Let's Talk About Radio Shack/Realsitic (Past) Quality

I used to be a Radio Shack Dealer back in the early 80's as I've mentioned before. It was pretty bad timing because that is when things started going down hill. There were still some good things going on early in the 80's but they deteriated quickly after that.

I have a nice example of Realistic quality in my opinion from 1979. The STA-235B. I always liked the models in the Shack line that had the clean lines and the sharp understated look. The STA-235B is one of those. It was not fancy but it had all you needed in features. At 55 watts per channel with Auto Magic Tuning and those cool double slider volume controls. It has a 4 gang 3 filter tuner section and plenty of PUNCH! Good reserve power with a lot of bass character.

A peek inside impresses too. I'm no expert but the layout and workmanship inside looks good. The Toshiba output transistors look significant and the placement of the modules looks well thought out too.

I think the main point that items like the STA-235B bring out is that the Shack had some good stuff in their line back then. It really stirs a lot of memories for me. I loved the place long before I ran one.

The other point it makes is ......What a crying shame that they have morphed into what they are now! A telephone/security store! I think there downfall started when they tried to be the Computer store and forgot about the hobbyist/audio customer that got them to where they were when they were strong.

I would still go and spend time and money in the stores if they were like they used to be. I see no point now because whatever they have Walmart has for a better price. It's a shame!

Anyway........The STA 235B is a nice old piece from a bygone era! What do you guys think? Best! Franksta

Nice!
I am still holding on to my STA-2100 in need of repair, but I will not sell it. To me that was the pinnacle of receiver/amps for RS/Tandy whoever built the things. Not to mention the Mach series of speakers for a Rockin good time on the cheap.
I once was treated as a VIP at a local branch where I use to live. I had a complete RS setup with every conceivable silver stereo piece I could get plus HiFi VCR and switch boxes.
It was an absolute thrill to visit back in the 70's early 80's. After everything went black I never went back. :thumbsdn:

I must say Franksta that is a very clean looking receiver :yes: . And it has a Midrange adj. also.

I love the old RS stuff, I think these units are particularly handsome. I have an STA-225 that sounds better than anything I've ever heard....I haven't heard a lot, but I put it up against a sansui 5000a the other day and to my ears the Realistic was victorious.
Sami

I have a STA-240 that is in great condition. It now serves as my garage unit. Very punchy.

See original post with pics here.

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showpost.php?p=648779&postcount=1

My first receiver was a Realistic. It was a 90's model. My father bought it for me after I blew up my Kenwood intergrated amp. My parents still have the realistic and I am amazed it is still working. I'd hook several speakers up at once and would cross he lines of each channel and do about every "no" in the book. The damn this just keeps on going. I never opened it up and would imagine it is not that impressive inside but some how it took all the abuse a little kid could give it.

how bout a nice silver sta2000 $80 cl sf bayarea? in and out views.

I worked at RadioShack in late 2004/early 2005 until I finished my degree and started at the newspaper. The state of the store now is simply a result of the economic times. Capacitors, etc. in the parts drawers have the best profit margin for the store percentage-wise, but they don't sell in enough quantity to pay for the space the drawers take up. Combine that with the fact that there's a greater assortment of diodes, cathodes, bridge rectifiers, etc. online for a lower price and it's not worth it money-wise to keep a large selection. Meanwhile, there is a lot more profit in the cell phone industry. RadioShack is a publically-traded, for-profit corporation. It would be nice if they were like how they were in the 1970s, but if they tried to do that they'd probably be out of business.

I worked for Radio Shack #3808 in Montery California from 1974 thru 1977. Though I was into high end stereo I could honestly sell our equipment to people most of the time. Sometimes though, after qualifying their needs, I would send them down the street to the high-end stores, Pacific Stereo, Monterey Stereo, and Gramaphones & Things. I wasn't a top salesman but people liked me for my honest and helpful nature. Most of the receivers, especially the integrated STA-1000 I think, had decent power and reasonably good sound and were as well built as any equipment out of Asia or Japan. Some of their speakers were real sleepers. My favorites were the Optimous 1s a nice two way with an 8" woofer. I never liked the Mach I's though and the Nova series kiked butt but I thought the criss-cross front grille looked old-fashoned. Life was simpler then....

