Golden Era of audio/Hi-Fi.

[frikkie]

I can remember going into an audio shop almost 20 years ago, where the guy played some Martin Logans for me. Even at my age, he did not mind explaining the whole setup and letting me sit and listen. The most beautiful sound I had ever heard. Maybe it's due to that unnamed, unknown, kind gentleman that my love for hi-fi started? Years later, I'd do the same at Hi-fi installations...just come in and listen...I suppose they know that a hi-fi customer is not one that should be rushed, but should rather become a friend, as you could be walking a very long road with them.

Yep - I fondly remember many a Saturday spent with a chain-smoking Mike Gebert in Tafelberg Bellville's listening rooms.

And yes, I was also a very young, very poor student at the time, and he knew full well that it will be some time before I could buy anything from him. Despite this, he knew me by name, and treated me like a friend. I did eventually buy quite a bit of kit there, including some Van Den Hul speaker cable, which I am using on one of my systems to this day.

[Ampdog]

Tempting thread .... what can I say.

Folks might remember (or look up) the 'Year-of-our-Lord' 1950. That's when I started. Huge cabinets with record changers, rather huge loudspeakers with field coils for magnets and hum-bucking coils. 'Stereo' and 'FM'?? We could not even spell that. Those huge black CDs that revolved rather slow and with all of 25 minutes programme on each side just came in.

I cannot boast with possession of much then, but I helped the local radioman repairing things. Got a pound a week for my trouble. I built my own 9 valve up to 30 MHz shortly after (it survives to this day).

Huge solid valve amplifiers (we also could not spell transistor) the likes of Leak TL12, Tannoy, Pye, RCA was about - and that most revered little wonder of all: the Quad II, plus electrostatic loudspeaker for the (very) affluent. Those were days when you could boast with all the different record equalising options on your amplifier (e.g. as many as 25 on a Pye amplifier!). This was before mercifully the light was seen and the RIAA was standardised. What a business! 

Homebuilt: Mostly Williamson. And record players?? You don't want to know .. dropped one with a SOLID cartridge on my finger one day and it had to be bound up to stop the bleeding. But mostly Garrard, and Connoisseur for the affluent. Huge bass reflex loudspeakers with Goodmans and Stentorian drivers. And for the affluent again: Wharfedale.

Alas, no pictures. Golden years?  ..... I guess golden years were whenever someone started with hi-fi. I am glad I did.

[Family_Dog]

I have always been a Wharfedale fan, G.A Briggs was most active in promoting his range of speakers by sponsoring live concerts and then switching between speakers and live orchestra and inviting audiences to detect the difference. I still have two sets of the Wharfedale Super 12 RS DD to this day!


-F_D

[Eclaire]

I would go as far to say Mike Gerbert introduced me to hi-fi.  He even loan me Audioquest Ruby interconnects to borrow.  although I could not afford anything at the time, and he probably knew this, his attention to you did not wane.  A true old fashioned salesman. Eventually bought a Pioneer stable platter CD palyer and a Yamaha cassette deck.

[Viagara]

Huge solid valve amplifiers (we also could not spell transistor) the likes of Leak TL12, Tannoy, Pye, RCA was about

Pilot, Blaaupunkt? and was'nt there a Hammerstein as well?

[leonsound]

Hi,

I remember the AD-F270, it was the must have cassette deck, touch controls and what not. And the TDK-SA , I still have 1 or 2 sealed
TDK-SA chrome cassettes!
I still have a set of AR38s in my TV room. Used to have another set and i stacked them on top of each other to create "the ultimate super massive floorstander".

I had a 3020B at some stage, but it was too light for the AR38s so I found a 3060 (older but much stronger) with analog level meters...

I also "shopped" with Mike Gerbert. My one purchase almost went bad - I was buying a demo/tradein Technics double cassette deck for R700, and wanted to put it on my 6 month budget on my credit card to soften the blow to my meager salary, but since I've never bought anything on budget it wasn't set up and bombed. Mike was very gracious in telling me my card failed! I wrote him a cheque the next day which he accepted without any hassles. Had that deck until it was stolen some time after that...

