Midcentury mesmerized

This little Realistic vacuum-tube FM tuner, circa 1956 and manufactured for Radio Shack by Harman-Kardon, kicks serious audio booty.

Fifty-six years old. Monophonic -- in '56, there was no FM multiplex stereo yet. And it sounds like a little bit of heaven. It's just stunning when you get a strong signal into it, particularly on classical music.

The less overprocessed the station's audio is, the better . . . but 56 years ago, that really wasn't a problem, was it? The FM "loudness wars" still were decades away.

I plugged this little gem -- the first to bear the "Realistic" brand -- into my Soundcraft mixer in the Revolution 21 studio, and I'm running it through a Crown D-75A amplifier for now. It really is amazing; the sound just jumps from my Electro-Voice studio monitor speakers.

I'M KIND OF afraid to hook this mono mini (it really is very small) up to the stereo multiplexer -- it might never leave the studio if I do, as opposed to what I have planned for it.

Think I'm exaggerating? Here's a 44-minute MP3 of the thing tuned into the local classical and classic-rock stations. Dear God.

I ALSO got the matching Realistic five-tube, 10-watt amplifier (manufactured by Grommes), which is a real beauty. See?

I've yet to hook that up -- eventually, the Realistic tuner will be paired with it to make a complete 1950s hi-fi system.

If anyone would like to donate a vintage 1956 hi-fi floor speaker. . . .

For now, I'm "making do" with an early-1970s University Sound floor speaker. (Note ironic quote marks. Nothing about a vintage University floor speaker constitutes "making do.")

You'll note the tuner and amp say "Radio Shack Boston." In 1956, there was one Radio Shack, and it was in Boston.

This concludes Your Daily Geek for Tuesday, July 10, 2012. Live long and prosper.

The sound of the '60s

This is an average hi-fi tuner from 1960.

Behold the Voice of Music Model 1416, a nine-tube AM-FM-FM multiplex tuner in all its midcentury-modern glory. This one is hooked up to a V-M multiplex adapter to allow it to receive stereo broadcasts.

And here is what an average hi-fidelity tuner sounded like in 1960. Starting in the fall of 1961, this is what one sounded like when tuned into an FM-stereo broadcast.

Really? You haven't figured out that I'm a major-league gearhead by now? Consider yourself informed. Yes, it is an addiction.

But a fun one.

As I was saying. . . .

What you'll hear here is some of a Saturday-night jazz program on KIOS, one of Omaha's public-radio stations. Enjoy!

The sound and the beauty

Photo: www.audioasylum.com

Leave it to me to be a hi-fi geek staring into the abyss of whole generations now come of age hearing the world as a low-bitrate MP3 through cheap earbuds connected to an iPod.

Yes, my generation had crappy transistor AM radios we listened to with cheap earphones. But we also had stereo systems with killer tuners, wall-shaking amplifiers and loudspeakers the size of a Smart car.

And before I yell at you to get off my lawn -- punk -- I'll just say that back then, FM sounded great, AM sounded really good, and most consumer audio allowed you to hear that. Not only that, some of our "stereos" or "hi-fis" were stunningly beautiful, even. Above is the REL "Precedent" FM tuner, circa 1954 . . . some seven years before my time, I hasten to add.

Some vintage-audio aficionados say the Precedent -- in all its monophonic glory -- was the best FM tuner ever made. I don't have the expertise (or experience of it ) to be able to say. But I do think it might have been the prettiest.

My trusty old Marantz 2226 receiver, though, surely has a place on the prettiest stereo gear list somewhere. I've had it since I was 16, and that's it at left . . . aglow in the dark.

Then again, I am an anachronism. I value the spectacle, and the experience, of hearing good music nearly as much as the music itself. IPods and MP3s have their place today, of course. But for me, they are a utilitarian concession -- not the crème de la crème of a generation rendered tin-eared by a utilitarian age.

For this relic of an age long past, alas, there is nothing left but to offer a futile protest against the times in which I must live -- non serviam. Now find a jazz station somewhere on FM and crank that tube amp up to 11 for me, will you?

Music in the night

The Voice of Music, circa 1960.

When in doubt, replace the weak 12AX7 tube in the add-on multiplex adapter, which is much less painful of a procedure than Saturday night's project -- changing all the dial lamps in a 35-year-old Marantz receiver. The music in stereo is a little sweeter now, just as the old Marantz shines like new for the first time in years.

