TJB on 1960s Equipment!

[Shane]

I have a quality modern turntable with a $200 audiophile grade cartridge, and a $150 pair of headphones. Its awesome, but sometimes I need a break from all that.

Today, I broke out my 1960-something avocado green Silvertone record player, pulled out a mono copy of SRO, and really got to experience this music in the proper context of the times. I got that record player at a yard sale in 1995 for a dollar, and haven't used it in years. It actually sounds better than I remember it... maybe it's because I finally managed to locate a new needle for it. What an awesome lo-fi listening experience!!

 

[Rudy]

I've had one of these for several years, and I'm finally going to be able to restore it later this year. The RCA "Victrola 45" model 45EY-3.

http://www.radiomuseum.org


That is something I'll probably buy 25-cent 45s at the used record store to play, as the few good ones I own I would not play on something like this. (As a rule, I don't buy 45s if I can help it.) I have some TJB 45s I've had for 40 years, some of which I remember buying out of a bin for 10 cents each. They might have been juke box pulls. I also have a couple hundred promo 45s from when my cousin worked at a recording studio, along with some older ones I'd had while growing up.

Restoration includes replacing all capacitors and any weak tubes in the amp, disassembling the changer to clean all the gummed up oil and grease, and relubricating with light machine oil, and replacing the rubber in the changer mechanism (idler wheel). The housing (made of Bakelite™) gets polished, and the changer base may get repainted as well when it is apart. There is also a replacement cartridge that takes the place of the original crystal cartridge from the 1950s. Aside from the cartridge, the only change I'll make from stock is to use a Polk Audio 3-1/2" full range speaker (from a pair of automotive speakers).

 

[Harry]

Both of those are blasts from my past. I had a Motorola flip-down, portable, stereo record player as my first stereo and it looked a lot like that Silvertone in terms of controls, etc. I'm actually surprised my parents DIDN'T buy be a Silvertone - everything else they ever bought came from Sears!

As a child, I had one of those RCA units. Mine was open - no lid - and apparently generated a lot of heat. I recall my parents putting on a stack of records for me to go to sleep by, and the thing was still running in the morning with the vinyl on the platter now warped!

Harry

 

[Mike Blakesley]

The first record player I had much experience with was my parents' cabinet model. I was one of those rare kids who was careful with "stuff" so I was allowed to use it. (I forget the brand name of the phono, but I think it's still in my mom's basement -- I'll have to take a look.) It sounded really good, so that's where my TJB listening began, with Going Places. I had previously heard Whipped Cream on a family friend's 4-track boat stereo, if you can believe that.

 

[Rudy]

As a child, I had one of those RCA units. Mine was open - no lid - and apparently generated a lot of heat.

45EY-2 perhaps? It is one of the most popular models they made IIRC:

Interestingly, there was also a 45J2:

No speaker? No...this was made to connect to an RCA radio set that had an auxiliary input.

All three of these use the RP-190 changer.

Both of those are blasts from my past. I had a Motorola flip-down, portable, stereo record player as my first stereo and it looked a lot like that Silvertone in terms of controls, etc. I'm actually surprised my parents DIDN'T buy be a Silvertone - everything else they ever bought came from Sears!

That Silvertone changer looks vaguely familiar--I'm sure someone I knew had something similar.

We'd had quite a few in the house. My main one was an Admiral upright console hi-fi. I've never been able to find a photo of it. I remember we changed the turntable out--the first one had worn, and we'd put in a grey Heathkit that was my grandfather's (he'd gotten a Garrard, which was the "in" turntable in the late 60s/early 70s).

I had a GE "suitcase" portable with a 7" platter, then I later bought my own first stereo, a green and white plastic GE (which I still have in a box!).

My parents had one stereo Magnavox console we'd bought new in the late 60s, the first stereo player in the house, so I was not allowed to play with the stereo LPs (including a handful of A&Ms ). in the late 70s, we'd redecorated the living room and needed to downsize the console, so we got a newer, smaller Magnavox. I wish we had gotten the optional cassette deck for it, but never did.

