Audiophile Gear
Vintage and Budget HiFi Equipment
Audio Electronics
Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always been fascinated with stereo equipment. I love listening to music, and any electrical devices that facilitate music reproduction are super cool. The first systems I remember were my parents’ Fisher 150 receiver with matching Model 5 bookshelf speakers, and the giant Magnavox console in my grandparents’ basement where my sisters and I could play records and listen to the radio. When I got a little older in the 80s, I subscribed to Stereo Review magazine, joined a classical music record club, and started collecting my own stereo gear with money I made mowing lawns. In recent years, I’ve begun to refurbish older components on a small electronics bench I’ve setup in one of our spare bedrooms. Below is a list of some of the equipment I’ve had over the years that I’ve really enjoyed.
A few years ago, my parents sent me their old Fisher 150 stereo which they bought new in the late sixties. I spent many hours sitting in front of it listening to music when I was a kid. The 150 is a combo system that came with a small receiver and two Fisher 5 speakers designed to be paired with this receiver only. While the speakers are definitely the weak point of the system, they’re really not bad for sixties era bookshelf units. It has a pleasant A-curve sound and can even image a little bit when the speakers are fairly close together. The audio sources I used with this system back in the day were a Garrard turntable, a Sears 8-track player, and a Technics cassette deck. The first two are long gone, but I still have the cassette deck.
These days, I use this system in my electronics room to listen to the radio or my iPhone. The receiver still works well after 50 years, although I recently ordered some replacement capacitors and a new stereo beacon bulb online. A quick refurb, and it should be good for another 50 years. Watch my video below for more info on this cool vintage system.
I bought this receiver new in 1983 with money I had earned mowing lawns. There was a stereo store that I used to go with my friends to buy blank cassette tapes and drool over the expensive stereo gear, and for decades I thought it was called J&R Music World located on 95th Street in Overland Park KS near Oak Park Mall. When I finally did some research for a YouTube video I made on this receiver (see below), I discovered that it was actually called CMC Stereo located on Metcalf Avenue, which was also very close to where I grew up in Overland Park. My friend’s Dad had an older Kenwood receiver that I always thought was cool, so when the KR-820 went on sale one week for $220 — still a lot of money for me at the time — I just had to pick one up.
I couldn’t afford speakers right away, so for the first few months I just listened to the FM tuner using my Dad’s Pioneer headphones. Finally, a set of 2-way Kenwood LD-40 speakers with passive radiators went on sale for $50 each at another stereo store off of 95th Street in the Nall Hills Shopping Center. I’m pretty sure they were from one of those cheap all-in-one stereo systems that were popular back then, but they were the only decent sounding speakers I could find in my price range, so I bought them with some money I had made over the summer break. I finally had a fully working stereo! I ended up selling them in the early 90s before moving to California. You don’t see passive radiators too often anymore, but I think they basically served the same purpose as ports.
I still have this receiver, having held on to it after the tuner section stopped working intermittently sometime in the early 90s. I was finally able to get it running again a few years ago after it sat in its box for over twenty years. We used it for a while in our living room paired with some Boston Acoustics VR-6 floor standing speakers, and it actually was not bad for a solid state unit from the 80s. And while I still prefer the older analog tuning displays, the blue flourescent digits on this one are cooler looking than most. Definitely a nostalgia piece that I’m going to keep for the long haul.
