Pacific Stereo - share your memories

I'm not sure if you're aware, but ESS Labs is still doing business and still using the Heil AMT in their speaker designs. I have been fascinated with them as they are still made in the USA and very tube friendly as well 98dB, not to mention the retro version looks really cool and not stupidly priced IMO.

 

Pasadsena store! My friends brother worked there-cool!

 

My AMT-1 Towers were this speaker with better bass, the woofer in a ¼ wave transmission line cabinet. It was where I learned a speaker box could make a difference in a driver's sound.

@billnunan, back in the 1970s I'd look at your AMT-4s and the AMT-3, wanting to buy them but not having the money. I'm glad you have yours and that the company is still around. The Heil Air Motion Transformer is a fascinating design, creating sound by squeezing air rather than pushing it.

Back on topic: My best friend growing up and I bought a Marantz 2270 receiver at the Pacific Stereo store in Pasadena, CA, in probably 1974. I sold him some ESS speakers that were a conventional 12" three way with a dome tweeter. I owned them before I got my AMT-1 Towers. I believe Roly still has both.

 

Got my first real job in '78 selling for Pacific Stereo in Dallas, Tx. Still have my name tag, too. Love it.

 

Most people don't know that CBS owned Fender back in those days, too.

 

Worked for Pacific in the Dallas area in that time frame. Yeah, Pacific ran ads every week. We'd have brief meetings on Saturday mornings to discuss the advertised gear which typically had very low margins and talked about how to step to more profitable alternatives - lol. We were paid based on profit dollars, so, of course there was a lot of switching going on.

 

Heil's Air Motion Transformer technology is pretty trendy right now and can be found in many high-end speakers such as Legacy Audio and Martin Logan among others.

 

Was my favorite stereo store as they had better gear than Radio Shack... Oak Park IL on North Ave near the huge Sears store (now closed). Introduced to SAE and ended up buying an SAE Two R3C receiver and putting a pair of large Advents on layaway. Probably 5 or 6 hundred bucks which was a fortune for me in 1982!

 

I purchased my first stereo setup at Pacific Stereo in March of 1984 when I was 19 years old. I think this store was in DesPlains (Illinois) or maybe Morton Grove. I used some money that my grandmother had left me to buy an Onkyo TX-45 receiver, a cheap Technics turntable (with a cheap AT cartridge), and a pair of Bose 901s. At $1,500, I thought the 901s cost a fortune and I’d never need another pair of speakers as long as I lived (lol).

Well a friend who was helping me move the 901’s into my dorm room at Loyola after I purchased them, dropped one of the boxes. The units must not have been packed very well because the drop but a good dent into the wood of one of the 901 speaker cabinets. I re-boxed the speaker and took it back to Pacific Stereo and claimed the damage was found when I opened the box. They replaced the speaker on the spot—no questions asked. Great people over there at PS.

 

Heard my first quad setup there. Also used to buy all my blank cassette tapes from them. Was a fun place to hang out and check out new equipment. One day they were having a open house/contest in the parking lot and my wife won a digital watch from them for having a dollars worth of dimes in her pocket. Another time for a new store opening at another location they had Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen do a free concert in the parking lot. That was pretty awesome.

 

I also remember buying my blank cassette tapes at Pacific Stereo. I would buy them a carton at a time, when they were on sale, mostly buying the Maxell brand.

 

I found a flyer that reads "On Broadway / Pacific Records announces a celebration of music / specializing in rock -- jazz -- rhythm & blues -- classical upon request."

"See Steve," it says, "at Pacific Stereo, 1322 Broadway, across the street of the library."

Sale prices for LPs are "4.98 list : 2.96 / 5.98 list: 3.96." Tapes & cassettes are "6.98 list: 4.96."

I'm wondering: Does anyone have any idea where this store might have been? The flyer doesn't say...

 

Wish I had been around. Would be so fun to walk in a timecapsule / vintage store these days!

 

One of many stories online about the demise of Pacific Stereo

END OF GLORY DAYS FOR PACIFIC STEREO

Living some 40+ miles northwest of Chicago, there were many other options available to me, including some boutique stores.
Musicraft was one of my favorites until a local store Team Electronics offered to price match and made some great discounts on bundled purchases. I blew through a ton of systems in the 60s and 70s.............

 

Remember the doo-wop “Welcome to Pacific Ste-re-ooo” jingle?

PS - Dee-Oh-Doubleyou-DOW was either on El Cajon Blvd or University (“Elcaversity”) near SDSU - 70th St? - bought a TV and a VCR there. But the rest of my stereo came from Tech Hi Fi in Worcester.

 

Wasn't QRK sold out to CCA, Inc. Then purchased by Broadcast Electronics, who also owned Rek-O-Kut in the end. Tip and fun facts. The base casting for a Russco and a QRK is the same item. QRK was earliest. And Russell Friend worked at QRK for a few years, Russell Friend came up with an improved QRK, and simpler, more modern design, and improvements to what QRK was building. Russell Friend found out that there was no design patents on the QRK turntable, and set up shop as Russco and built the Cue-Master. QRK then later incorporated the Russco improvements, and introduced the QRK 12-C. All less than 50 miles from each other until the BE buyout.