I remember the hifi expos that used to be held in the President hotel in Sea Point. Later on it moved to the Aroma Inn in Brackenfell (demolished). At the President we used to take a break and sit in the restaurant drinking 1 orange juice (so expensive!) while filling out many entries into a draw of some kind. I never won the Linn...  What I remember was a massive Cervin Vega speaker set with red cones and what must've been 18" woofers, which was demo'd using Grace Jones' Libertango. That spoke to me since I was the only (Grace) fan I knew of. In another room some 6 feet tall speakers were being demo'd with Yello, another of my favourite under appreciated bands. I walked into an almost empty room when the (loud) demo started, and at the end of the song ("Live at the Roxy") when I turned round the room had filled up with almost all the guests of the whole show.  Also a Linn Sondek was demo'd with Roxy Music, yet another favourite.

My very first CD player (and basically the only thing I ever bought new) was an EBA (someone else also mentioned that!). It was the cheapest I could find, at Dion's I think, and it was crap from the beginning (couldn't track properly). My first CD that I bought at the same time was The Doors - The Doors (about R45). I am so sick of that recording now - couldn't stomach any Doors for the last 20 years....
I actually saw that same CD player in a Cash Converters a few weeks back, in quite decent looking shape, for about R500, which was about what I paid for mine in +- 1989!

Allow me to digress even more - the first LP I ever bought (together with my brother) was Jona Lewie  (Stop the Cavalry / Allways find me in the Kitchen at parties, etc). Then my parents had a Blaupunkt set inside of a wooden thing that was actually a piece of furniture. Still have the LP but the Blaupunkt turntable took it's toll on it. 2nd was Grace Jones "warm leatherette". Still have it, plus the log we kept of each time it was played and why - only legal reason was to make a cassette recording to spare the LP. Little did I know it was a thin local pressing and how we were being ripped off by the local industry.
By then I had a Micro Seiki MB5 turntable, quite good but very basic. I had my eye on a demo/tradein Fair Mate micro hifi which was actually a separate stack system that can be screwed together to be portable, bought it in OK Stellenbosch. Still have that next to my PC. It can take a 12V input so has been on some camping trips...

those were the days....
Regards
Leon

[frikkie]

I remember the hifi expos that used to be held in the President hotel in Sea Point. Later on it moved to the Aroma Inn in Brackenfell (demolished). At the President we used to take a break and sit in the restaurant drinking 1 orange juice (so expensive!) while filling out many entries into a draw of some kind. I never won the Linn...  What I remember was a massive Cervin Vega speaker set with red cones and what must've been 18" woofers, which was demo'd using Grace Jones' Libertango. That spoke to me since I was the only (Grace) fan I knew of. In another room some 6 feet tall speakers were being demo'd with Yello, another of my favourite under appreciated bands. I walked into an almost empty room when the (loud) demo started, and at the end of the song ("Live at the Roxy") when I turned round the room had filled up with almost all the guests of the whole show.  Also a Linn Sondek was demo'd with Roxy Music, yet another favourite.

I remember those President shows very well - and I remember that Cerwin Vega demo all too well! Incredible, tight, heart-stopping bass...

When I still had the hifi-shop in the early nineties I also did a lot of servicing of audio kit for clubs - one particular hole in the wall at the bottom of Bree Street had 4 18" Cerwin Vega folded horn bass bins driven by 4 H&H 900 amps. Incredible, loud, solid bass, but the CV's took serious strain under those bridged H&H's, and as a result I regularly got called out at strange hours to come have a look at a dead bin... Fixed several of them onsite, whilst the club was rocking - broken pigtails more often than not the cause, due to the massive excursion those woofers were capable of.

This club also happened to be a gay club - many, many images of strange happenings still ingrained onto my poor abused retinas to this day...

My very first CD player (and basically the only thing I ever bought new) was an EBA (someone else also mentioned that!). It was the cheapest I could find, at Dion's I think, and it was crap from the beginning (couldn't track properly). My first CD that I bought at the same time was The Doors - The Doors (about R45). I am so sick of that recording now - couldn't stomach any Doors for the last 20 years....
I actually saw that same CD player in a Cash Converters a few weeks back, in quite decent looking shape, for about R500, which was about what I paid for mine in +- 1989!

Heh heh - I still own an EBA... Bought it in (I think) '88 or '89, and is still working flawlessly to this day. I actually bought 2 - I was a full-time mobile DJ at the time, playing mostly vinyl, but even in those days, some stuff one couldn't find on vinyl any more, forcing a move to some cheapy CD players. The EBA is rather the worse for wear on the outside, being very well-travelled, but mechanically and electronically working just fine... More than I can say for several Pioneer, Technics, Sony et al players that followed in later years.