Also in the very early 70s, my mom's aunt and cousin had upgraded their hi-fi to a stereo with a Garrard changer, Sony receiver and Small Advent speakers. I got their hi-fi, which was a VM (Voice of Music), a very popular brand made here in Michigan.

It had three oval speakers (operating in mono)--the grille wraps around the left side, and one 5x7 speakers points out in that direction. The left middle had a 6x9, and a second 5x7 was firing on an angle on the right side. Decent bass for a rather small enclosure! You can see the changer, here, but you could operate it with the lid closed. Look at the bottom right side of the front of the cabinet--it looks like three knobs below the VM logo. That middle control is actually a translucent plastic rod. It worked as a power indicator light, plus you could push it to start or cycle the changer! The controls were volume and tone (treble...from muffled to not-quite-as-muffled ).

The changer itself was also very popular in other brands of hi-fi equipment, as VM made these for quite a few different companies.

In the changer compartment on the left side is a panel with a small section of matching grille cloth on it--this was removable to access the tubes (two of which were 6V6 power amp tubes, one 12AX7 preamplifier tube, plus one 5V3 rectifier tube). That panel also had a phono jack which you could use to plug in an outside source like a radio. We also had the metal legs that attached the bottom of this, as you could convert it from a tabletop to a standalone hi-fi. And on the bottom was an auxiliary speaker connector, so you could power yet another speaker with it.

Interesting about the tubes though: if you find one of the VM record players with original RCA tubes, you could probably sell the tubes for a lot more than the player is worth! Seems these RCA tubes are popular among the guitar amplifier crowd, the 6V6 tubes especially being sought after.

The pic below is the model I had, same color and grille cloth:

I wish I had kept it now, but I have so much stuff now, it's a bear when I have to move. And in fact, I have several components I'm trying to sell or trade on Craigslist so my next move is lighter...

 

[Captaindave]

I came to appreciate the Tijuana Brass on the kind of Magnavox Entertainment system mentioned above. I thought it sounded just fine. It was a combination black and white TV/AM/FM radio/record player. If I remember correctly, it was purchased back in late 1963 or maybe early 1964.

I didn't know anything about any other possibilities in high fidelity equipment until I heard a system based on some McIntosh and JBL components. That had an excellent sound, but I was still pretty much satisfied with the Magnavox in our home.

There are times I think about finding another one of those old systems like the Magnavox if I could find one that didn't need restoration, but I'm pretty sure my wife would not share my interest...

 

[Rudy]

We had the two Magnavox consoles in the house. The one in the basement got a couple of scratches on the sliding lid from when we remodeled the basement, but the upstairs console had a perfect cabinet. The one thing wrong was the cheap changer used in the newer console ended up breaking, but I sold it for $15. The older one went for $100. I actually had someone from Florida wanting to buy the older one, as it was a style he was looking for as part of his collection. Turns out it was too much work to crate it up properly and ship it, so it sold locally. Can't believe there was all the interest in both consoles though.

 

[Shane]

I'm getting ready to buy my first house, and my mother wants to get rid of her 2 ton Magnavox console about as badly as I want it! It will look awesome in my living room!

(Disclaimer, I am newly single and am setting about designing a bachelor pad the way I want to design it.)

I even found an original 1966 advertisement online for the exact model she has:

 

[Nathan Strum]

I still have my folks' Perpetuum Ebner 2018 turntable, ca. 1969(?). Grew up listening to TJB albums on it. It mostly works. Except for all of the automatic functions.

 

[Harry]

When I first began discovering the wonders of stereo back in the mid '60s, I was over at a buddy's house, and his parents had just gotten a big Admiral television console with a built-in stereo turntable. Naturally it had that big, boomy sound that those wooden consoles were famous for, and it came with a demonstration record album that told you all about "Admiral's Phantom Third Channel!"

