Calling All Recollections Of All-In-One Stereos!

Bought an RCA all-in-one about '72...had a MAGNETIC! cartridge & 8" 2-ways. About 20WPC. Still have the speakers....they've been upgraded a tad and sound a l m o s t like ARs. Ran across a very nice Centrex system at a garage sale this summer...a better-than-BOTL BSR with a Shure cart & a pair of speakers that were pretty heavy for their size. I offered $10...but they wouldn't budge off of $20. I thought it would make a nice little rig to check out thriftstore/garage sale vinyl & the like.
 
I had a Zenith Allegro Quad System purchased with a summers worth of grass cutting money. About 400 bucks in the mid 70's. It was purchased from a local furniture store because there were no stereo stores in town at that time. Funny thing was I wanted a Zenith Wedge System like I saw in my uncles playboy magazines. The sales guy talked me into the quad system though.
 
I am trying to avoid becoming a collector of all-in-ones, and just gave away the Realistic Clarinette 105 I got free a few weeks ago. However I AM keeping this Sony one:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=314384

My first real system was a tube system, the guts from a Viking console. An elder lady neighbour gave it to me but kept the cabinet to make into a chest. After her tube TV caught fire she got frightened and bought a solid state system. I had to make my own speaker cabinets which I covered in red Mac-Tac vinyl. I never did put the receiver portion in a cabinet, a bit beyond my 16 year old woodworking skills.
 
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Ordered a Monteverdi all in one from Speigal catalogue for $150 in1977.I was happy as a bug in a rug with this being my first stereo for a 16 year old.
 
My first AIO was a Pilot AM/FM with what I'm pretty sure was a BSR changer (weren't 90% of them either BSR or Garrard?) that was handed down from my parents. It had a brushed metal face, blue light-up dial and a real tuning meter(!) It actually came with pretty decent 2-way speakers but my dad hung on to those.

Sadly, the FM tuner didn't work. I remember at age 13 or 14 taking the thing apart and getting ready to solder some stuff that looked to me like it should have been connected but wasn't. Right then my dad came home and put and end to my uninformed repair attempts.

After a few years of suffering with no FM, I swapped the Pilot out for a thrift store KLH (Model 26 maybe?) AIO with a Garrard TT and ONLY an FM tuner. I never missed not having AM.
 
I remember, back in the early 70s, my dad bought this system... I don't recall what make or model it was, but it definitely put the bug in my blood. It was an all-in-one system that had a turntable, am/fm tuner, an 8-track, and, now get this... a digital clock!!!!

I remember thinking how cool it was seeing time expressed as digits.

Oh, yeah, and it had detachable speakers, too. That made it really cool as my dad had it set up on the bookshelf next to "his chair". The stereo was right there within arms' reach and, now get this for cool... the speakers were on the top shelf of the unit.

I mean, like, OMG!!! Can you believe it?????

As cheesy as it was, though, I was hooked.

Oh, yeah, and it had a quarter-inch headphone jack.

Man, that system had EVERYTHING.

I think my parents might have bought it with S&H green stamps, so you know it had to be great.
 
Washington DC, where Mass Ave. ends at Goldsboro, 1978. Received a Realistic AIO, table, AM/FM, and 8 track as a gift. Even came with a little mic Made a lot of recordings to the 8 track playing DJ. Eagles, Cheap Trick, AC/DC and Pink Floyd were on the playlist over the next three years of living in that house.

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Had this Panasonic for awhile. Good tuner, HORRIBLE tape player, turntable had trouble.
 

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My first stereo was a late-70s vintage Sanyo JXT 6440 all-in-one with a cassette deck, tuner, BSR TT, and speakers. It looked great, with a family resemblance to Sanyo's beefy JCX receivers of the time, and didn't sound half bad at low volume levels. Surprisingly enough, I was able to find a couple of pictures and a Youtube video of a similar JXT model with 8-track and cassette on the Web:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heezdedjim/3868305508/in/photostream/

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBndka5-YKY

30 years later, I got back into vintage audio with the purchase of a 1977 Sanyo JCX-2600 receiver with the same looks and immensely better sound and build quality. No doubt it was nostalgia for that AIO I had as a kid that influenced my decision to go with the JCX rather than something more common like a Pioneer SX-850/950. Now I wish I would have kept that old system. It would have been great for the garage.
 
