Golden Era of audio/Hi-Fi.

[Neil]

Yip 80's and 90s's i was also into hifi - when we lived in the uk for 2 years from 81 to 83 my dad bought an Amstrad ts-35 - this was when the double cassette deck had just been launched - and this amstrad was an all in one with double cassette deck and mic inputs - wow did this thing work well, it worked well for 15 years!!! by that time it was stukkend.   in 1991 i discovered audio video magazines and have collected them since then.

i went to high school "college" in town and i discovered Audiotronic - and Gary McCrystal still knows me if i bump into him, because every friday after school i would go sit there and listen to what he had put together, wadia, theta, audio research, I discovered Onkyo then - i had never heard of it but it bit me - i just loved the look of the onkyo and 5 years later - i bought myself a whole onkyo set - of which my letter still lives in the audio video magazine.  And i still love onkyo today - there is just something about their stuff that is one notch ahead of everybody else...I remember going on the saturday morning to go buy my cd player - the first component, and he brought his ferrari 355 in to work!  he parked it across the road and ran out the store every 2 minutes to see if it was ok...

Back in those days we had all those hifi shows at the parktonian hotel in braamfontein - i used to drag my mother around those shows - wow that was awesome - to listen to stuff you could never afford.

Those were the days!!!

[ODUODU]

Yes the nineties

There were still so many dedicated stereo systems around and tape decks were still in large scale production. There were still so many dedicated entry level seperate components companies like Denon, Rotel & Nad making quality stuff at excellent prices.

guess everything is about money now. excellent thread. captures the essence of what sound is about.

[...]

Yes the nineties

There were still so many dedicated stereo systems around and tape decks were still in large scale production. There were still so many dedicated entry level seperate components companies like Denon, Rotel & Nad making quality stuff at excellent prices.

guess everything is about money now. excellent thread. captures the essence of what sound is about.

Hi ODOUDU, just read your post and it seems like we are doing a full circle, stereo is growing again, turntables are becoming a commodity again and companies like Cambridge audio are making hi-fi affordable again.

[moistek]

I started with a Sanyo, then got a Technics system with Kenwood speakers new for R500 in 1979. When i heard it at home i thought it was so good i would never upgrade ! 6 months later i bought a NAD 3020........now 30+ years later and having spent R 100 000 's of rand on HiFi i am still upgrading. P.S> the fisrt 'real' HiFi i heard was a DUAL. My best amp to date was an Acoustat TNT 200 .

[Uriah]

I picked up a Duel amp the other day but has din type connecters on the back and funny speaker connectors so not sure how to wire it up

[...]

I thought this thread was dead.

[LAV]

I picked up a Duel amp the other day but has din type connecters on the back and funny speaker connectors so not sure how to wire it up

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector for good info on DIN connectors (the speaker sockets on your Dual are also DIN types)

[Ampdog]

Back in 1973 I was actually .... ag, toemaar.

........ who insist on skinny dipping, the water is not THAT cold

Oh? So you actually went into the water for that? Why?

Moog said:

Most of the time we had to install a coin above the headshell in order to ensure that the ceramic stylus would not skip.

!!!!!!!!!!!
...and in those days coins were COINS, and could buy a thing or two!!

[Viagara]

Oh? So you actually went into the water for that? Why?

All part of the "RITUAL" 

[placebo]

I thought this thread was dead.

Old threads never die they get resurrected,the same as old HI-Fi equipment by forum members as well as our memories of the good old days when decent Hi-Fi shops existed and the salesmen actually made selling or not a vocation.
Music and Lyrics by Russian composer Boris Fomin
Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours
And dreamed of all the great things we would do

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la...
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days

[antonsa]

hehe
i grew up with THESE, inherited em from my late dad

PHILIPS MFB 545



PHILIPS MFB 541



both sets 3 way fully active, discrete amplifier for each band, active xover aswell

[Shonver]

Hi Anton

Did you manage to finish your rebuild of these?

[antonsa]

@shonver
well... *cough* *cough* hehe

the 541's, the "faulty speaker" of the set, was a faulty amp, i eventually "fixed" it, but there were 3 revisions of this speaker with 3 sets of service documents,
some had changes in it, the service doc i had had some faults in it... a whole section of resisteres for example... like listed as 2k ohm, when in reality its 200ohm, things like this
i got the amp 90% working, well it actually played, but was obviously distorting due to incorrect components... currently these speakers are bubble wrapped and up in the garage roof..

as for the mighty beasts the 545's, they have leaky caps in the power supply... play perfect for maybe 1hr then start making popping sounds...these are also bubble wrapped and up in the roof.. trouble is, if i had the space, i would setup a e.g 4metre x 1metre bench and put them there and strip em completely and do the necesarry work... but its just not feasible at the moment...
ONE DAY!! cause they are such nice sounding speakers.. particularly in the midbass and bass regions

[Shonver]

ONE DAY!! cause they are such nice sounding speakers.. particularly in the midbass and bass regions

Yeah, that's what I liked about them!

[Steerpike]

Yip 80's and 90s's i was also into hifi - when we lived in the uk for 2 years from 81 to 83 my dad bought an Amstrad ts-35 -

I want to contest the postulation that anything bearing the Amstrad name can be called "hi-fi".