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On Saturday I visited Berkeley Stereo on San Pablo Ave (between Gilman and University) - met the owner, Warren. A really nice guy. He had some very nice vintage gear (hifi and midfi). He also had a very nice selection of new midfi turntables (with and without built in preamps) as well as Tube Amplifiers. Complete two channel systems with turntables start at around $800 - you get a free vinyl album with every turntable purchased
This post is FYI - I have absolutely no affiliation with this business
Follow Ups:
How many shops are in the Berkeley area?
I only know of:
Music Lovers Audio
The SoundWell (used, Sat 12-3)
and this new store.
One of these shops has Spectral gear.
I was at Music Lovers Audio. Nice selection of turntables.
They couldn't do much for me for DACs though. Salesman said $3000 and the DACs start sounding good. My budget was much less.
Anyway, who knows. Probably a lot of music lovers there, no pun intended.
...an AR-XA for $795 ?!
Good luck with that.
Dean.
reelsmith's axiom: Its going to be used equipment when I sell it, so it may as well be used equipment when I buy it.
someone from the current trendy big money strip a few blocks away
will stroll in, see what they want, pay for it and never think twice
about the transaction.
And those are the under 21 crowd!
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
You missed a great opportunity. Meyer Sound is on San Pablo in Berkeley.
:)
...I'll have to look for Berkeley Stereo.
I wonder if the Berkeley Vacuum Center is still in business. They should be near Berkeley Way & Shattuck Ave. I did some small customer database work for their store back in the 1990's on FileMaker Pro under Windows.
The owner was an audiophile and he was excited to try out his new isolation feet on some equipment in his audio rack. I can't remember the guy's name.
I was living in Pleasanton at that time, and "between jobs" (unemployed). The startup I worked for in San Jose went belly up. The database gig at the Berkeley Vacuum Center helped pay the bills.
...in Berkeley? In the summer of 1992, my female friends KJ and ACS (separately) accompanied me to the audio stores on the Oakland/Berkeley border. I'll never forget brands such as Audio Alchemy, Cardas, Epos, Creek, Thiel, Conrad-Johnson, and XLO. Both KJ and ACS were students at Cal.
In 95-96, ACS and I would make a few visits to those stores.
In the late-90s, KJ and I checked out San Francisco Stereo Plus' Berkeley locations.
Who knows? You and I could have crossed paths, but just didn't know it. But trust me. If you ever came across the loquacious ACS, or bombastic KJ, you would have no doubts.
Unfortunately I did miss out on KJ and ACS. I worked briefly in the Berkeley area in 1989 - 1990 ish.
The Kleiner Perkins V.C. funded startup I worked for in San Jose went belly up around that time... but I met John Doerr and Vinod Khosla. Lots of good that did me! ;-)
In 1989-1990, ACS and KJ were still in high school. ACS never went to concerts with me and my friends. KJ did. We'd sometimes go to the Omni in Oakland, somewhere near 48th & Shattuck. We'd also stop by the nearby Kasper's and Hoopers candy.In the summer of '92, ACS and KJ were......18 years old. They were thought of as girls, not adults/women.
I'll never forget ACS going to dB Audio. We saw the huge Jeff Rowland, Cardas, Thiel system. But we were relegated to a corner which had the little Creek stack and some unassuming bookshelf speakers. She thought the compact Creek stack would have been perfect for our tiny college dorm rooms, and cramped Bay Area homes.
Man, I just do not recall the names and exact locations of those Oakland/Berkeley audio stores. Remember, those were the pre-Internet days, when we relied on paper maps.
Edits: 11/09/15
Who are KJ and ACS?
:)
ACS (A Certain Someone) and KJ (Killjoy) were my female friends, whom I met when all of us were in high school. If you click on my moniker, you can find my homepage. The small army which follows my homepage knows full well who ACS and KJ are.There's a small handful of audiophiles, who, during the 90s, happened to come across ACS or KJ, at audio shows, stores, gatherings, and parties. Perhaps once a year, some audiophile will e-mail me. He will state that he has read my posts, put 2 and 2 together, and swears that he unmistakably had crossed paths with me & ACS or KJ, in San Francisco.
During winter break 1992, ACS and I returned to Berkeley's dB Audio. I wrote a couple of sentences about that in the link below. ACS did not go to S.F.'s Audio Excellence, until 95-96.
At a Stereophile show, one room was twiddling with cones and other anti-vibration devices. That room then played some awful female jazz vocals, at ungodly LOUD levels. The host still fiddled with the tweaks. To which KJ rolled her eyes, and boomed, "Doesn't Do Jack!!!"
After getting over the stun, the audiophiles scattered like roaches.
Edits: 11/10/15 11/10/15
Forget Meyer sound , its KJ and ACS is what he really missed out on .....
Go Rossi ......
"Forget Meyer sound"What?!
John taught me more about loudspeakers than anyone else, and certainly more than reading hi-fi mags for fifteen years.
:)
Edits: 11/09/15
at this time.
Would have been 35 or so years ago too, but NOT 20 years ago.
New and used is the way to go and a variety of price ranges focused
on moderation a great idea. Nice website.
Gonna be a hard road - hope they have the stamina!
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
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