biscuitdough
New Member
TLDR: which big late 70s receiver's got perfectly cylindrical, not-as-long-as-Kenwood, toggle switch tips on the front panel, which extend deeply their slots without getting narrower, combined with a silver backing to the tuner dial?
Hi all. New user, trying to figure out what my first receiver was. I'm not sure if it was a 110wpc+ Monster Receiver, now that I think about it, but it was pretty heavy, and the complexity of the front panel makes me think it must have been high end, if not TOTL. Many a year has passed since I bought it from a friend in high school. I'm pretty sure he got it as a hand me down from his mom's biker boyfriend. This was 1993 and we were 14; I suppose the guy was in his 40s then or perhaps 50s - the Warlocks MCs lifestyle probably ages you a little, and as a teenager, anyone over 30 probably looked like a prune that had been found in Tutankhamen's tomb to me. This all lines up with the guy buying it circa late '70s. Location was East Coast USA in the Philly metro area, a huge population center and distribution point, so it could have been almost any major brand.
Suffice to say it's been a long time since I saw the thing. I bought a Pioneer-rebadged-Optimus in 1997 when my Monster Receiver broke, since I worked at Radioshack and had a discount. I chucked the poor thing out on the curb on trash night because the power switch stopped working, so maybe I was the first to experience the famed 70s receiver power switch issues. Lately, I've been wanting to recapture my lost youth and replace it. Here are the details, in order of how well I recall them:
I definitely remember that it had a silver/brushed aluminum faceplate and a matching background to the tuner dial. This eliminates most of the early 70s silverfaces, with the black tuners. It also didn't have synthesized tuning with a digital readout, which counts out 1980-81, the end of the silverface era. It had at least one toggle switch in brushed aluminum on the front. The toggle(s) were fully set into slots with rounded ends - so it's not a Pioner SX-n50, where the tips of the toggle switches were larger than the slots in the faceplate. Instead, look at the Fisher RS-10nn. In bold because that's a vivid memory. The frame around the front panel was also silverface - maybe polished and laquered rather than brushed. Not fully enveloped in wood, at any rate.
That "maybe" leads into the stuff I'm pretty sure about, but not definite. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the above-mentioned Fisher RS series, because I recall the toggle tips being cylindrical. The Fishers are a cylinder with a flat bevel on the top. I'm also pretty sure it had screw terminals for the speaker outs. It definitely had either screws or spring clips, not bananas or binding posts. I think it had a mute function labeled "MUTING". I think it had some low-profile pushbutton switches, cylindrical and bigger than the toggles. I don't recall any blue or red-lit indicators, only green and amber.
Here's the super vague stuff: I don't think it had any of the c.1980 tall narrow pushbuttons. I don't remember a horizontal tuner dial a la Marantz, but I don't specifically remember the absence of one, either. I think it was prone to a gentle "foof" sound through the speakers when powered on, although this could just have been a bad snubber or relay, since it was probably 15-20 years old and well-used by the time I got it. I remember FM tuning being good with no antenna, but we always got a lot of FM stations where I lived, even with the junk receiver (built-in turntable and 8-track) that my parents had in my preteen years, as well as low-budget battery powered radios, cheap Walkman clones, etc. It seemed to push the Technics SB-CR55's I had more authoritatively than the Optimus SRA3500 that replaced it, but that could have been the taper of the volume control, since I never used it for serious sound reinforcement tasks nor had to truly crank it. This takes into consideration my long-abiding love of death metal.
Much of the above suggests Kenwood, except they stuck with black backgrounds for their tuner dials well into the late 70s, after the other big receivers went fully silverface. Also, I don't think the toggle switch tips were quite as long as some of the Kenwood ones.
Am I nuts? It kind of comes down to Kenwood vs Fisher, based on the research I've done. I must either be wrong about the roundness of the switch tips or the length of them. So that's why I'm here. Was there a big, heavy receiver c.1975-79 with cylindrical switch tips AND a silvery sheen to its tuner?
Hi all. New user, trying to figure out what my first receiver was. I'm not sure if it was a 110wpc+ Monster Receiver, now that I think about it, but it was pretty heavy, and the complexity of the front panel makes me think it must have been high end, if not TOTL. Many a year has passed since I bought it from a friend in high school. I'm pretty sure he got it as a hand me down from his mom's biker boyfriend. This was 1993 and we were 14; I suppose the guy was in his 40s then or perhaps 50s - the Warlocks MCs lifestyle probably ages you a little, and as a teenager, anyone over 30 probably looked like a prune that had been found in Tutankhamen's tomb to me. This all lines up with the guy buying it circa late '70s. Location was East Coast USA in the Philly metro area, a huge population center and distribution point, so it could have been almost any major brand.
Suffice to say it's been a long time since I saw the thing. I bought a Pioneer-rebadged-Optimus in 1997 when my Monster Receiver broke, since I worked at Radioshack and had a discount. I chucked the poor thing out on the curb on trash night because the power switch stopped working, so maybe I was the first to experience the famed 70s receiver power switch issues. Lately, I've been wanting to recapture my lost youth and replace it. Here are the details, in order of how well I recall them:
I definitely remember that it had a silver/brushed aluminum faceplate and a matching background to the tuner dial. This eliminates most of the early 70s silverfaces, with the black tuners. It also didn't have synthesized tuning with a digital readout, which counts out 1980-81, the end of the silverface era. It had at least one toggle switch in brushed aluminum on the front. The toggle(s) were fully set into slots with rounded ends - so it's not a Pioner SX-n50, where the tips of the toggle switches were larger than the slots in the faceplate. Instead, look at the Fisher RS-10nn. In bold because that's a vivid memory. The frame around the front panel was also silverface - maybe polished and laquered rather than brushed. Not fully enveloped in wood, at any rate.
That "maybe" leads into the stuff I'm pretty sure about, but not definite. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the above-mentioned Fisher RS series, because I recall the toggle tips being cylindrical. The Fishers are a cylinder with a flat bevel on the top. I'm also pretty sure it had screw terminals for the speaker outs. It definitely had either screws or spring clips, not bananas or binding posts. I think it had a mute function labeled "MUTING". I think it had some low-profile pushbutton switches, cylindrical and bigger than the toggles. I don't recall any blue or red-lit indicators, only green and amber.
Here's the super vague stuff: I don't think it had any of the c.1980 tall narrow pushbuttons. I don't remember a horizontal tuner dial a la Marantz, but I don't specifically remember the absence of one, either. I think it was prone to a gentle "foof" sound through the speakers when powered on, although this could just have been a bad snubber or relay, since it was probably 15-20 years old and well-used by the time I got it. I remember FM tuning being good with no antenna, but we always got a lot of FM stations where I lived, even with the junk receiver (built-in turntable and 8-track) that my parents had in my preteen years, as well as low-budget battery powered radios, cheap Walkman clones, etc. It seemed to push the Technics SB-CR55's I had more authoritatively than the Optimus SRA3500 that replaced it, but that could have been the taper of the volume control, since I never used it for serious sound reinforcement tasks nor had to truly crank it. This takes into consideration my long-abiding love of death metal.
Much of the above suggests Kenwood, except they stuck with black backgrounds for their tuner dials well into the late 70s, after the other big receivers went fully silverface. Also, I don't think the toggle switch tips were quite as long as some of the Kenwood ones.
Am I nuts? It kind of comes down to Kenwood vs Fisher, based on the research I've done. I must either be wrong about the roundness of the switch tips or the length of them. So that's why I'm here. Was there a big, heavy receiver c.1975-79 with cylindrical switch tips AND a silvery sheen to its tuner?
