Remember Those Living Room Consoles?

I agree with Dan...these solid wood stereophonic consoles just aren't made anymore, and to lose them to butchers who cannibalize them for their amps, iron, and tubes is a real sacrilege IMO. My bro's and I never really gave it much thought until he won that eBay auction on the little Magnavox 6BQ5 power amp.

Last time I wandered into our local Goodwill, I stumbled across a fine walnut finished '60s Magnavox console, only to discover that the tube amp was literally ripped out from behind it's beautiful cabinet, along with its tuner (the record changer was still intact, though). It really is sad to find what few consoles are left in this kind of condition.

 

Everytime I hear anything from the Carpenters' The Singles: 1969-73 album, I think of my aunt's humongous but pristine General Electric console in her "nice" living room at the front of her house ("no feet on the couches or the coffee table!!") where she played that album so much. Bass was kind of thumpy but really powerful from the side-firing 12" woofers and made listening to rock & new wave really fun.

btw: I've honestly considered sending a message to some A/V furniture manufacturers asking them about selling a modern-day "console" for flat-screen monitors (& for music too of course). Last month while at Best Buy I saw this beautiful gloss-black Pioneer plasma sitting on a pretty cherry stand/console/whatever. Supposedly people don't want to see electronic gear and speaker boxes everywhere, but what if you couldn't see it? Just about anything has got to be better than the TV's built-in speakers.

 

My parents had a mono Magnavox console with just a record changer, probably dating from the mid- to late 1950s. I remember the cabinet was a light-colored wood with light-colored fabric covering the speaker and a little red light at the bottom indicating that the unit was on. When you opened the lid, from left-to-right were the record changer, a divider with the power/volume, treble, and bass controls in a column, and then a bin for storing records. The thing put out some serious bass, although were I to hear it now it would probably sound boomy. That record changer had a very solid feel. The base and platter were dark gold in color; the platter had a black rubber mat; and the tonearm and piece that held the records in place on the spindle were black. A black knob at the front left of the changer selected the speed (16-33-45-78); a black knob at the front right set the changer cycle. I have no recollection what the model designation was. My parents replaced it in 1977 (at my urging) with a Zenith Allegro stereo unit (AM/FM, record changer, cassette recorder/player). I have tried to find photos of and literature for that Magnavox on the web, but without success.

Paul

 

I still have one of these at my mom's. Telefunken Dominante, 1967, stereo record player and mono tuner. Still working, but the wood is full of termites. The sound is very coloured.

 

Growing up, we had a nice tube stereo console from Motgomery Wards that was bought in 1961. It's what I heard all the great Stax and Motown 45s on. It worked until 1972, and we finally got rid of it two years later. It had a ceramic cartridge and tons of mechanical noise and hum, and my family liked to jack up the bass, but we loved it! My older sister was always trying to sdjust the bias on the tubes to get an even warmer sound.

For a very brief period in late 1973, we had a console from Sears that included an 8-track deck, although in 1973 I had no real clue as to what that was. (!) We returned it because the lid was very slightly warped. We never replaced it.

Our neighbors had a huge console with a reel-to-reel deck in it. I thought it was unusual because my father had an upright Sony deck back in the 60s.

 

Liberace?

 

My mom still has her 1963 Sears Silvertone console stereo. It is a Mediterranean style console with lattice-weave speaker grilles all finished in solid walnut. Between the two speakers are a pair of doors that conceal the tuner and record changer. It has an AM/FM/FM stereo tuner, and the turntable has a floating cartridge. Naturally it has dual tube amplifiers (one behind the tuner, the other in the right speaker enclosure). I grew up listening to that console, and it sounded very good for its time. It still sounds pretty good, but the speakers are showing their age. I remember too, that my mom had a fit over how much it cost: $500.00 in 1963, which is probably about $2500 or more in today's money (you could buy a new Chevrolet in 1963 for around $2,000). I do intend to re-tube it at some point, as it is the only record player anyone in the family has that can play '78s, and mom still has about 60 (including an album of 6 nearly pristine Frank Sinatra records). Nice memories. Thanks for making this thread.

 

The Japanese had some incredibly ornate consoles in the 1960s and 1970s. I don't think they ever got imported here, but I saw lots of them on ships built in Japan. They had much larger speakers than the US versions, sounded wonderful, and they were installed against a wall, because of ship motions at sea. Hard to play a turntable at sea, but they would play them in port, and they would sound magnificent. Some also had open reel decks, which were more useful at sea, and they all had radios that would tune AM, the Japanese FM band (not too useful in the US, but some stations were tunable), and shortwave. Listening to the sounds of shortwave on a hi-fi can take some getting used to.