This geek minute has been brought to you by black wingtips and white athletic socks. Additional funding for this program has been provided by pocket protectors . . . pocket protectors, because pens leak.

Heavy metal

Don't bother me.

It sounds like my childhood in here.

It sounds like heavy metal.

Now, by heavy metal, I do not mean Megadeth. I'm talking a sheet-metal chassis filled with vacuum tubes and wires that connect them to resistors and capacitors and all manner of normal-size things that won't fit on a computer chip.


I'm talking an honest-to-God tube-type, hi-fi tuner . . . circa 1960, when FM was mono, not stereo, but you could buy this little box, see? And when stereo did come to town, this "multiplexer" (below) would set you up.


HI. I'm the Mighty Favog, and I'm a geekaholic. Hi, Favog!

Right now, I'm listening to the new/old Voice of Music tuner. No one will mistake it for state of the art. But the sound it produces could be mistaken for a certain Magnavox console, circa 1962. The one that lived in my childhood home.

It sounds quirky, but really warm. It also gets warm, thanks to the vacuum tubes, which fill the studio with a nostalgic aroma.

The old VM also is unforgiving. It hates rock stations that turn the processing up to 11. It really hates them. I can almost hear it saying, "Back in my day. . . ."


BACK IN its day, FM was for "good music." And like a good tuner of its time, the VM loves classical and jazz, enveloping the orchestration in an affectionate hug, then playfully tousling the music's long hair.

Which is a pun you might "get" if you're as old as I . . . and my Voice of Music tuner.

House of hi-fi

You may be a geek if you get really excited over winning this in an eBay auction.

I am a geek, because the 1960 Voice of Music tuner (with an add-on FM multiplex adapter for that newfangled "stereo" thing) is mine. Mine! Mine! Mine! Because a radio isn't a real radio without vacuum tubes and Conelrad markers at 640 and 1240 on the AM dial.

There's only one purchase that could make me happier.


This.

But an opening bid of a little short of $1,000 is a lot more than a final purchase price of a little over $70. Champagne taste, etc., and so forth.

Happy are the ears that hear the Crown

There's a new monitor amp in town at 3 Chords & the Truth, and there's only one thing I really can say after getting it hooked up and going strong.

Long live the king!

My only regret is that you can't hear the Big Show as an uncompressed WAV file played on a Crown D-75A and a pair of vintage Electro-Voice Sentry 100A studio-monitor speakers. It sounds soooooo sweet.

There is no comparison to any consumer audio equipment that you're likely to find or be able to afford. I'd forgotten how spoiled you get having stuff like this in radio-station air studios and production rooms -- the old E-V studio speakers absolutely come alive when paired with the Crown amp. It's kind of breathtaking, actually.

Oh . . . I even built a little equipment rack for the Crown out of oak 1x4s, which I oiled up right nice to bring out the natural finish. Wait till I add the vintage '70s Pioneer tuner ($15 on eBay) that's on its way to Papa as I write.

Hi-fi fries self in line of duty, once played the hits

This just in to the newsroom:

OMAHA, Neb. (INS) -- Harmon/Kardon 330C, the vintage stereo receiver deep into a second career as a monitor amp in a home production studio in this Midwestern metropolis, died in a cloud of ozone Saturday, with its right channel humming and the room stinking of toasted electronic components.

Harmon/Kardon 330C was 36 years old.

"Well, you had to figure this would happen sooner or later, using an old, second-hand receiver hours on end every day," said 3 Chords & the Truth host Mighty Favog. "I can't get mad about it; I think I got more than my $35 worth out of it over the past few years."

The dead receiver will be interred later in the week somewhere in a basement closet and will be exhumed for spare parts at a later date.

In a related development Saturday, 3 Chords & the Truth management announced that Crown 75-A -- a broadcast-industry standard monitor amplifier -- has been purchased as Harmon/Kardon's successor. Favog said it was time to call on pro equipment to do a real studio amp's job.

"Crown is the Cadillac of monitor amps," the aging program host slurred. "Those things were (unintelligible) built to go 24/7 in radio air studios, so it ought to (unintelligible) work here with no . . . problem."

