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Pacific Stereo History

Vis the comment about Silo: don't know where you were, but the Silo in Haverford or Bryn Mawr PA had a very good selection of equipment -- EPI, Marjen, Jennings Contrara, Techincs Avid, most others, and, get this -- IMF and then Fried. Got my Fried Qs from them.
As I recall, they didn't have Thorens, AR or ADS because the Sam Goodys down the street had them, and the Tech HiFi in Bryn Mawr had Philips and HK as well as Ohm and Nikko. And then there was Barclays with Transcriptors and Dayton Wright and so on. And then the repair place in Ardmore (which was still there two years ago, packed to the brim) which had Quads, Lowther/Voigt Corner Horns and Janszens as well as Thorens 124s and so on. And the Swarthmore music library had Stereophile from its inception. But I digress...
 
Quadraflex Q3 speakers

I bought a pair of q3 quadraflex speakers at the thrift store for like $5 because the grills match a rca victor(1957) console I got. both have sat for years.
I plan to revamp the console with a Dual 1019, my Dads Dynakit ST-70 I plan to rebuild, a yardsale Dynakit PAS3 I will rebuild, and hopefully a Scott 330 tuner. I want to Mod the console speakers with something cool and ported (any ideas) and use the Q3s (possibly upgraded) as extention speakers.
 
Bought my Kenwood KA-3500, KT-3500 and my Dual 1237 there. Store was located on Indian Hill Blvd in Pomona CA. Same day bought some other stuff, can't recall exactly what now, at the original Good Guys, also located on Indian Hill Blvd a few blocks north of PS. Back in the days of Federated (Audio?), too long ago.
 
Hello Pacific Stereo:

Did you know Rich Rodgers from the San Francisco area? He was in the main parts department and was hired by Schramm.

Marty
 
I don't recall if the Federated I frequented was in NH, however in the words of the character Chris from the movie Roxanne "It's huge! It's enormous! It's gigantic! I mean, they said it was big, but I didn't expect it to be BIG!" And that's all I have to say about that. :-D
 
Wish I would have visited more than one time around 79. I was stationed at Oceanside and drove north up around L.A. to visit one. Can't remember at the time which store. Either Hollywood or maybe if they had one in Aneheim (sic). Thats about the same time I visited the Altec Lansing factory looking to hear some 19s. I asked the manager at PS if they could order me a Kenwood Eleven GX and he looked it up and said Kenwood doesn't make such a thing. Well, I had just returned from Okinawa with one and had the brochure for it with me and showed it to him and said yes they do. He looked at it and offered me cash for it on the spot saying he wanted to use it as the house stereo. He made it sound like they had a speacial stereo there that was featured as "The House Stereo", I declined but man was he in awe of the new GX. Wish I could of made it back more often but I did return back to Okinawa and Japan and bought more stuff anyway. That was quite the store I must say. Haven't seen one as big since. Made the PXs look small.
 
In 1977 I gathered up all of my graduation money and went to the Dublin, Ca. store and bough my Marantz 2226B and a pair of house brand speakers :music:

I still remember the yelling lecture I got from my dad about spending all that money for a "radio" :nono:
 
Growing up in the Bay Area there was always some connection to Pacific Stereo. There was always kind of an incestuous aspect to technicians and HiFi stores.

I worked with a guy named Dominic (Wong?) at the Soundwell in Berkeley. Dominic used to work at the Pacific Stereo Shattuck Ave. store.

I used to work with Dave Austin and Nick Kratz at Resistance Repair. Dave later moved to SoCal and worked for Yamaha (Orangethorpe, Buena Park). Nick used to work at Recycled Stereo on Shattuck. .... across the street from Pacific Stereo.

When Pacific Stereo liquidated their warehouse, both Resistance repair and The Soundwell went down there to look over the PALLETs(!) of stuff. Both shops came home with card files full of microfiche schematics. These included SAE, Concept, quadraflex, etc. etc., etc. The Soundwell took home many Concept parts. MPX filter assys, Loopstick antenna assys, knobs, etc.

Since the Soundwell was a used gear store, we used the loopstick antennas on anything that needed one. I can't think of one instance where they didn't sub.

