Remember Those Living Room Consoles?

My parents still have two-a mono Zenith from right after WWII which is not used and a "stereo" RCA they use semi-frequently. The RCA I rebuilt by disconnecting and removing the inside speakers, refurbing the amp/PS chassis, and after the changer died (I call them "record plows") I told them it could not be fixed and rigged a external input and bought them a Technics SL1200 to put on top. I installed road handles and Speakon connectors on the sides and gave them a largish pair of sealed box yard sale dead speakers I rebuilt with Madisound guts. Dad is a woodworker and he refinished them and I stuffed the drivers in.

They mostly listen to cheesy music and it sounds just as good on this as it does on anything else.

 

I'd buy for the furniture first and put in the guts I wanted.

You can keep the original RF head by building a little supply for it if you change or remove the power amp.

You can't have speakers in the cab with any analog inputs. That's why they have no bass-they'd go nuts. Sell the drivers on ebay or use them for a practice amp or signal tracer or whatever.

Most of the 50s changers are record terrorists. I've heard of people gutting them and building a turntable out of the baseplate. You'd think someone would offer a kit to do this.

People pull the amps out of consoles and eBay them to the gullible all the time. In most cases, not all, the amps are not-even-guitar-grade. My parents' RCA has a stereo amp that's actually semi-credible and uses a circuit out of the RC tube manual of the era, roughly ten watts a channel. I replaced all the lytics, the bias resistors, and replaced the tube rectifier with solid state and some series resistance. I also put in a little muffin fan. You have to go on a case by case basis based on your wants and needs.

My next project on my parents' unit is to add a CD player. I need to add another aux position on the selector and some jacks.

 

What do you mean exactly?

I've heard consoles with 12" and 15" woofers that, while the bass didn't extend that far down, what was there could shake nearby walls.

 

Yes, but it wasn't accurate. The speaker and the cartridge/record interface form a feedback loop. Serious bass response in a console would have set up a sustaining oscillation-classic feedback howling, until it blew up or the owner turned it off. There HAS to be a highpass filter somewhere in the system so it does not.

The whole room was shaking because the whole console was shaking up and down and while not breaking into a self sustaining howl it was enhancing what was there.

You wouldn't put your turntable on top of one of your speakers, would you? But that's exactly what consoles did.

The other problem is that because most consoles are not all that wide, you can't get any stereo separation out of them. Plus which, they had speakers of minimal build cost and in an era long before T/S parameters or anything like that.

Audiophiles used to HATE, HATE, HATE consoles because for the price of many of them-many were very expensive-you could buy a real system. Even a cheap console cost more than an AR table and speakers and a ST70 and PAS in the early sixties, the classic college dorm room stereo, and it was not uncommon at all for the larger ones to cost the price of a McIntosh/Altec/Empire setup. Since taht war is over and we won, we can regard the console with bemusement instead of a fire ax today.

 

My hi-fi console is currently my second system upstairs.

It's great for 78s.

 

That's when we were groovin' to the music and not listening to the fidelity!

 

Funny you mention this today...

Just yesterday while in the process of moving I sat down and browsed through a 1976 copy of PLAYBOY. Yes, I did look at the pictures, but I was honestly checking it out to see the vintage ads for audio gear.

Anyway, I think it was a Pioneer ad that stated those "living room consoles were easy on the eyes but torture on the ears." Something like that, anyway. The ad went on to say the living room console was $900.00 worth of fruit wood and $200.00 worth of stereo components." They were comparing the price of individual Pioneer components to that of the all-in-one console versus sound quality. I can scan and post the ad if anyone is actually interested?

BTW, I went to about 10 estate sales last year in older parts of the town in which I live, and I'll be darned if I didn't see one of those consoles in every single house. They must have been REALLY popular in the early 70's?

 

Tony, I found a mono Admiral radio/phonograph while cleaning out the farm house. I asked a similar question on the Tube forum over at audio asylum and all agreed it wasn't worth the effort to restore.

While we haven't thrown it out we have no plans to get it working. And we are storing a couple of tubes in my son's guitar amp .


rick

 

That is wonderful!!! I love that early 60s-era blond wood too. That's an RCA Victor unit, right?