Inkara1 said:

I worked at RadioShack in late 2004/early 2005 until I finished my degree and started at the newspaper. The state of the store now is simply a result of the economic times. Capacitors, etc. in the parts drawers have the best profit margin for the store percentage-wise, but they don't sell in enough quantity to pay for the space the drawers take up. Combine that with the fact that there's a greater assortment of diodes, cathodes, bridge rectifiers, etc. online for a lower price and it's not worth it money-wise to keep a large selection. Meanwhile, there is a lot more profit in the cell phone industry. RadioShack is a publically-traded, for-profit corporation. It would be nice if they were like how they were in the 1970s, but if they tried to do that they'd probably be out of business.

Click to expand...

Your point is well taken! I see the need for change and our culture has changed tremendously in the last 25+ years. It's a more mobile, miniatureized and disposable culture. Things electrical must be small, portable, and disposable because there will be something new out next week!

The thing is .....When you look at some electronic items from the past you realize they were designed and manufactuered to last indefinitely. It didn't matter if it was a fan a toaster or a stereo receiver. Things were overbuilt! I think that is where part of the ...."I miss the good ole days" feeling comes from.

For sure some of the stuff that was made back then was cheap and not very well designed. The Radio Shack had plenty of that junk! Some things just didn't work well even though they were built like a tank (like 8 track tape players). After all poor design is poor design!

I think when you have a chance to stand in the now and judge how things were done then, you realize how nice some of the low end and middle of the line stuff was made. It makes you long for those days or to own something from those days.

My mother in law still has a Sunbeam toaster that was a wedding present back in 1958. It's the kind you just drop the bread in and it lowers itself slowly down and turns on automatically. It seems that it just won't die. That's the kind of engineering I would like to see nowadays! Too bad somethings just become obsolete! But Not Vintage stereo. Not yet anyway! Best! Franksta

Funny you should mention that Realistic 235b, I have one in the shop at work and we listen to FM on it all day, 5 days a week. It has a nice smooth sound to it and has been bullet proof since I brought it to work nearly two years ago. Thats over 4000 hours of run time without a single problem, I think RS was building their best stuff when this one was made.

For the garage...

...this receiver continues to surprise me. STA-2290, early '80s gear listed at 90 WPC. $50 off of CL and running whatever I have in the garage at the time...:thmbsp: (Sorry about the crappy picture...)

After spending more than a few years (1967 ~1993) with Radio Shack back in the "Good Old days of Radio Shack", I agree with the general consensus here that there were some exceptional pieces of equipment that appeared from time to time. The STA-235B is one that I do recall as being one of those exceptional items. From quite a bit earlier, another receiver with a similar design that really stood out was the STA-120B. It was an outstanding receiver with some unusual (for the time) features that other "Name Brands" did not even have. The store where I worked at the time carried the excess inventory from the Allied Radio aquisition so we had a huge assortment of top shelf gear in addition to the Radio Shack line. One somewhat unusual feature for that point in time was that the STA-120B had a midrange control in addition to bass and trebble. It also had a loudness contour circuit that decreased it's effect as the volume control increased to keep it from over compensating at moderate volume levels and above. Most other equipment of that time required the user to switch the "Loudness" off of the volume wasincreased above a low level. It worked perfectly. I liked that receiver so much that I bought one on Epray for $10 last year. It still works great!

My next door neighbor runs a 1979 STA-52B. Nice little 20 watt machine with a sweet, warm tone.

I supervise a woman whose father owned a Radio Shack in the 60's-70's. She has fond memories of helping out at the store and she says that at her mother's house there is a storage room with all sorts of RS parts. I recently acquired a pair of Realistic Nova 6's, but one of the tweeters was blown. I was talking to her and she asked me to bring her the tweeter. I did and the next day she brought me 4 different tweeters from the "storage room" that matched my blown tweeter. She said that she has all sorts of tubes as well as other parts. I have fantasies of going over to her house just to look in that "storage room" as well as there being a pair of Mach 1's up in her attic hidden away. She said that she found a "big silver receiver" in her mom's house and will give it to me when I get back from being off work due to an illness. I definitely have my fingers crossed to see what it will turn out to be.

RS had the makings of a great US electronics company but floundered in the mid-'80s and lost it. My first laptop was a TRS-100 and my first productive computer was the TRSII and from the the 16 and finally 6000. Went from the built in disc bay to the external 4x bay setup to 4 of their 5 meg hard drives stacked. Each was as large as an IBM pc. Went from TRS-DOS to RS-XENIX and finally had a bank of WYSE 50 and 100 terminals off a 16 acting as a server to run my office. Easy to set up, easy to maintain and dang think just ran 24/7 and NEVER crashed or had to be reset. It was without any doubt the best computer system I'd ever experienced.