The new 75-A, which Crown is discontinuing after decades of pro-audio popularity, was obtained from Broadcast Supply Worldwide for $399 -- a $622 discount from the list price as the merchant closes out its stock. Favog, somewhat distracted by the absence of Early Times from his coffee, added that he wanted to pay tribute to Harmon/Kardon for kicking the bucket at such an opportune moment.

Crown 75-A is slated to begin its studio duties sometime during the next two weeks.

Back when cassettes ate their peas

"Who wants a tape-cartridge recorder?"

Not enough people, obviously, since I'll bet you've never seen one of these things. This RCA tape-cartridge recorder is a 1959 model, and it's kind of like a cassette deck, only bigger. With better fidelity, too, because it's basically a reel-to-reel machine with the reels in a great big cassette . . . er, cartridge.

It never stood a chance when little cassettes came along in the mid-1960s.

The world is filled with Philistines! Any idiot knows that Beta the RCA tape-cartridge system is better, but noooooooo!


HEY! You can't argue with "four and one-half years of research."

Well, you can, but that just makes you an audiophobe. Philistine.

Four walls . . . and a 78

Stand back, people. I got my geek on.

And I'm gonna show you something. More precisely, I'm going to let you hear something.

First, however, the setup. In three . . . two . . . one. . . .

IT'S IRONIC that, after introducing the 45 almost a decade earlier, RCA Victor had pretty much perfected the 78 rpm record by 1957. As I told you in an earlier post that sadly lacked an audio-visual component apart from a snapshot of an old Elvis record, RCA's "'New Orthophonic' High Fidelity" was all that.

Let's once again say that like my Elvis 78s, this old Jim Reeves record -- after 54 years and God knows how many plays -- sounds better than most new vinyl today, what there is of new vinyl today, and better than a lot of CDs being cranked out today. Imagine when it was brand new. . . .

Anyway, I've been telling people how it has been all but lost to history how good 78s could sound, and now I've decided to show you. Enjoy.

AND NOW the technical notes. . . .

|geek|

The video was shot with a Nikon CoolPix L20 digital camera. Ambient audio was recorded with a Studio Projects C1 condenser microphone, while the audio from the 78 was off the Webcor record changer's phono output. Both the phono out and the mic output were fed into a Soundcraft stereo mixer, then into a professional sound card.

The audio was recorded to a WAV file with Adobe Audition software, then synced to the Nikon video. The audio track was not cleaned up in any way, just normalized to 98 percent modulation.

|/geek|

The dawn of hi-fi . . . at 78 rpm

In many cases, high fidelity spun into 1950s homes, and into popular culture, at 78 rpm.

And so did the king of rock 'n' roll.

I've been putting some more of the records of my youth onto the computer hard drive -- bringing my analog musical formation into the digital present, I guess. This is another of those, Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up" (above), on a glorious 10-inch shellac platter.

I couldn't tell you how many times I played this record -- this very 78 that's four years older than I am -- as a kid. The rough estimate: lots.

IN 1957, "All Shook Up" was magic. As it was when I first got a hold of it around 1964 or 1965. As it is today.

That goes as well for another of my little stash of Elvis on 78 . . . "Too Much." That's it at left, sitting on a 1955 Webcor record changer here at Anachronism "R" Us.

And you know what? After half a century and change, these records still sound pretty much like new. And I have many compact discs that sound a lot worse. A lot worse, because these old 78s sound great.

RCA Victor's "'New Orthophonic' High Fidelity" was, indeed, all that. All that and a pair of blue suede shoes.

I'm itchin' like a bear on a fuzzy tree to play this stuff on the Big Show, I ga-ron-tee.

Eine kleine Nachtmusik

Frankie Carle entertains at the piano, through the decades and on vintage vinyl, late on a summer's night.

You want to know why I love estate sales? Because I can pick up original, first-generation LPs -- this one is from 1948 -- for about a buck a piece.

And why a 63-year-old sweet-jazz album for my listening pleasure on a Wednesday evening?

Because it's not Lil' Wayne. Or Lady Gaga. Or Ke$ha. Or Kenny G. We at 3 Chords & the Truth have a reputation to uphold.

Next question?

'50s sound: It's a thing of renown

What happens when you play a 1958 pressing of a 1956 LP on a 1955 Webcor record changer? Something like this.

