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Antique Hi-Fi Archive

Jensen Explains Your High Fidelity Music System! (1953)

Download an eleven-page article from IST, September 1953, on the subject of “Your High Fidelity Music system!”

DOWNLOAD: IST-1953-09-Jensen-Your_High_Fidelity_Music_System

Glorious, glorious mono.   And so much assembly/work to be done by the user!  I was at a yard sale this past weekend… do I even need to mention this point… lured there by the promise of “Audio equipment.”  This equipment turned out to be a bunch of radio shack garbage circa 1980 and a pair of overpriced BOSE speakers (btw have you seen the T+E bit where they mock BOSE?  Amazing…).  As I was leaving I noticed a pair of circa 1955 full-range DIY’d corner speakers in the 30-yard container outside.  Trash, apparently.  I was invited to pull them out and turns out that they had GE full-range 1201A 12″ broadcast drivers in them.

Above, from the GE “Audio Data Book” circa 1955

The cabinets are ever so slightly different in construction, which led to me to believe that this enterprising man built one, and then the 2nd, once the Stereo Age was upon him.  I salute you, sir…  Anyhow, brought ’em home and the speakers sound good, INSANELY loud with minimal wattage.   Put on some Thomas F Browne and it was fantastic.  Strange thing is: there must have been an installer or shop in this area that was really pushing these 1201As back in the day as these are the 3rd and 4th that I have turned up in this county in just the past two years.

Above, maybe poor apparel choice for soldering-times.  What is that outfit even?  Was that swim-wear?  Enjoy the article.

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1975: Record Yourself

I think I will, thanks…

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Turn your turntable into a tape machine! (1952)

From the pages of AUDIO ENGINEERING, ’52: the Presto TL-10.

Next in this series: Turn your tape machine into a CD Player!   Followed by… oh shit then it’s the end of physical recorded music media.

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Speak-o-phone: Turn your PA amp into a record-cutter! (1940)

Records on Acetate or Aluminum discs!  Click here for more info on this early recording service/hardware manufacturer.  

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Popular Science: Basic Radio Techniques c. 1946

Nothing too notable in this book; just love the cover graphic.

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1943: A Dictionary of Radio Terms

From “A Dictionary of Radio Terms,” published by the Allied Radio Corp., 1943.

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1940: Radioman Romance

Was electronics repair ever a ‘sexy’ profession?  “RADIO NEWS” March 1940 seems to make this case.  Wishful thinking, I imagine…

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Magnecord INC archival factory-film now available online

Thanks to H. Layer: A never-before-available Magnecord, INC factory-film circ 1955 (???) is now available on YouTube.  These are the people that built the machines that powered broadcast tape-recording on the 1950s.

Click here to see the video on YouTube

Loads more Magnecord INC history and related information on PS dot com… just click here!

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Beyond Four Tracks

Sansui six-track cassette format c. 1989

Otari Compact 8-track 1/2″ format c. 1989.   Also, SECK mixer.

Toa 8-track cassette format

…and you better bet TASCAM made one too.

Above: some short-lived “more-than-four” home-recording formats that were available between the 4-track cassette and ADAT eras.   It’s kind hard to imagine how significant an issue ‘track count’ (IE., the number of available tracks of a particular multi-track recording machine) was just a short while ago.  It’s not unusual at all these days for me to make a production for an artist that has 80 or even 100 tracks.  And I am not talking about some crazy orchestral or prog-rock epic; I am talking about just a well-produced indie pop song.  Modern music means layering.  Lots of it.  When I, and many other folks started doing this, we dreamed of someday having more than 8 tracks to work with.  Well, as it turns out, ‘more’ didn’t mean 16, 24, or even 48: it meant infinite.  “Be careful what you wish for…”

What will be the next technological barrier to fall in the world of audio production?

I wouldn’t mind seeing all those goddamn wires go away, for one…

Any other ideas?

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Ladies and Gentlemen of 1989 (pop music division)

Cyborg chick with some sort of midi-synchonizer

I play the keyboards (for Bon Jovi)

(pointy guitars are) impossible to (avoid) / (resist)

“Well I like your style too, man.  Got a whole cowboy thing goin…”