 

These are so cool.
My Aunt still has hers, and it nearly takes up a whole side of the room.
Wood, with red "velvet" covering the speakers on each side.
My Mom had one with the turntable underneath a liftable top. A turntable along with a radio dial. I wish I would have known better and had her take care of it for me. I suppose my Dad threw it out years ago...along with her huge collection of 45s. *sigh*

 

That's the one! I remembered reading it and thinking to myself that the components might have trouble venting heat, and also wondering if one would be in danger of shaking the electronics loose in components that were meant to stand upright a different way.

Just got the thought that it might not look so good to try that nowadays with a console built around a television, as I don't know how well an HDTV unit would "seat" in the cabinet...what price progress?

 

Back in summer/fall of 1959 my folks purchased a Grundig console (maybe 4 feet wide) in Europe, which had a mono record player, AM/FM/SW/Maritime/Aircraft Band tuner with 3 or 4 speakers horizontally across the bottom. I inherited it from Mom when she passed away, but the radio won't tune anything in any more. Beautiful "blond" cabinetry, and it cost $189 at a military Post Exchange back then. Probably about a $350 set in 1959, so must have been a pretty high-buck model at the time.

Anybody know where some European tubes or their US equivalents can be purchased?

 

All the usual suspects have most non-common (read: audio or guitar amp) European or EIA equivalent tubes, usually NOS and cheap:

Antique Electronic Supply

Triode Electronics

-Aaron

 

Thanks, Aaron. I'll check out both sources. That was an awesome machine when it was new!

 

when I was about 7 or 8 years old:


saturday nights when my parents went out dancing, I remember blasting "dark side of the moon" and "selling england by the pound" at full volume thru our behemoth console TV/stereo/record player....the whole house & windows shook

and mixing ice cream/coke/whatever else I could find in the fridge into crazy kidlike concoctions

 

Stereo Consoles

I have one of the stereo consoles, Admiral solid state 80 with turntable and AM/FM stereo. Works great! Volumn crackles a little when you turn it up. Might be just a loose wire. Looking to sell it if anyone is interested. In kind of an oak color cabinet, a few minor scratches. Just email if you are interested.

 

Were they the first boombox?

Think of the acoustic coupling between the speakers and the tonearm!!

(I used to have one, and I bypassed the electronics and used the speakers. Did the trick for this college boy)

 

Then around 1974 Electrohome set up a factory in Stellarton may have been that old Clairtone factory.

 

Well, I just had to chime in here, as I have a real thing for European console stereos from the late 50's and early 60's. I bought this console (a Loewe-Opta) about 5 or 6 years ago in Vancouver and then had to lug it back to Calgary where I live (600 miles!). From there, I had to clean about 40 years worth of nicotine off the cabinet, since the old couple that bought it back in the day smoked like chimneys. Anyhow, it cleaned up really nicely, and does sound great - I seem to recall it has about 8 speakers along the bottom. The other neat thing about it is that the radio swings out from the front, rather than having to lift up the top. The other nice thing is the way they matched the wood grain on the top and front...

 

Great looking console.

 

Looks very nice, I'd like to find an old console too

 

We had a Zenith when I was really young. After Dad got a promotion we got a Pilot which he said was "the best". Who knew?

Both were tube. Of course, when I was young a 6 transistor "pocket radio" was the thing to have too.

The first LP I bought, "Ferry Cross the Mercy," was Mono. That wouldn't do on a Pilot stereo. So I had to earn some cash to buy "Beatles 65" in stereo to listen to it on the big console stereo.

When Sgt. Peppers came out, my friends and I sat right in front of the Pilot console and listened to the LP 3 or 4 times straight through, reading every word and wondering what those oh so British words really meant.

I still have that "Beatles 65" LP today.

 

Very nice, I like the color of the wood. Does any part of the top lift up...Can you put "stuff" on the top without losing function?

 

Every so often, I visit a tv/stereo repair shop and he had a Grundig in there. Shop owner told me the guy who owns it has about 20 of them. The glossy finish to the wood was incredible. And the tuner/controls are neat. I would love to have one!

 

Mickey had his in our living room for some time. I don't remember the make...and that's how we listened til the late 60s, early 70s. Who had stereo components back then?

 

Stereo systems encased within pieces of furnature were quite popular in the '60s and '70s. We never had one ourselves, but a lot of our family friends and relatives did.

To be honest, I've never liked them very much: I always thought it was pointless and counter-intuitive for someone to disguise a stereo system as if it wasn't there, and visions of crappy components with 8-track players, dinky closely-spaced speakers, and "precision crafted in Great Britain by BSR" vinyl-grinders in humongous cases with warped particleboard back panels are still fresher in my memory than I'd like them to be.