Ok so I need to admit something...(Enjoying Roy Orbison and Paul Anka on an RCA Console System)*

It did have a lid that flipped up (open). I have some pics, I'll post them later. On the road now.

 

^^^
You better!

 

God bless your grandma. Enjoy her, talk to her as much as you can. Some of the things she tells you, you'll tell your own grandchildren someday.

 

While in my playpen, I was situated between the speakers of a 1959 Zenith television/stereo console my grandparents paid $700 for -then-.
I believe they used a Fisher tube amp, nice mahogany wood speakers in cabinets on each side of the tv, so you got the stereo picture, sorta
The sound was just astounding, I will never forget how magnificent is was with the records of the time. So warm and powerful. See my avatar

 

Great! That is when you are in the zone and the music goes beyond being a technical thing that can be measured. It has nothing to do with what equipment or pressing you have. That is what music can be and what I think most of us are trying to reach. Enjoy!

 

It occurs to me that if you found an old console that had an 8 track player in it, you could wire RCA jacks into where the cables for the tape deck are and hook a CD player up to it.... hmmmmmmmm

 

now that would be cool! Beatles and Christmas music would be spinnin'

 

Couldn't agree more.I have five old consoles,all tube,unfortunately they all need work.The person who made the OP may not realize that consoles from the 50s,60s,and better ones from the early 70s have had a remarkable resurgence of interest in the last few years.Some can go for decent money if they are restored.People have been gutting them for years for the amps,but more and more people are realizing they are something very special.There has been Facebook and Yahoo groups devoted to old consoles for a number of years.Please try to make room for this old RCA,and try to get it restored.

 

it would be a dream having my childhood RCA consul, but that is not in the cards...but, I do have the memories!

 

You bet it can be done, at least with a Magnavox Astro-Sonic. The RCA auxiliary inputs are on the amplifier itself.. there's no 'outside' access, but if you take the back off you can set up the 'auxiliary' input cable to hang out of the back of the cabinet.
I switch off between a CD player, an 8 track, and an mp3 player (with an adapter). And it sounds pretty good!

 

I will be making room for it and taking it back at some point. It'll be a 700 mile journey back, so it needs to be planned. ;-)

 

This RCA had inputs on top, in the rear if I remember right. I don't think I'll be hooking up a cd player to it though.

 

My grandparents had that exact console. It got tossed when Grandpa died in 1999, evidently having not been functional for some time by then. I thought about trying to talk my parents into letting me have it, whether it worked or not, but I knew them well enough to know they'd refuse. (My mother pretty much hates everything about my collecting hobbies, and she hated her inlaws as well, so this in her basement wouldn't have gone over well!)

 

I'm in for it now. I know this is putting the bug up me and next summer, sure enough, my wife will be looking at me with that "NOW what the hell is he up to" look while I come up the 150' of driveway with an old console in the back of my garage sale cruising pickup truck.
It just never ends for me......

 

Roy Orbison sounds amazing on anything. Because he's f@#king Roy Orbison.

 

When I was a kid, those old mono tube hifis had an RCA that came from the turntable into a rather crude input on the side of the amp, right on the same box as the tubes and other electronics.
We use to use that is a guitar amp. We'd make up a 1/4 - RCA cable.
I got knocked on my ass more than once fiddling around in those old tube hifis and TV s that way..... It is a bit amazing I made it to old age......

 

Yeah but there is just something about the bass those old tube hifis were capable of.
Those things could wake the neighbors and knock black and white pictures of dead family members off the walls.
And they could put out more bass with 35 watts than most modern surrounds can with 500 watts. Subwoofers have nothing on those things. Those speakers in them were VERy efficient.

 

Cool !
My first guitar amp was an old, early '60s era monaural 30W Heathkit tube amp, kluged to a Fisher 10" speaker cab that my brother in law put together for me. I played my Kalamazoo through it for a year or so.
That thing had a really great distortion to it, I've never found an amp that could re-create it.
I cut out and glued on it a "Zig Zag Man " from a pack of rolling papers to make it look cool.

 

Kalamazoo, eh? Did it look like a bad copy of a Fender duo sonic and have a pressed fiberboard body with one pickup? If so, was it red?
My first official guitar amp was a 1959 Fender Champ. Cheap back then. Now it is worth anywhere from 750 to over a grand depending on the condition.
But still when I was at somebodys house and we needed a guitar amp, I knew how to rig the hifi up. Probably didn't sit well with some people that I was that forward about messing around in back of their stuff in that "other place" that was entirely foreign territory for them.

 

Yup, Duo-sonic copy w/ pressed fiberboard body, plastic covered 2-pickup model but the original color was "Swimming Pool Blue." My bud who gave it to me (he had no use for it after he bought a '64 Strat) refinished it with a walnut stain.
Just like this:

 

Stained it? How? I mean, how could you sand and stain glorified cardboard?
I think the one I had was a 1 pickup model, but exactly the same otherwise except red. Sounded terrible!

 

Ha! well, it sounded good to me when I was 12!
We stripped it stained it and varnished it, and it sounded ...well...better than a Teisco.(!)

 

and it shouldn't..enjoy it now. having fun makes it all worth it in the long run...