Finally move to SCO UNIX when RS stopped supporting the computers and moved into their 2000 that was a disaster and finally became an IBM clone maker. SCO was a nightmare to get up and running but the Dell computer when it finally got configured was okay but less reliable than the RS.

RS made a mistake in not developing the series further as it used the 68000 chip that I think was also used by Apple and I think if they had teamed up rather than going in different directions, the computer world as we know it today would have been significantly different. During the company's computer heyday, they were the world's largest computer manufactuer of mini and personal computers.

There was a reason to start moving to this market as RS had a history of moving into marketing into pioneering electronic fields and the computer industry at the time was highly profitable whereas the audio industry was by then operating at minimal dealler profits except for speakers. There mistake was not defining their market niche a bit better and actually employing persons who knew something about computers. For the youngsters, RS was the first retailer to offer shrinkwrapped off the shelf computer applications though they were either targeting businesses or programmers. The Scripsit wordprocessing program killed the later dos Wordstar, they had Visicalc and Multiplan (the best spreadsheet program ever IMHO), Profile data base, Executor time and billing, Lexis (first company to partner for on-line research), and a couple of accounting programs based on SAS90 (think that wass the name) and even offered for 1 year a tax prep program that forecast the furture some years later when tax software finally arrived and could be used by multiple persons at the same time rather than batch processing.

I remember RS not for their early days or their audio but for this short brief shining period when they showed the furture but the company did not have the bravery to advance to meet it.

Seems to be a perception problem. I have never considered RS to be more than small parts store that I would use for the occasional electronic part or switch that nobody else would stock at the end consumer level.

As I started to get in to audio, in the very early 1980's, I can remeber going in to the RS stores and looking over the equipment. It was my uninformed perception that Realistic was not a quality product. There is no way that I was going to spend my money on that brand. I would have bought a big name unit from Macy's before going to RS. I would bet that's what most American consumers would do.

Other than the few former employees here, and those of us who now know it was good stuff, there are very few who would believe what we are saying.

RS would have been better off selling big name products built to their specs(or not), with the big name still on it. Think about the idea of a RS in the late '70's having the complete line of Pioneer receivers and speakers. Many more boxes would have walked out. Sadly, I don't think Pioneer would have done it. I'm sure they were aware of the RS stigma. Could be the reason that Pioneer was branded as Realistic in the RS stores.

These are just my thoughts. I have no credentials, other than being a consumer. Some may disagree and have a better uderstanding of the history and failure of RS.

Dan

Radio Shack, Lafayette, Olsons, Allied and some other chains were early into the electronics hobby and of them only Allied seemed to have found a niche and that was in the industrial sector for parts. The others tended to look to the DIY and small repairperson market as their core plus Lafayete and RS catered in different degrees to the amatuer radio market. Audio was not their main focus with early on each going with name brand dealership systems and then moving to house brands. For old timers from the '50s and '60s, these companies were significantly different than from the early '70s onwards.

I still remember the Lafayette and RS stores in Boston - both were large well laid out, sectioned off for the amateur/shortwave crowd, audio, kit builders, test equipment/repair and engineers, etc. Early on Lafayette and RS had the largest square footage in Boston devoted to audio. Yes, these were the mono days. It was not unusual to see some of the early legends of audio doing floor time explaining their products.

When stereo hit, things seemed to have changed and by the time SS and imports predominated the marketing world had changed. Maybe vintage really ended with the advent of stereo or form the other side, the demise of mono.

I gotta admit that STA-235B is one sweet-looking unit.

My cousin was the only person I knew that bought stereo gear from RS. He plunked down quite abit of change to purchase a STA-2100, Mach Ones an EQ, and the TOTL wooden base TT they had. After hearing the stuff I was hooked. Everyone else had JVC, Kenwood and PIONEER.
Most never knew RS offered gear or blew it off as novelty and would never consider buying stereo gear there.
Once I bought the 2100 from my cousin I began to buy everything silver RS had to match it. I wound up with a nice setup when I was 20-21.
But because it was not big name stuff It was never given the credit It deserved for the nice sounding setup It became.
I have said it all along most who settled for smaller speakers because of a name missed out on the Mach series altogether.
It seems just in the last few years thier following has caused a feeding frenzy for them.
I was always proud and happy with my setup, but convincing others of its worth was another story. We never had any real cool audio stores where I grew up. Only remember JCPenny having the MCS series. So the local RS store was the bomb for me anyway.