 

Hey, I used to build them! Back in the 70's I worked for Zenith, and the consoles weren't too terrible. They used BSR turntables with magnetic cartridges (most consoles are ceramic), 10" ported woofers and a nice little horn tweeter, 15 watts a side and 40-17,000 Hz. At least Zenith did have a clue about fidelity.

I used to go to work and daydream about the wall-of-bass I could build with a SKID of those woofers!

 

semidetached...dig them crazy lights!!! :>)

 

Nope. It's a Motorola "Stereophonic Masterpiece."

We purchased it mainly because it was a groovy piece of furniture in good shape. The components were all in excellent working order, but we thought we'd mainly use it for junky thrift store LPs, 45s, and 78s that we didn't want to play on the main system.

But after switching some tubes, replacing the needle, and giving it all a good cleaning, it actually sounds very good. It's especially nice for early mono LPs, and we use it for our main 78 system.

 

I believe my family had what you described. It provided me hours of musical education from about '70 to '85. It's retired now, but still sitting in my parents living room. I though it had lovely sound, but it has been years.

 

I grew up with a 1960 Motgomery Wards stereo console that used all- vacuum tubes. It worked until 1973.

 

I wouldn't want my LP's to be played on those antique Tutn Tables, but most Consoles become alive, when the Radio is on. They have far more stations and way more + fatter sound than 90 % of all Tuners or Receivers i came across. Guess it's the Tubes. Only problem the FM wave stops at 103, so it is a bit short. still gets you around 25 channels vs the 4 or 5 you get with that modern rubbish "automatic" frequency knobs in cars etc. Who invented that crap anyway ...is it too hard to fine tune with a knob ? Modern Life is rubbish...LOL

 

The European consoles are far better than the American ones. I have a Telefunken console that has a great tuner, AM, FM and shortwave. It's a little weird hearing shortwave stations in high-fidelity, with all kinds of background beeps and whistles, but the Euro style of design in the 1950s and 1960s is also a favorite of mine.

 

If anyone cares: yesterday I was at a church resale shop and they had a Magnavox console, "Astrosound" I believe it was called, priced at $75. It was one of the shorter models, maybe around only 4ft wide. Light walnut(?) in very good condition with reddish brown grill cloth. Going by the styling it looked like it might be a 70s era model. Looked to be a 10" woofer per side but couldn't tell about the tweeters. Included a record changer though it looked like someone had split half a can of coke in there. Tuner on the opposite side looked very clean though. They had it plugged in and turned on - I wanted to change the station & turn it up more but was afraid it might stop working and *I* would be paying for it. Maybe someone who truly likes this kind of gear and wants to use it could grab it before one of those ebay "flippers" got their hooks into it.

 

A Zenith was one of the consoles I used to listen to a lot at a friend's house - sounded nice! I disntinctly remember the horn tweeters it used, mounted vertically and pointing out the corners of the console at a 45 degree angle.

 

My dad worked for RCA, so we had a number of consoles. And of course, since he worked at RCA's tube factory in New Jersey, we had tube consoles. We still have the last one he bought in the late 70s, before they closed the tube plant and we moved to Ohio. That one is solid state though... I inherited the tube console as my first stereo. I must have destroyed a lot of records with that one.

 

I will be moving the Telefunken console from my parents' house in NYC as soon as I have found the room for it in my house. Tube-based and German construction from the late 50's.

 

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My father-in-law has a large wood console, from the 70s. It had a Garrard Zero 100 (!) integrated in a slide-out cabinet. When I took a look last year, it still had the original Shure cartridge mounted, and the suspension was gone.

I replaced it with an AT95 and it sounds great.

 

The turntable tonearms found in most of these consoles are horrible. There are no anti-skating or tracking force adjustments. My parents' Telefunken console from the late 50's is no exception.

 

My dad still has an old Saba console that he bought in the early 60's sitting in his basement. It hasn't worked since the early 80's and is now used as a shelf to set things on. It has a big tilt-out tuner with AM/FM and shortwave and also had a turntable and reel to reel on either side of the top but those were tossed many years ago. I remember the reel to reel having some kind of a neat green "meter" that looked like it must have been some kind of tube. When he bought it it was one of the very first stereo's in Brooklyn, Iowa where he lived at the time.