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RE: You Might Be An Audiophile If :

Posted by JURB on June 9, 2017 at 11:42:34:
"I simply cannot imagine what my interest in audio and music would have been without having those formative experiences and mentors. :) "

Actually I was blessed by a couple of good sounding floor models.

One was an RCA TV/stereo combo that had some quite smooth low end response, in fact decent overall. It had an RC-1227C radio chassis that was OTL and solid state, gut had a driver transformer running pairs of PNP germaniums in TO-3 cases.

This thing had oval woofers, 15X9s. Topped off with 4X6 mids and 3�" tweeters. The Fm was so strong with the igh level of AFC you could not get to a place on the dial with no station, I shit you not, it just kinda flopped to the next station even if it was 2 MHz away. It also had an Astatic 353D self weighted cartridge (about 2g) that was the best sounding ceramic cartridge I ever heard. It was SESAPP but cap coupled to the speakers. Supply voltage was about 35 volts or so, so I guess it was around 20 WPC or so.

I remember reveling in the low bass of Herb Alpert - Magic Trumpet. Used to have a Buddy Holly collection, and one album which was a part of a set titled "CKLW" after the famous radio station in Detroit, Michigan. We also used to listen to their station, but it was AM and thus not in stereo. They did some out with CKLW FM for a time but that didn't last, plus we didn't really get all that good reception, AM actually sounded better. Actually, the AM wasn't all that bad, you know it can do damnear 10 KHz.

Then there was The Fisher. Toobes, I think 6V6s. Records only, no radio section. Mono, had three 10" or maybe 8" in series, one in the back. Terrific bass. This thing was so old it had "AES" and RIAA and all that on the selector for phono EQ.

Not to be outdone of course was the Columbia that preceeded all of this. Actual srereo, and I think it had a variablee reluctance cartridge These need a preamp of course like any magnetic, but this thing was hot chassis. No power transformer, which means no real feedback loop either. The instructions say to never touch the arm, to let the changer puit on your records, as it will do it more efficiently or whatever of course.

And then you would also not discover that the cartridge was a shock hazard. It also had one speaker removable, you could slide it on out for stereo realism when needed. But the speaker wires were adequately insulated from the mains. I do get the impression though that if the UL had a look at that unit today they would suffer cardiac arrest.

So beware of those elcheapo units like the flipdowns that some old people might like. Many of them are hot chassis which makes the cart hot. Sometimes you see like a nylon insulator, and there might be a sticker like "THIS PART IS PART OF THE SAFETY OF..." or some such, but not always.

And you might be an audiophile if you have one of those in your silverware drawer