What you see and hear here is the real deal. And it's a lot more fun than an iPod. Or iTunes. Or even an iYiYi.

(Yes, there is such a product.)

The first part of the audio is from the crappy microphone on my Nikon digital camera. Then I fade into the WAV file being recorded of the Les Brown LP on the studio computer. The audio file has been synched to the video.

This is what it really sounds like, folks. I did absolutely nothing to the audio other than adjust the volume.

Compact discs, my foot.

Now sit back, relax and enjoy your visit to the world of 1950s high fidelity. Up next, Les Brown and His Band of Renown with "Meanwhile, Back on the Bus" off of the Capitol Records album "Les Brown's in Town."

And note, please, that hipsters today are paying $28 for 180-gram LPs that fall far short sonically of what was the $2.98 norm in the 1950s and '60s.

The House of Hi-Fi . . . today

Sigh. Today, what was the House of Hi-Fi is now Omaha's house of anti hi-fi.

Obviously, I was born too late . . . and not in Omaha.

Still, Google Maps is an amazing tool for taking what was and seeing what now is. Now if I can just manage to step inside that 1964 edition of Billboard like a hot-tub time machine, I could do some serious shopping.

And were "ifs" and "buts" lots of fruits and nuts . . . oh, what a feast we'd have!

Good night, House of Hi-Fi, wherever you are.

3 Chords & the Truth: The hits in hi-fi

All I need is a nice vacuum-tube hi-fi, some nifty record albums and a record changer, and I'm in business, Hoss.

Well, and a time machine. That would be nice.

What do you think is on sale at the House of Hi-Fi this week? Let me jump in my Big Show time machine and find out.

While I'm there -- sometime around 1962 -- I'll see what kind of radio gig I can pick up to earn enough to keep me flush in LPs and hi-fi equipment. Food, too. Food is important.

AND YOU know what? While I'm back in the early '60s, buying neato electronic toys and spinning the hits somewhere or another, I'm going to see how 3 Chords & the Truth translates to "back in the day."

This should be fun -- or is that "koo koo, Pally"?

Ring-a-ding-ding, and all that jazz. Because I'm hep to all that, cats.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Come listen with me

This not only looks right, but it sounds right, too -- vintage Sinatra on a vintage hi-fi record changer.

I've probably entered the realm of irrational antique audiophile fandom, but there's something about these old LPs that just sounds a lot better on an old turntable. Technically, it probably has something to do with a slightly vintage cartridge that carries a bit more "pop" (as opposed to pop and crackle) than usual, as well as running with a bit more tracking pressure than a new, expensive cartridge could handle.

Or maybe it's just '50s magic.

But let me leave you with this: I really, really wish the microphone in the upper right-hand corner of the photo was Frank Sinatra's beloved "Telly," a Telefunken (Neumann) U-47.

Hang on to your hats

Now that I have this new addition to the 3 Chords & the Truth studios, God only knows what's going to start showing up on the Big Show.

"This" is a 1955 Webcor component record changer. Back then, this would have been part of your expensive and cutting-edge "hi-fi system."

I just call it my "midlife crisis" purchase.

But now that I can play 78 RPM records in the studio just like anything else (in glorious monophonic sound, might I add) . . . watch out.

Is what I'm saying.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Simply '70s: Dig the groovy sounds, man

This early-1970s TV commercial shows some Magnavox iPods docked for your home listening enjoyment.

Very stylish, no?


And this is a 1970 Magnavox Micromatic iPod undocked and ready to take with you wherever you go.

Young people back in my day were much stronger than today's youth, now more accustomed to toting around today's wimpy little iPod models. Any questions?

Veni, vidi, geeky

Let us travel back to the early 1960s, when your Mighty Favog was but a sprite . . . and Americans still made stuff.

Sigh.

A TEAC-able moment

I've been away from the blog -- mostly -- for a while doing this delicate dance between my inner MacGyver and my inner MacGruber.

In other words, I was out accomplishing s***. Despite myself.

The saga started Sunday, when Mrs. Favog and I bought an old TEAC reel-to-reel tape deck for $30 at an estate sale here in Omaha. Did it work? I didn't know, but I suspected I might be setting out on a journey to the Land of Fix-It -- a kind of road trip of the mind and soul that I'll detail in a bit.

