What's the most useless, over-designed, or badly designed feature you've ever seen on a piece of audio equipment? I'm not starting this thread to bash any one manufacturer, but there must be some pieces of equipment that made you wonder why? Why would a designer or design team sit down and put so much effort into re-inventing the wheel, so to speak. If you can post pictures of it, that's even better.
I'll start with this one, and it's a "buy one get one free" deal. It's a little Technics SA-626 receiver (pictured) I had earlier on in the year. Produced in the early 1980s, it had a punchy 65 watts per channel and a nice sounding tuner section. I had no problem with the way it sounded, it just had two really useless features.
My problem was with the over-designed volume control. I don't dislike motorized volume controls, if they are on amps with remote controls. But someone at Matsushita went out of their way to design this thing. The up-down control powers a little electric motor that turns the shaft of a conventional potentiometer. If this wasn't enough, there is a little strip of orange film that runs between two sprockets, with a light behind it, that shines onto a scale on the front panel. As you turn the volume up or down, the film strip moves with the volume pot, and changes the bar graph scale you see from white to orange. Surely for all this expense, they could have just put in a decent quality Alps pot with detents? Even a slider would have been better.
The other feature with this receiver is the "analog" tuning scale. As an owner of a Sansui T-80, I have no problem with tuners with both an analog scale and a digital readout. In this receiver, the analog scale is a moving coil meter. Somebody had to design a circuit that increases the voltage going to this meter as the tuning frequency increased. Wouldn't the cost have been better spent on maybe a more accurate signal strength meter? Maybe even some power meters, at least they would be more interesting to look at.
Come on, some of you must have similar stories, let's hear them.
Lee.
I'll start with this one, and it's a "buy one get one free" deal. It's a little Technics SA-626 receiver (pictured) I had earlier on in the year. Produced in the early 1980s, it had a punchy 65 watts per channel and a nice sounding tuner section. I had no problem with the way it sounded, it just had two really useless features.
My problem was with the over-designed volume control. I don't dislike motorized volume controls, if they are on amps with remote controls. But someone at Matsushita went out of their way to design this thing. The up-down control powers a little electric motor that turns the shaft of a conventional potentiometer. If this wasn't enough, there is a little strip of orange film that runs between two sprockets, with a light behind it, that shines onto a scale on the front panel. As you turn the volume up or down, the film strip moves with the volume pot, and changes the bar graph scale you see from white to orange. Surely for all this expense, they could have just put in a decent quality Alps pot with detents? Even a slider would have been better.
The other feature with this receiver is the "analog" tuning scale. As an owner of a Sansui T-80, I have no problem with tuners with both an analog scale and a digital readout. In this receiver, the analog scale is a moving coil meter. Somebody had to design a circuit that increases the voltage going to this meter as the tuning frequency increased. Wouldn't the cost have been better spent on maybe a more accurate signal strength meter? Maybe even some power meters, at least they would be more interesting to look at.
Come on, some of you must have similar stories, let's hear them.
Lee.
