Ishmael
Super Member
In the mid-60s my brother came back from Vietnam. He brought back many things, some of which (Agent Orange) led to his passing away last year, but for me he brought back the source of my lifelong listening to recorded music.
It was so simple, I did not realize then, it was perfect. A Sansui 500 tube receiver, Dual automatic turntable, and Coral coaxial 10 inch speakers, with an adjustable treble control dangling from a connecting wire, which we never used. The receiver and turntable found a place on an unused end table and the speakers sat on the carpeted floor angled up from where they rested. Yet this was a perfect system. It was where it all began. First alone listening to Joan Baez and other folk albums my brother brought back from the war and then the crucible of High School, with a group of a half dozen friends.
It was better than Bob Dylan’s dream, it was ours. A new album would come out and we would all gather, sitting between the two speakers and listen, read the liner notes, the lyrics and then play it over and over again through the night talking about the music, our lives and how the two merged, those evenings when we were young. Graduations came, paths parted, new journeys began, new servitudes to the necessities of adult independence. The last to go from this first system was the Sansui 500 after it had handled a procession of speakers and front ends until that day, we all know, when we step onto the merry go round of the “better”, Stereo Nervosa. Over the decades when I would come back to my parent’s home, there it was sitting on its shelf my very own “Rosebud”, waiting through my parent’s deaths and finally my older brother’s death. Estate sale, abandonment, for some reason, perhaps the decades we were brothers, I wanted this back.
And so, I lugged it and I do mean lugged, we’re talking heavy iron in those transformers, to our decades long stereo shop. Would they know someone who could restore it to near as new? This relic? They did! And not only did they know someone, but the technician also wrote up a multi-page explanation of his repairs, how to bias tubes (funny that, I never biased the tubes in the decade of its use, no issues ever) and then there was the comment from the stereo shop salesman: “He really loved restoring your receiver.”
“Love”, that’s the word for all of this. The music, the friends, the 60s, my brother, love ran through it all and drew me back. To a moment of truth. All connected to sources, plugged in, the lava lamp bubbling like my worry. Would it drive my modern 8 Ohm speakers? There was no output tap after 8 Ohm. I tugged the power switch to “On” and for the first time in four decades the face lights came on, then cued up Joan Baez “Forever Young”, turned the volume to 11:00 with all tone controls at zero and sat again in a darkened room. At first, I was alone, and then a circle of friends joined me, and then as she sang another voice joined hers, the voice of my brother.
You can come home again.
It was so simple, I did not realize then, it was perfect. A Sansui 500 tube receiver, Dual automatic turntable, and Coral coaxial 10 inch speakers, with an adjustable treble control dangling from a connecting wire, which we never used. The receiver and turntable found a place on an unused end table and the speakers sat on the carpeted floor angled up from where they rested. Yet this was a perfect system. It was where it all began. First alone listening to Joan Baez and other folk albums my brother brought back from the war and then the crucible of High School, with a group of a half dozen friends.
It was better than Bob Dylan’s dream, it was ours. A new album would come out and we would all gather, sitting between the two speakers and listen, read the liner notes, the lyrics and then play it over and over again through the night talking about the music, our lives and how the two merged, those evenings when we were young. Graduations came, paths parted, new journeys began, new servitudes to the necessities of adult independence. The last to go from this first system was the Sansui 500 after it had handled a procession of speakers and front ends until that day, we all know, when we step onto the merry go round of the “better”, Stereo Nervosa. Over the decades when I would come back to my parent’s home, there it was sitting on its shelf my very own “Rosebud”, waiting through my parent’s deaths and finally my older brother’s death. Estate sale, abandonment, for some reason, perhaps the decades we were brothers, I wanted this back.
And so, I lugged it and I do mean lugged, we’re talking heavy iron in those transformers, to our decades long stereo shop. Would they know someone who could restore it to near as new? This relic? They did! And not only did they know someone, but the technician also wrote up a multi-page explanation of his repairs, how to bias tubes (funny that, I never biased the tubes in the decade of its use, no issues ever) and then there was the comment from the stereo shop salesman: “He really loved restoring your receiver.”
“Love”, that’s the word for all of this. The music, the friends, the 60s, my brother, love ran through it all and drew me back. To a moment of truth. All connected to sources, plugged in, the lava lamp bubbling like my worry. Would it drive my modern 8 Ohm speakers? There was no output tap after 8 Ohm. I tugged the power switch to “On” and for the first time in four decades the face lights came on, then cued up Joan Baez “Forever Young”, turned the volume to 11:00 with all tone controls at zero and sat again in a darkened room. At first, I was alone, and then a circle of friends joined me, and then as she sang another voice joined hers, the voice of my brother.
You can come home again.