But here's what's important right now about that trip: It feels good -- and I needed that.

It's easy to sit behind the keys here and write about stuff. Some of that output, I hope, is insightful and decently written. Most of it, I fear, falls in the category of "Well, DUH!"


OURS IS an age where I have just committed a branding and self-marketing faux pas. Humility is out, and so is introspection that might lead to honesty.

What I ought to have told you is how dead-on right I've been about stuff, that this is important writing, and that you can't live without reading my take on things. This would be because I am smart, hip, happenin' and. . . .

That's right -- cool.

That's how, apparently, one "markets" oneself. I suck at that, probably because I think it's bull. A lie. Immodest . . . particularly in a world where a little modesty might be refreshing.

Yeah, I could have been waxing eloquently about the bloody obvious fact that Shirley Sherrod got hosed, that the Obama Administration let itself get stampeded by the Big Lie, and that Andrew Breitbart is a far-right ideologue and twit whose actions over the last year or so just may prove him to be objectively evil.

Or at least indifferent to the truth.

All of that, of course, would be bloody obvious, except to certain brain-dead constituencies who -- unfortunately -- have taken advantage of universal suffrage.

But I didn't wax eloquently about that, or any other stuff that might be rattling around the echo chamber this week. Instead, I've been doing something useful -- fixing up that beautiful old TEAC reel-to-reel tape deck, one about 40 years old.

Why?

WELL, for one thing, getting that thing running again -- put back into good use once more -- was something tangible, a sign of contradiction in this increasingly intangible world. I figured I could look at something restored to its former audiophile glory and feel like I'd accomplished something.

That's objective fact. It was broken. Now it ain't. I accomplished something.

Being another schmuck opining on a blog? Feh. Maybe that's an accomplishment, but you just might find it to be a first-class detriment to . . . whatever.

Making a tape deck live again -- making it once again able to pluck lost bits of music . . . and history . . . indeed, ourselves out of magnetized oxide particles stuck to a Mylar backing -- now that's something tangible, and your validation neither adds nor subtracts from the act.

I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

Or hear, as the case may be.

LIKE I SAID, my journey with the old TEAC started in west Omaha last Sunday. The ticket cost 30 bucks.

I don't know why -- I mean, apart from my general geekiness -- I love old reel-to-reel tape decks.

But I do love me some reel-to-reel tape deck, and I have even before I did my first air shift in a radio station, where once upon a time, you could play with top-end (or not) reel-to-reel tape decks to no end.

For its time -- the late 1960s and early '70s -- the TEAC A-4010S was quality stuff. A top performer. Built like a tank.

Today, geeks like me call it a "classic" -- classic in performance, in design and in quality of construction.

When I bought this one -- as I said -- I didn't know whether it worked. Turns out it didn't.

THE ELECTRONICS in the amplifier were fine, as I more or less discovered when I got it home and powered it up, but the tape transport was in bad shape. The pinch roller mechanism, part of what makes the tape move along at the correct speed, was as stiff as a board -- it moved only through brute force.

This was not by design. The whole thing needed cleaning and oiling . . . and a screw in back needed loosening (a little).

And the capstan drive belt? It had turned into tar balls. Really.

Ever tried cleaning tar off of all manner of metal moving parts? Not fun.

Slowly but surely, I got the old TEAC -- it of long-past better days in an Omaha home where its owner used it to listen to Latter-Day Saints conference sessions and some sort of music programming -- cleaned up, lubed up and loosened up.

I scavenged a drive belt and a better pinch roller from another old TEAC tape deck I wasn't using anymore. When I found the belt was too loose to stay where the tape-recorder gods intended, I cut it to fit and super-glued it back together.

And when the torque on the drive motors was too much in one spot and too little in another -- trust me, this can get real ugly, real fast -- I ended up doing some MacGyvering of the taps on a couple of resistors.


IN BRIEF, thank God for old service manuals found on the Internet, an unused tape deck to scavenge from, WD-40, Super Glue and electrical tape. Not necessarily in that order.

And thank God for the tangible things in a self-promoting, subjective and intangible world. Thank God for old tape decks, craftsmanship that stands the test of time, working with your hands and the visible fruits of one's labor.

Thank God for these things, because sometimes they're what keep us sane. And sometimes, they point the way toward what's really important in life.