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Have You Ever Been Embarrassed By Your Stereo?

musichal

musichal

poet emeritus
I have been, at least twice.

The first time involved a '60s model Lloyd's eight-track-ceiver when I was a kid. A buddy asked me if I would bring it to the football game for the little concession stand.

"Does it play loud?"

"Well, pretty loud." I cranked it up, and it was loud. In a 10x12 bedroom.

However, when I arrived at the game with the stereo, someone had decided that they wanted it behind the stand so the folks in the bleachers could hear it, too. Sure, okay.

Couldn't even hear it over crowd noise. My buddy disappeared, leaving me with strangers at a new-to-me school who thought the whole plan my own. Welcome to middle school.

Many years later, I had just purchased a lot of audio gear from a fellow who'd run an ad in the newspaper. I'd bought it to resell, which was an important part of my income at that kid-raising time. The paper internet was all we had in the stone age. A couple we were getting to know from church stopped by - very conservative people - and I made sure to ask before they left if they had any interest in purchasing audio gear, just so I could explain the reason I had all the stuff. Mild embarrassment the impetus for the explanation.

I can't be the only one.
 
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As a 13 year old, how about a big old shiny York receiver, 7 band Realistic EQ, a cheap Technics cassette deck and I am not even sure what the TT was and speakers were Panasonic Thrusters. It was mine though
 
I had a Lafayette LR75A that my dad got me when I was about 13. 15 watts a side and no phono stage. With my ceramic cartridge BSR 6500AX, and my ancient (and small) DIY Heathkit speakers, it sounded ... about like you'd expect. Actually the SQ wasn't terrible unless you tried to generate any volume at all.
 
A couple of times, when it was sounding so great I invited friends over to show it off. One time there was an unbearable hum, the other, a channel was dead. As if to mock me, the hum disappeared, and the channel reappeared, as soon as my friends departed.
 
I had an all in one miracle mart model that had a cheap astatic needle, and dual 8 track. My best friends dad had a system of separates I think with a nice dual table and bullnose advents and a jvc receiver with a 5 band graphic equalizer. He came over and I was embarrassed to show him my system. But it was mine!
 
I've got you all beat.

I loved listening to the radio but had no money to buy a stereo. I took my big GE portable, plugged in an ear phone jack, spliced the end wire to a large speaker I pulled out of a tv from Gerhards ( at night) placed it in the corner and turned it on. I would record off the radio with a microphone dangling in front of the 15 inch driver onto my Magnavox cassette deck. I still have the tapes.
I improvised. But when I went over to a friend's house and saw what he had in his bedroom I knew something had to be rectified.
 
Was showing off my mancave a couple years ago. Cranked the system up & went out on patio- A7s loud & clear but I knew bass wasn't right-everyone else impressed. Went in & jacked gain on sub amp still not there. Couple days later discovered both THT subs were disconnected from last repositioning DOH!
Had bragged about the bass.......
 
When I was 14 I had a very modest setup, a Craig Pioneer car 4-track hooked up to a 12V power supply and some 12" woofers I found somewhere.Also had a standard (maker unknown) portable TT ceramic cartridge (you know the kind) hooked up to a cheap almost antique guitar amp. Many scoffed but, had nothing of their own but, it never bothered me knowing it's always easier to poo poo something that someone else has.
Oh! and I hooked a head phone jack up to it for my Realistic headphones. Sounded just fine to me, cause it was all I had and I put it together from bits and pieces I found or got at a thrift stores.wink.gif
 
I can think of two times ....

Once when I invited a friend over to hear my audio rig (back in 2000). Was living in a house in Colorado at the time that had vaulted ceilings ... looking back, I think that it was interfering w/ the sound. Anyway ... he was not impressed ... he told me that latter when I asked for his honest opinion.

Another time ... couple of years latter, when I moved back to Ohio .. I played a record for my brother. He had not heard an LP in years. I played the same album on Vinyl and then CD ... he said "Wow! Guess CD's really do sound better" o_O ... about a month latter I bough a new TT ... still took me a number of years before I got the "sound" that I was reading about on the blogs.
 
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I was content with my main system a few years back, until a buddy came over to rock out. My feelings of Decibel Inadequacy (*) were powerful enough to make me put together my present tri-amp setup, including from-scratch construction of a custom electronic crossover.

(*) Okay, that was not the first instance of that phrase on the interwebs, but it's close enough that I'm claiming it. (**)

(**) Sheesh, when will my fragile ego ever be satisfied?

Cheers,

chazix
 
chazix said:
I was content with my main system a few years back, until a buddy came over to rock out. My feelings of Decibel Inadequacy (*) were powerful enough to make me put together my present tri-amp setup, including from-scratch construction of a custom electronic crossover.

(*) Okay, that was not the first instance of that phrase on the interwebs, but it's close enough that I'm claiming it. (**)

(**) Sheesh, when will my fragile ego ever be satisfied?

Cheers,

chazix
Click to expand...

Be PC and say SPL-challenged.
 
My parents didn't have stereo at home until sometime after I had graduated from college and had married, but they had a caseless mono tube kit amp and a phonograph with a stereo ceramic cartridge on it, enabling the playing of modern records. Oh, the speaker was an 8 or 10 inch Jensen my dad mounted in the lower part of the hi-fi stand he made. Right before college, I got a pair of tiny Herald x-air type speakers and a Herald 4-watt per channel stereo amp from Olson Electronics in Chicago. My turntable was a thrift store bought cheap portable with a flip-over cartridge, which I rewired to have external outputs, completing my "component system." I was never embarrassed. It was what I could afford. The around $30 it cost was a lot of money to me then. Now, I have the kind system I would have liked to have had about ten years after that, almost all of the pieces bought used in the past ten years at a fraction of their original cost, which would have been entirely out of sight for me--then and now.
 
4-2-7 said:
When I was 14 I had:D

View attachment 1140441
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Oh heck, for a radio I had and ole Aircastle table model with standard broadcast and short wave that I had dug out of the neighbors trash that still worked fine.
This is as close to the model I can find. I remember it had the "magic eye" that still worked and push buttons along the bottom of the scale that where marked WLW, WCCO, and so on.
cache_4085976507.jpg
 
musichal said:
The first time involved a '60s model Lloyd's eight-track-ceiver when I was a kid. A buddy asked me if I would bring it to the football game for the little concession stand.

"Does it play loud?"

"Well, pretty loud." I cranked it up, and it was loud. In a 10x12 bedroom.

However, when I arrived at the game with the stereo, someone had decided that they wanted it behind the stand so the folks in the bleachers could hear it, too. Sure, okay.

Couldn't even hear it over crowd noise. My buddy disappeared, leaving me with strangers at a new-to-me school who thought the whole plan my own. Welcome to middle school.
Click to expand...

 
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