On a sad note, I used to work for Hank Hong (Honkers of Berkeley) who used to manage a Cal HiFi, a competitor of Pacific Stereo. He passed away last week. R.I.P. Hank
 
I grew up on Southern Cal during the golden age of the stereo stores. The major chains were in full swing: Pacific Stereo; University Stereo; Federated (with their wacky TV ads); Rogers Sound Labs; Leo's (before it went to car audio); Cal Stereo; Recycled Stereo (great store, like a museum!).. More important, there were the independent stores still around: GNP (Gross National Product) in Pasadena with their Lead Balloon speaker and Cal-Tech association. You could spend time in there and not feel pressured. Radio Lab in Glendale was old school...tubes, McIntosh, Klipsh!! The Sound Factor out in the Valley...best place for Infinity...I purchased my RSII's and Infinitesimals (the real ones) there. Hell, even FEDCO (RIP) had a great little stereo shop inside. I was way too young to appreciate it, but the stuff they sold is highly sought after now. Pretty much all gone. At least there are still some decent record stores to rummage through. There is still a Pacific Stereo connection...in Anderson Valley CA, Navarro Winery is owned by former owners of Pacific Stereo. Their wine is excellent. :thmbsp:
http://www.navarrowine.com/main.php
Mike
 
Ultralinear Speakers were built in City of Industry (that or Anaheim, can't recall positively now). U.S. based company, though I can't say now if the drivers were made in U.S.A.
 
Quite a coincidence seeing this thread today after just this morning going through old receipts and seeing one for the Dual 506-2 bought (and still have) from the Walnut Creek, CA store. Now back East I haven't seen a Pacific Stereo since the 80's and am sad to hear the news.
 
I grew up in SoCal, right in the prime of the whole vinyl and stereo store thing all through the 70's.
The local Pacific Stereo for me was located between a Licorice Pizza record store to its immediate left, and a Wherehouse Records to its immediate right.
I didn't care much for the Wherehouse. Licorice Pizza and Pacific Stereo got all of my biz. I first learned about Sennheiser open-air headphones at the Pac Stereo store in the mid-70's, and had to have a pair.
I got $5 a week for lunch money for school back then, and spent nearly all of it when you could get two records for that money, at Licorice Pizza. I still have it all too.
 
mjalazard said:
I grew up on Southern Cal during the golden age of the stereo stores. The major chains were in full swing: Pacific Stereo; University Stereo; Federated (with their wacky TV ads); Rogers Sound Labs; Leo's (before it went to car audio); Cal Stereo; Recycled Stereo (great store, like a museum!).. More important, there were the independent stores still around: GNP (Gross National Product) in Pasadena with their Lead Balloon speaker and Cal-Tech association. You could spend time in there and not feel pressured. Radio Lab in Glendale was old school...tubes, McIntosh, Klipsh!! The Sound Factor out in the Valley...best place for Infinity...I purchased my RSII's and Infinitesimals (the real ones) there. Hell, even FEDCO (RIP) had a great little stereo shop inside. I was way too young to appreciate it, but the stuff they sold is highly sought after now. Pretty much all gone. At least there are still some decent record stores to rummage through. There is still a Pacific Stereo connection...in Anderson Valley CA, Navarro Winery is owned by former owners of Pacific Stereo. Their wine is excellent. :thmbsp:
http://www.navarrowine.com/main.php
Mike
Click to expand...

Gosh, that brings back memories. Almost all of them are gone, the only one left that I know of is Sound Factor. I heard a rumor they are about to close shop next month.:tears:
 
mjalazard said:
I grew up on Southern Cal during the golden age of the stereo stores. The major chains were in full swing: Pacific Stereo; University Stereo; Federated (with their wacky TV ads); Rogers Sound Labs; Leo's (before it went to car audio); Cal Stereo; Recycled Stereo (great store, like a museum!).. More important, there were the independent stores still around: GNP (Gross National Product) in Pasadena with their Lead Balloon speaker and Cal-Tech association. You could spend time in there and not feel pressured. Radio Lab in Glendale was old school...tubes, McIntosh, Klipsh!! The Sound Factor out in the Valley...best place for Infinity...I purchased my RSII's and Infinitesimals (the real ones) there. Hell, even FEDCO (RIP) had a great little stereo shop inside. ...Mike
Click to expand...

I have fond memories of the old style Radio Shack from the old days as well. And also there was University Stereo. Old style electronics shops were more common back then, you know the ones you would see electrical techs and electrical engineers (like my dad) hanging out at...they had aisles of electrical components, and usually a HiFi area for DIY (there is only one of these still around that I am aware of in Fullerton, CA called ORVAC).

I wish I could remember Pacific Stereo a little better. But, it is the Fred R. Rated ads that stood out for me.
 
Yamahalic said:
I have fond memories of the old style Radio Shack from the old days as well. And also there was University Stereo. Old style electronics shops were more common back then, you know the ones you would see electrical techs and electrical engineers (like my dad) hanging out at...they had aisles of electrical components, and usually a HiFi area for DIY (there is only one of these still around that I am aware of in Fullerton, CA called ORVAC).

I wish I could remember Pacific Stereo a little better. But, it is the Fred R. Rated ads that stood out for me.
Click to expand...

