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I was 4 years old, listening to a record on headphones connected to this rig. Leaned too far back, and caught the 1/4 inch input jack on the headphones right in my fucking eyeball.
Missing an 8-track player. Not sure if Sony ever made one, but I imagine they might have.
That one appears to have a CD player, which most certainly wasn't included in the one I grew up with.
My parents' cabinet (console) didn't even have the cassette tape unit, just turntable and reel-to-reel.
I am that old, we just were never that rich.
My dad did splurge on a CD player that came in a self-contained one-off unit that also had a dual deck tape player pretty early on in 1989. He bought it off a encyclopaedia seller and it came with a huge collection of classical music CDs and a bunch of books. Pretty decent purchase, in the end, given the financing. None of my friends had an easy way to copy CDs to tape for years after that, so even that was ahead of the curve.
I dumped the CDs from that collection that haven't died to disc rot last year, too.
Holy shit, that exact Sony EQ is right beside me! It's an SEH-310, made in Japan, 1981. I'm old enough to remember racks like that, was far too poor for stack of Sony gear. My shit has always been a random mess of cobbled together gear.
This was common. I didn't know anyone who actually went out and bought everything all the same brand right out of the gate.
We were decidedly middle class. My dad pounded tin for a living. He just liked music I guess.
I remember dorking around the EQ sliders, though having to reach a bit to get at them. This thing (black eye excluded) is probably why I'm hugely into music to this day. Some core memory forming shit or something
The coolest thing ever was when those old receivers had a motorized volume knob that would move when you used the remote. I'm a simple man, but that always made me happy.
You just unlocked an ancient memory in me
Honestly, aging capacitors and cracked motor drive belts aside, a complete hi-fi is a thing of beauty. And it's supposed to be, hence the showy front and glass case to keep the dust off.
I'm no audiophile, but with refurbished power supplies, updated noise reduction* & EQ, and modern speaker technology, that setup would be an old media blasting beast.
* - for the uninitiated, or if you're old enough to smell OP's photo, the way tape-hiss intrudes on music is just hot garbage by today's standards. So, having a way to mitigate it would be strongly advised.
My dad had a set-up like this because my mom and him used to be DJs. I was forbidden to touch it but, in the 90s, when we had cassette players and CD players as part of a separate cabinet, those were hard to mess up.
So, as a compromise, my dad showed me how to power up all of the amps and receivers to get the cassette or CD player working. At the time we had a massive subwoofer next to our CRT TV and, when the subwoofer magnet messed with the TV coloring, my dad blamed it on our Sega Genesis instead of the sub.
Good times.
Not to mention that the advent of touchscreens on literally everything makes accessibility a lot harder for a lot of people.
Yes, I am that old. Yes, I miss physical buttons to play and rewind, along with a decent wheel to adjust volume without fixed steps.
I also miss when placing the speakers separate of each other was the normal and expected behavior. The idea of Stereo.
But above all, I miss dynamic range. And that's not because of the gear, but of the recordings.
Separate Tuner, Cassette Deck, Amplifier, CD player, Equalizer, and Turntable?
I am old enough and if that system were in good shape I would set it up in my living room right now. Would probably leave the cassette deck and CD player in storage though.
Pfft. I had one of these.
I grew up with vacuum tube TV, (we got one channel, maybe a second if the weather was right), and reel to reel tape players.
I still remember the TV not working and my Father pulling it away from the wall and removing the back to look for the burnt out tube. Then since this generally happened on a Friday evening, (no Saturday cartoons), we had to wait until Monday to drive into town and go to the drug store to test and search for a replacement tube.
When I got to be a teen, I remember listening to the local am rock radio station and waiting for hours for the latest hit to come on so we could record it on a portable cassette recorder. Both my sisters spent many evenings doing that. We were sailing the high seas of piracy before it even existed.
Ahhh, those were the days. I'm so glad we don't need to do that shit anymore.
You call that old? It's got one of those fancy, new-fangled CD players! Not old at all.
We never really had one; didn’t have that kind of money I’d guess nor do I think my parents really would have had the interest even if it was in the budget
Look at Mr. fancy-pants having an EQ in his rack.
I'm slightly younger so all of that would have been black plastic instead of brushed steel.
I just finished donating my Marantz with "digital tubes" to an archival library
Yeah, we both might be a similar age.
Does anyone know what that stack would have cost new? I bet it would sound amazing though.
At least $1000 to get properly started back in the day, although usually family that could afford these would not have purchased it all at once. Modules were added later in a couple of cases that I knew.
In 2025 money, that's like $5000-ish to fill the cabinet.
And I took this personally.
Yes, yes, I am.
Buttons are an reminder of the luxury of space we used to have.
The absolute smoothness of the giant volume knob and heft to it as you turned it.
You can still buy brand new HIFI gear with buttons and VU meters, for example: https://nadelectronics.com/product/c-3050-stereophonic-amplifier/
The above unit has a ton more additional functionality such as room correction, streaming support, digital connectivity, a DAC, multi room support, and far better audio quality.
Sure, not all of it is cheap, however neither was a full stack like the OPs picture.
I'd have to ask how old this system is. Ours was black, made by Kenwood, and had a wooden cabinet. Tinted glass door. Tape player was a dual front loader. That looks like a CD cartridge loader. We had that too. Our cartridges held six discs and they swiveled out.
Wasn't mine, it was my mother's, and she still has it. It still works. The doors on the tape deck have snapped off (we were rough with them) but you can still snap tapes into it and they play.
I remember when my mother got it. She'd just gotten divorced, had a bit of money, walked into a Circuit City (this woulda been like 1989?) and asked for the best stereo they had. And I think either she or I asked about Sony, because I remember the guy saying Sony was for people who want people to think they have an expensive stereo. Kenwood was for people who wanted a good stereo. I don't know how true it was. Maybe he just wanted to make a commission. I think she paid a couple grand for it. I don't recall. I didn't pay for it. I bought my Super NES from that same Circuit City though, and I paid for that out of my allowance. $150. I didn't bring the tax though. My mother did cover the tax. But anyway.
But while it wasn't mine, I was the one who put it together, because back then you didn't have Geek Squad (which is Best Buy, but you get the idea). I think they might have had "professional home installation" but that has never been cheap or affordable. Plus, my mother's oldest son (me) was a computer guy. She figured, if he could put together a computer (that is, connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to a computer and turn it on — I wouldn't start building them for another 15 years — I could assemble a stereo. Which just meant stacking them on the shelves, and connecting them via the wires in the back. Two wires — one red, one white — connected to each component and plugged into the... switcher? Whatever it was called. Pretty easy. Did it again when we moved. And then again when it came from the garage, which was like a family room, to the living room when we turned the garage into a granny unit for family who would move in. And then, when I did that, I was able to connect the TV to it, which greatly improved our sound.
Oh yeah, OP doesn't show the speakers. Did that Sony kit include them? I'm sure it must have. My mother's Kenwood came with speakers as tall as the cabinets! Two of them. The speakers only lasted maybe 20, 30 years though? My brother, then grown, found her better, more modern speakers to hook up to it.
