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My quest to bring back my stereo from 40+ years ago is almost complete!

A

Alobar

Addicted Member
My system that I bought new in 1974-1975 has been parked at my brothers house for the past 30 years, mainly because it was too large and heavy for it to follow me around through life. I moved around a LOT in the past 30 years while my bro has been stationary so the arrangement worked out well. About 2 years ago he approached me about taking my old gear off his hands and I was pretty ecstatic about the idea (now that I am retired and stable in one place again) as I loved the sound it produced and I have so little from that time frame. The biggest part of the problem in getting my old gear home has been logistic. I live in a tiny town in the southeast part of Alaska and he lives in Fairbanks Alaska, a 1300 mile drive round trip drive, almost half of it through the Yukon Territory Canada.

My system (minus the odd turntable and reel to reel tape deck) consisted of a Kenwood power amp/preamp model 700M and 700C, a pair of JBL L-65's (which I have kept with me since new) and my large JBL L-200's, the last of which presented the greatest challenge in bringing back home. The Kenny was brought home a year and a half ago with the preamp section non-functional. I sent it off to Echowars and it now works well and sounds great. The power amp has been a little different story due to its 70 lb weight which is too heavy for the post office so in this case I have sent Glenn the 3 main boards to be rebuilt and am looking forward to getting those back.

The L-200's were a big challenge. Seems every time I was there for a visit there was not enough room to load them. So I decided to make a special trip with my truck and camper. After removing the rear seat in my extended cab Chevy truck there was just enough room (or so I estimated) to fit those in the back.

As you can see the rear of my full sized truck is quite full!



Now that I have got them in the house and cleaned up (they hadn't been played in at least 10 years and were full of dust) I started appreciating what I have. The cabs are in great shape with only one ding about an inch long in the back edge of one of them. After a little fiddling with my EQ I had them playing with nice sound (although I know they will sound a lot better still once the Kenwood 700 is back in the lineup).

All this has been quite worth it for me as I have regretted giving them up so many years ago. I frankly never expected to get it all back as the years went on and I reluctantly listened to inferior sound from cheap gear except for the L-65's which sounded as good as what the source was, which was pretty bad until recently.
 
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Thanks, yes it is really nice to have it back. I was only 19 years old when I bought the L200's which was a huge deal with all my buddies and my place became THE hangout! Could never have afforded that sort of thing except that Fairbanks at that time was a boom town with the Alaska pipeline construction gearing up and I remember working 7 days a week on that. My sleep suffered as I do remember lots of late nights with music cranked up! Just looking at these again brings back all sorts of memories.
 
What a very cool story. Appreciate you sharing, and please get some pics once it is all set up.
 
Great story. Nice that you still had the chance to get the old system back up and running. I second the pic request.....:bigok:
 
Here are a few pictures. Excuse the rather trashy component setup as it is all temporary and a much nicer setup will happen once we get the flooring down. I am building the house while we are living in it.. This is not recommended..:whip:

I haven't had a chance to clean up the walnut on the JBL's other than to give them a good going over with the vac. You can see that they are in pretty good shape tho, for 41 year olds! :beatnik:





 
just dave said:
A noble quest to be sure! Are there any fair maidens in this quest?
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Well no, sadly there weren't. I suppose if I had hung around up there I might have seen a few that were around 40 years ago, but they would be 60 now and probably unrecognizable. :yikes:
 
This inspires me to create a period system. I'm going to have find components that I would have loved from around 1984 and 1985. There would be pieces from Sony, Harman/Kardon, KEF, Realistic and Boston Acoustics for sure (maybe even a silver Dual), but for now, back to 1975.
 
Alobar said:
Well no, sadly there weren't. I suppose if I had hung around up there I might have seen a few that were around 40 years ago, but they would be 60 now and probably unrecognizable. :yikes:
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Yeah time sucks but sweet setup though.40 years didn't hurt your rig any!
 
Jody Thornton said:
This inspires me to create a period system. I'm going to have find components that I would have loved from around 1984 and 1985. There would be pieces from Sony, Harman/Kardon, KEF, Realistic and Boston Acoustics for sure (maybe even a silver Dual), but for now, back to 1975.
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That seems like a worthwhile venture! I would like to add to mine but where I live shipping is tough to impossible.
 
I was picturing you building up a system like the one you had, not the actual system. That's much cooler! It's great that it's been week taken care of for all these years and now gets to come home.
 
OMGCat! said:
I was picturing you building up a system like the one you had, not the actual system. That's much cooler! It's great that it's been week taken care of for all these years and now gets to come home.
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Thanks, there is more than a little sentimental attachment to this system. Had this equipment been lost to me like practably everything else from that time of my life and I tried to get a 70's vintage system together now I would get different (smaller) speakers. There probably are better sounding ones out there but these are mine and paid for (40 years ago) so there is something to be said for that especially now that I am on a fixed income. Also they are built like tanks which I like. The amp is one of those items that had/have a great sound with the L200's , loads of power and are quite rare because of a very limited production run. It would fetch a good price on eBay likely but that isn't going to happen unless I can't bring them to the old folks home someday..
:(



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