Another local electronics store I currently frequent is Ford Electronics on Orangethorpe just west of the Fullerton Municipal Airport. They are a bit smaller than ORVAC but they have a very nice selection of parts, many of which are still in the tall sided cardboard bins. I like them because they're more family/pop run but ORVAC does also have a nice selection and a lot more commercial sound stuff too.

Anelectronics company I used to frequent was/is ITC Electronics. They had a store in Hawthorne on Imperial Highway near the 405. Had all the crazy surplus stuff you could find. They still have a store on Olympic in LA, I thought they had a store in Torrance on Hawthorne but I don't see it listed anymore. Had a lot of speaker stuff there, catered a lot to the DIY autosound and home.

Can't forget Olson Electronics, which was on Century Blvd. near the 405, home of the parts grab bags and rather sort of pedestrian offerings. Never thought they were all that good but they seemed to thrive for a while from all the local aerospace guys. Same for Inglewood Electronics about 2 blocks up the street, small shop with some parts stuff but for me, my first exposure to the early 70's Kenwood, Fisher, and Scott stereo gear. Wasn't much of a showroom but had a lot of gear on display.

Newark Electronics, an industrial distributor still in business had a main office another block west.

The two Pacific Stereos I visited often were in Inglewood on Manchester about 4 blocks east from downtown across from Sears, and their very nice Torrance store on Sepulveda and Hawthorne. After bike riding, I'd go there and try to get into the high end rooms just to look at all the Marantz and Pioneer racks of gear, and some of the really nice stuff that I can't remember the names of. I do remember getting a pair of hanging Bose 901's to rocking/swinging once we were able to turn it up! Remember the stacks and piles of boxed gear with prices on it just waiting to be picked up and taken to the counter?

I also visited a lot of the Federated stores while at UCLA. The nearest was on Olympic (?) in West LA, listened to alot of RTR's there, and the La Brea store in Hollywood not long before they closed down.

Lots of good memories there.
 
So much to comment about!

@Martin: I didn't know Rich.

@DaWoofer: Our regional HQ was Anaheim, which also was my store. That location was originally a White Front, and had a HUGE, HUGE parking lot. Was it that one?

@Jon: We did that warehouse liquidation both at Anaheim and up in Emeryville. Emeryville had the lion's share of parts, though. I'm trying to place Dave Austin. If he was a tech at Yamaha, he wasn't there when I was.

@mjalazard: It's pretty amazing to think about just how many places there were back then. My cousin and I made up a board game once, called the "Going Out of Business Game," and it had squares for all of those retailers on it. I'm pretty sure I still have that around here, somewhere. Recycled, BTW, was our operation. And Ted does make excellent wine- I've been up at his vineyards.

@mfrench: What store was that? In Newport Beach, University was flanked by LP and Warehouse, but I don't remember any of our stores being like that.

@Yamahalic: Yeah, Shadoe Stevens was absolutely hilarious as Fred Rated. They had much better ads than we did.

@Mech986: I LOVE Ford Electronics! And I remember ITC. I remember they once had a floor stack of brand-new TEAC elcassette machines (looked just like an A-650, but with a big well) that they had gotten from somewhere (this was long, long after the demise of that format), and still kick myself to this day for not buying one. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

There's a funny story about the Torrance store. When I was liquidating, I was at the Santa Monica store, getting ready to set up the blow-out sale. Well, this guy walks up to me and says that he's from the city.

City Guy: "What are you guys doing?"
Me: "Well, we're going out of business, and I'm setting up the sale."
"Do you have a permit?"
"A what?"
"A permit."
"A permit for what?"
"A permit to have a going-out-of-business sale."
"I need a permit to go out of business?"
"Yes."
"Uh, we're bankrupt. How much does a permit cost?"
"It's $2000, and we also take 2% of your gross sales."
"WHAT??"

Well, you can imagine how the rest of the conversation went. I told the city official that, "Not only are we not going to have a going-out-of-business sale in Santa Monica, but that his city would also lose out on the sales tax revenue, because I'm moving the inventory over to Torrance, where I don't need a f-in permit to go out of business!"

He was pissed.

I walked back into the store and announced to everyone (in front of Mr. City Guy) that we weren't going to have the sale here and that we were moving all the inventory to Torrance. We did that, I locked the SM store up and put a sign on the inside of the door directing everyone over to the Torrance store. Heh. I forgot about that until just now!
 
PacificStereo said:
..."A permit to have a going-out-of-business sale."...
Click to expand...

You have got to be kidding me, that can't be legal can it? I would think that it would not be different than a normal sale, but I suppose the permit in question is really for the extra "going out of business" signage...but $2,000 and 2% of gross? I am glad you had the option to take your business elsewhere.

Sounds like I need to check out Ford Electronics :thmbsp:
 
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