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In Reply to: RE: Best Buy finally gone Hi End... posted by ABliss on December 01, 2014 at 19:46:02
now closed but when it was open it simply all Magnolia. Not a Best Buy artifact in sight. The staff was knowledgeable, the equipment offered was very good, the rooms had good sound and seating (I sold them the listening chairs, so I know it was good). It was a very large store and I did buy a few things from them.
It may have been an experiment on how a only Magnolia store would work in a high tech town....
They had McIntosh gear, set up properly. Home trials? Yep, you bet.
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...in the late 1970s and early 1980s was home to The Audible Difference, one of the Bay Area's best audio stores.
and where I bought the Apogee Scintilla's, my VTL, various Meridian gear, and my Well Tempered TT. Wayne was at my place time after time setting up and fine tuning. Whenever he left he had a sheet of paper listing albums I had played while we fiddled. Fine compliment when he told me I had the best taste in music that he ever came across.
It was a great store, I have no idea if it is even there now.
what became the "New Audible Difference" is now known as "Future Sound" in Burlingame,CA. Wayne has been running a wine shop in San Francisco DigWineSF or digwinesf.com.
a Cab fanatic if I recall correctly...
...last time I was there was in about 1998 after Russ sold it and the store moved to El Camino Real.
One of the rooms had been converted to home theater so it wasn't the same.
Garcia was a cohort of Valin's when they wrote for TAS. When the they both left and went to Fi magazine, HP felt betrayed and made Garcia "persona non grata" at the magazine, I was told.
Later when Martin bought TAS and brought him back, Harry was not very happy about it.
dial in a TT and cart like no one else. But they were on El Camino at least as far back as when Apogee came forth and the Well Tempered came out. I do not know where they may have been before then....late 1980's ...
Was that in, or next to a ranch style shopping center? I visited that store once while on a service call in the early 90's. In a smallish listening room on the left they displayed large Eggelstonworks driven by a small VTL 80. That room really clicked for me and left me rethinking my system.
On the way out someone was setting up a system with chrome faceplates. He was complaining loudly about the difficulty in removing the fingerprints from the chrome. I went out to the van and gave him a couple packs of lint free wipes. He was amazed and pleasantly thankful. Nice guy, nice store.
The Bay Area had a rich community of brick and mortar audio stores.
...the original store was off of University when I first went there in about 1980.
he was partners in a Hi Fi shop that was on University Circa 1980 or so. He left that and went to work for KEF. The store was on the east end of the University ave biz district....
...didn't know him but that was where Audible Difference was - east end of University north on a side street.
That's interesting. The only Magnolia stores I've been to were in corner enclaves within a Best Buy store but not completely enclosed or partitioned off. Foot traffic and ambient noise from the main section of the store was fully audible in the 'high-end' audio section. Not a good setup but this wasn't Palo Alto or Atherton. ;-)
You didn't miss much. I may not have spent much time there, but it was like an every man's HiFi shoppe; basically, nothing to get our blood pressure up. However, I miss the old times. Only Apple and Restoration Hardware occupy that strip for big item retail, but Palo Alto Bicycle is still going strong. Lots of bicycle shops, still, fortunately, where you can go to a store where they really know their product.[Not even a book store, as Borders closed quite a while ago under the competition from Amazon's online sales. So, I have little reason to go there anymore.]
Edits: 12/02/14
gone too. When I was there last May I noticed it was empty. I like to eat at the corner cafe across from it...
They closed a bunch of stores, but NOT the Palo Alto location. I like that store. Their furniture is way too expensive, but they have other stuff that is very well made and worth the price. Their sales people are of high-caliber as well.
I was thinking of that high end bathroom store on the corner of Hamilton & Emerson...the one that sold Turkish towels for 90 bucks! Sorry, been gone from the area too long and off of University not long enough...
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