Naturally someone's already placed this in YouTube:



We got a kick out of how sound was miraculously comping from where the TV screen CRT resided, dead-center. It was like magic - and I was sold on the idea of stereo. At home, I made sure to arrange my speakers on my little Motorola portable record player to get that same sound image of coming from the center, and it was gratifying to find that Herb Alpert's trumpet nearly always was found in the center of the stereo.

There were of course a few tracks where he wasn't centered, like the early "Lonely Bull" track where his extra track for the stereo version was on the left channel while everything else was right. And the song "Whipped Cream" has a sort of backwards approach to stereo with Herb's trumpets on both the right and left, with everything else mixed to center.

Even to this day, whenever I set up stereo speakers, I still recall that silly "Phantom Third Channel" recording.

Harry

 

[Rudy]

I still have my folks' Perpetuum Ebner 2018 turntable, ca. 1969(?). Grew up listening to TJB albums on it. It mostly works. Except for all of the automatic functions.

Here is a pic of a model 2040 (playing side two of Pat Metheny Group's First Circle album ):

My grandfather had a Garrard turntable, although I can't locate the model number. My uncle owned a Garrard Zero-100, which was a higher end yet finicky (and a bit controversial at the time) turntable that automatically corrected the tracking angle error as the record played. Note the extra mechanism attached to the headshell from the pivot:

The Garrard 401 and especially the 301 turntables were (and still are) highly regarded when restored to original condition. They are sometimes matched up with expensive tonearms.

 

[Captaindave]

Back in the late 1970s/early 1980s, I had both Garrard and Bang and Olfusen turntables when I had components. I also had a pretty powerful Yamaha receiver and JVC cassette deck, and a pair of Bose 901 speakers. Then, I added some kind of time delay system for the rear of the room and used Bose 301s for that. Also had some of those headphones that plugged into something like a preamp. I was into components at that time.

All that stuff is gone now and I don't miss it at all, but I still would like to hear the old Magnavox again.

 

[Rudy]

B&O turntables are quite collectible in good condition, but getting parts is like paying a king's ransom. I know someone who is trying to find a new stylus for one of his, and it costs way more than it should. Cool Scandinavian designs though! The top pic is one of their Beogram linear tracking turntables; the other is a traditional pivoted design. (Photos from beophile.com .)

BTW, Jeff at Tone Audio just did a three-part review on the current Bose 901s. Quite surprisingly, Jeff raved about them. They don't have the ultimate in resolution, but he says they have been a lot of fun to listen to!

 

[Captaindave]

One of the big differences in the models pictured above was the angle at which the tonearm tracked the record. The model in the lower picture was the one I had, on which the stylus tracked in the usual manner typical of most turntables as the arm swung in an arc across the record.

The top model was a higher model. The arm moved in a straight path along the back of the unit and did not swing in an arc across the record.

 

[Rudy]

Yep, linear tracking--it's a lot more accurate than pivoted arms (the stylus is always at 90 degrees to the grooves), but only if done correctly. That 2nd arm to the left was sort of a "look-ahead" so the servo electronics knew how fast to advance the arm.

Revox had a cool linear tracker in the early 80s.

There are still a couple of high-end linear tracking arms that ride on an air bearing, but they cost a small fortune. Technics had some in the early 80s also but they are junk.

 

[KentTeffeteller]

For 45 RPM duty, I still use my Technics SP 15 and 25 turntables and their transcription tonearms. I use Stanton 680 and 681 family cartridges with A conical styli for better records, and AL heavy duty for condition challenged copies. After all, the broadcast standards the SP line are and what many a fine A&M hit got played on the air with.

 

[Bobberman]

I remember my parents vintage1977 soundesign console stereo with a bsr record changer i remember how sweet the tjb and a&m albums and singles sounded at the time years later i purchased my first stereo soundesign system like my parents only smaller and cheaper ahhhh memories