary credentials? Membership in the lunatic fringe.

Marcotte distinguished herself with her blogging at http://www.pandagon.net/ where the tolerant tone reminds one of - uh, the Third Reich comes to mind. Michelle Malkin was kind enough to give us several re-enactments of Marcotte's recent posts, showing the intellectual horsepower behind Pandagon's unequalled blend of wit, nuance, and persuasive skills - that is, if you equate those things with profanity-laced screeds. Judge for yourself here and here. As you watch these, bear in mind that these are verbatim reproductions of Marcotte's actual words - not sensationalized over-the-top distortions. Although Malkin will never win any Academy Awards, I do think she managed to nail the motivation quite well as she plays the part of Marcotte. The only thing missing was the flying spittle in slow motion as the loving words were spewed forth. Here's another blogger's parital summation of the strange universe Marcotte inhabits.

McEwan likewise distinguished herself with her Shakespeare's Sister blog with her insightful commentary that seems to repeatedly draw on female genitalia to make its points. Here's another example of her sterling ability to persuade. And, for those who don't think that the liberal worldview expressed by 99.999% of the journalists on the Big 3 US TV networks is sufficiently dominating the airwaves, you'll appreciate this wonderful bit of wisdom she offers showing why allowing a conservative voice on ABC is unforgivable.
What's not to like, eh? Feel the love. Feel the inclusiveness. Feel the tolerance.

And feel the hypocrisy.

Why did Edwards choose these queens of intolerance and vulgarity to be the online voice of his campaign? Who knows. I'm glad he did, however. It's rather in keeping with the recent Democrat track record of being their own worst enemies.

Frankly, this should come as no surprise. The left would like you to believe it's all warm and fuzzy where they dwell. But the truth is, it's generally dark and hateful. Check beneath the hood at popular left-wing blog spots and you'll see what I mean. Marcotte and McEwan may be a bit over the top, but the most recent liberal "excuses" for their behavior are of the predictable "what they do in private doesn't have any bearing on their job performance" defense. In private? Oh, I must have missed that part about blogging. Or the, "who hasn't engaged in profanity-laced online screeds" argument. Yeah, I actually heard that one offered as a defense. Brilliant. Almost as brilliant as the combined wattage of Marcotte and McEwan.

Which brings me to the real point of my remarks here: the idea that people have split-personalities when it comes to private and public, personal and business. I'll be the first to admit that what we see on the surface isn't always what lurks underneath, but I take strenuous objection with the assertion that one's inner life can be conventiently checked at the door and a completely different persona takes over in the public sector. Hart, Studds, and Clinton all come to mind. The right has not been without its own moral reprobates, such as Foley, but there's a difference: not in the behavior, but in the response to the behavior. The right doesn't try to hide behind this stupid notion of split personalities. They don't create this artificial dichotomy of "the private man" and "the public man" when it comes to moral integrity. The same man that took the pants off to cheat on his wife is the same man that puts them back on again to then tell us he'd never be dishonest.

I have a simple rule: As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. Wise words from a guy named Solomon. Look it up in Proverbs 23:7.

Marcotte and McEwan are foul-mouthed, bigoted radicals. They didn't suddenly become rational repositories of virtue the day their employment contracts arrived from the Edwards' campaign. The same ideology that drove them to be online screedmistresses is the same ideology that will drive them now.

We take ourselves with us wherever we go. It's a lesson John Edwards apparently hasn't learned yet.