I had a Sound Design New Wave. It was black with tacky teal, purple and yellow buttons. the speakers were thin plastic boxes with single drivers. It had dual tape decks and the crappiest turntable ever made, plastic tonearm. Hell, I'm pretty sure the stylus was plastic. My mom gave it to me for my birthday. It was one of those gifts you hate immediately, but you try to act like you appreciate it just to be nice.
 
I bought my first stereo in 1973, a Lloyds AM/FM 8 track. No turntable, but it did come with a cheap pair of headphones. Paid $69 for it out of my second paycheck of my first real part time job. I think I wore out my Quadraphenia 8 track on that one through those crappy headphones almost every night. I found one exactly like it at SA several years ago for $9.95. It's stored in my moms old console downstairs. It was quite a step up from AM/FM clock radio.

Kim
 
when i first started collecting gear, when i was 9 and 10, i was really into the all in ones, from the 60s-70s, i had a buttload of them, panasonics, sonys, lloyds, electrophonics, etc. but the one that always stood out was a electrophonic all in one, with the radio on the top, next to the garrard tt.
 
1969! I think it was Sylvania. It was a self contained stereo shaped kinda like a small suitcase with speakers on either side and the turntable part in the middle that folded up and down like a murphy bed. It was all tubes, which was pretty normal back then. I thought it sounded great.

I'd love to have it back. The turntable wasn't so good, but it'd make a great little guitar amp now.
 
My first stereo really wasnt a stereo at all it was a rockola jukebox, my grandma work for a rich banker who had bought it for his kids. But they didnt like it and scribble it up with crayons and cut thepower cord . so he gave to us and it end up in my room. So cut off 3prong exstension cord andtape it together plugged it in and boy was that thing loud. And by the way i know why his kids didnt like it, full of all Bing crosby records:thumbsdn:
 
My father had a system similar to this one:
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Except his had a BSR turntable mounted on top of it and the area behind the lens was black, not silver as it was an older model made to match the dials of Pioneer's SX-x3x series. The cassette deck was simply a Pioneer CT-F2121 transport (tape sat back and to an angle). I would say apart from the turntable, it was one of the better all-in-ones of the era.

I had some pretty bad ones as a kid. I had a JCPenney all in one from 1982 which was also marketed under several other names including Lloyds. I remember it developed a problem with the heads where it would play both sides at once through one of the channels. After that I had a Realistic Clarinette 122 (I think). It was an all black unit with dubbing decks and a digital tuner. I thought it was pretty cool since it had a digital tuner, although it was not a good unit and it had to be exchanged...twice.

I made all my tapes on my dad's system until I got a "real" stereo in 1989 consisting of a Pioneer SX-1300 and PL-600 turntable with a JVC dubbing deck. Not fantastic, but better than what I had been using and the Centrex was on it's last legs by that time. Well at least the turntable was, everything else seemed to work.
 
In 1980 I got a Realistic Clarinette 101 for Xmas. The all in one AM/FM/Cassette/8 Track Record/TT. I would sit in the dark for hours at night just listening to it. I still have it. The speakers are long gone. i have a set of Pioneers on it now. Great bedroom stereo. In the beginning it was and still is a bedroom stereo. I moved on to the KR9940 and the SX1980. I still have those too.

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Just thought I'd revive this old thread, as I've recently picked up a Panasonic SE-850 at a garage sale for $10. I actually owned one in my early teens, so couldn't resist buying it......if only for the memories!

Pretty clean cosmetic condition. The BSR C-141 changer, mounted on top of the center SD-85 receiver section, needed a good cleaning and re-lube as it was frozen up. The receiver's pots needed to be cleaned with Deoxit. Original needle is toast and needs to be replaced, which I already ordered.

The tuner section and tape input work(using a CD). Sounds pretty decent considering it's a compact all in one with small bookshelf speakers. That said.....I'm having a fond 70's flashback playing around with this AIO Panny!
 

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I had an Emerson all in one in junior high. I really enjoyed it sans the fact it could never get loud enough or sound good enough for me...I would, when mom wasn't home, lay on the floor and use the speakers like headphones. I'm sure that wasn't good for my ears. The nut came off the selector switch in high school, and my first largely unsuccessful attempt at soldering was made at that time.
 
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