[VALVAGLO]

I cant help myself from jumping in on this nostalgic trip.What fun we all seem to have had along the hifi journey,which for me is still going. I was raised on a plot in Pietersburg where there was no electricity so my music was a Supersonic valve radio which I connected to a big full range speaker from a radiogram that my uncle had left on the plot.The Supersonic worked off a 90 volt battery which in those days cost One Pound and Ten shillings,which was a lot of money then.My first hifi was a Pioneer SX 510 T,cs 53 speakers PL 12 turntable.I had a Beolit 600 portable radio,also very pricey for its time.I have owned Sansui amps and speakers marantz direct drive turntable aiwa pioneer and teac cassette decks and marvelled at the magic of the Nakamichi cassette deck which turned the tape over to side two when it got to the end of side one.Two of my most powerful amps were a Dynaco ST 420 and an SAE a 14 My speakers were AR 11's. Recently I was offered a pair of Ampdog Restored Quad 11 and this has changed my whole outlook on music. I now also own a Jolida 502 B valve amp. I really love music.

[Pimpin']

TDK-SA chrome cassettes, i bought a couple of those with my hard saved lunch money.

[Andrew]

My first steps into hi-fi consisted of making my own 'loudspeakers' from car speakers and connecting them to a small radio/tape combo I had. I must have been about 14, I guess. After that it was an Aiwa system, also small, all-in-one thing that actually only gave up the ghost about two years ago, after finishing its years in an Italian deli in Greenside. Static and scratches on the LPs was always something that drove me mad, and I could swear that some of the local pressings were done so badly that the noise I heard was actually dirt imbedded into them... I tried everything a youngster's budget could afford to get rid of the noise: anti-static fluid, distilled water, carbon fibre brushes...*sigh* Then there was the never-ending search for the best cassette tapes to use - TDK or BASF? I remember the TDK Chrome ones very well. I used to stand at the stores looking at all the coloured graphs on the back of the tapes, and then pick the one that looked the most impressive...and which I could afford. My first proper step was my first separate amplifier - a TEAC my Dad bought me when I was around 16. That one I think is still going strong at my sister's house. I bought my first CD player in my first year of national service and loved to finally (sorry to the vinyl lovers!) be able to to say goodbye to scratches and static.

[Ampdog]

Now all we need is a campfire on 4th beach and some - er - Boeries! (Ja OK Alphabet, some of that too.)

Just wondering whether someone can recall (or actually had the priviledge and money to own) the exquisite 'Geloso' radios then sold by Romeo in Hout Street, CT. Boet, did I ever wish to have enough money to buy one of those! They were all-wave tuner-amplifier kits (AM only) with the neatest coil-pack that I ever saw and the rest of the lay-out to suit. I built two of those for someone. Wonder what happened to them .... possibly ended up in some attic/dustbin when fm came in.

We now have push buttons and remotes and everything very digitally lahdidah. Not the same.

[Andrew]

Now all we need is a campfire on 4th beach and some - er - Boeries! (Ja OK Alphabet, some of that too.)

Just wondering whether someone can recall (or actually had the priviledge and money to own) the exquisite 'Geloso' radios then sold by Romeo in Hout Street, CT. Boet, did I ever wish to have enough money to buy one of those! They were all-wave tuner-amplifier kits (AM only) with the neatest coil-pack that I ever saw and the rest of the lay-out to suit. I built two of those for someone. Wonder what happened to them .... possibly ended up in some attic/dustbin when fm came in.

We now have push buttons and remotes and everything very digitally lahdidah. Not the same.

I'll bring the boeries, just get someone to sponsor us plane tickets to the beach, even though I hate flying.

[leonsound]

Hope this picture attachment works...
Here is my collection of +-1991-1995 vintage TDK-SA cassettes...  that was a good year

[Andrew]

Yup. That's them. And BASF had these very serious-looking, dark cassettes, if my memory serves me correctly. I also remember that some of the TDKs had these graphs to show you how much one type performed better than the other.

[VALVAGLO]

Ampdog I dont have Geloso radios but I do have four Geloso G 3270 valve amps that I am trying to restore.