 

Loved my 901s for many years

 

I looked around and much of the histories of QRK and Russco have disappeared. There used to be a Russco turntable website which contained lot's of information about both manufacturers. The two manufacturers were actually less than 10 miles apart, with QRK being in the old logging area of Fresno known as Pinedale and Russco being out by the F.Y.I. air terminal. The aluminum casting for both brands was done at a local foundry, Kearney Manufacturing, which is still in business.
I'm not sure of what CCA, Inc. is, but I do know that QRK was owned by CBS in it's around it's end times. At some point, employees weren't getting paid and QRK turntables were disappearing out the back door. I found this out years ago from a friend who bought one of theses TT's that way.
Another friend told me that one of these turntable brands began in the back room of a local radio station, KYNO, on Barton Av. in Central Fresno, even closer to QRK. I would suspect that it might have been Russco as that was the brand of TT's they had there. Many of other local radio stations in Fresno also used Russco TT's. My QRK must be the 12-C, but it has no markings indicating that. It is close to being the same, if not the same, as the Russco "Cue-Master" . My QRK does not nor ever had an ID plate at the front around the shift lever. My QRK also has a tubular tone arm similar to Rek-O-Cut, but is branded QRK. Rek-O-Kut had the Rodine TT brand which are different to Russco and QRK models I've been around. QRK did not improve after the 12-C, but Russco did. They went to the "Studio-pro", which was 2-speed and had a belt-driven idler, which quieted them down for the rapidly growing FM-stereo market. Further improvements brought the Russco Mk. V. I believe that Russ told me that the motors were sourced from Nidec in Japan. Their detriment was a glass strobe disc which was part of the motor. Not replaceable, many of the motors arrived with broken strobe discs, so they were tossed in the trash. Russ kept a Mk. V and had a couple of extra motors for it. I got his last 2 new idler wheels and he said that he was going to order another batch from a manufacturer in Carson City.

 

CCA, Inc built broadcast transmitters, and was founded by Bernie Wise, who later on founded Energy-Onix broadcast equipment. Russco did have a turntable which was belt-idler drive before the Studio Pro was introduced by the way, and quite rare. The Russco DD turntable was the one which was really a problem, as it had problems with the glass strobe disc, the Mk V was the turntable he liked best. The Nidec motors, were very excellent, and the Japanese motors on late model QRK 12-C were also of the same quality, the quietest motors on Russco and QRK turntables.

 

Hey, that was my store, in the early 70s I would live in there drooling over all the gear, etc. I've been into music and audio gear since I was an ankle biter but I bought my first real HiFi in that Oak Park store and much more over the years after. In 1974 I blew a big chunk of my wedding present money on a Marantz 2270, AR-XB TT, and a pair of speakers whose name I can't remember now. At the time PS carried 2 models, they were quite individual if anyone remembers them. The smaller ones used 3 tweeters mounted on a bracket that had them aimed as to fire in a pattern that would give good dispersion thru-out the room and a 10" woofer IIRC. The larger had 5 tweeters also mounted for good dispersion and a 12" woofer IIRC. I'd love to remember their names. I've been a early adopter of multichannel music and bought a matching Marantz 2440 quadradial adapter not long after the receiver.

That marriage didn't last too long and the ex took the Marantz receiver and speakers with her when she left. But to power the new system I got a heck of a good price on a demo Phase Linear 700B I'd been coveting there for a couple years. I had purchased a pair of Klipsch La Scala's elsewhere and I liked my music loud back then. LOL
Good times they were and I have many great memories of my times at PS and those boom days of HiFi. Most everyone had some interest in HiFi, as young adults the first thing we bought when setting out on our own was a TV, the second was a HiFi. You weren't KOOL unless you had a nice stereo shrine in the living room. My how times have changed, now they sit around and compare their $2k and up SmartPhones while hollering out commands to the living room spies from Google, etc.
Here's a couple photos to turn back the clock.

Marantz 2270 & 2440 & AR-XB


Phase Linear 700B amp & 1000 Dynamic Range expander, & AR TT, & DBX sub-bass harmonic synthesizer all from the Oak Park IL store. All the rest bought elsewhere.


Brand New Klipsch La Scala's "in the raw" before I finished them, 1978
Wish we could buy high end speakers unfinished today and save a bunch of money.
Man this rig could ROCK! LOL I can hear Waylon singing "Ive Always Been Crazy" on it now.
And my 135 lb Doberman "Max" pulled security duty 24/7/365. All was kept safe and sound.

 

I bought a Teac V-5RX cassette deck from the ... somewhere in south LA (Costa Mesa? Tustin? Santa Ana? north of San Clemente, CA anyway) in ... 1983? I remember the cute girl at the counter had dark purple hair, the first hair dyed like that I had ever noticed ... normally shy me complimented her on it, she went out in the sun so I could see the color better. Dang, shoulda asked her out ...

I think I bought a new $100 cart from there (maybe a different store) for my BSR TT, they installed it and I think thought it was silly to put a nice cart on a cheap TT but I thought it sounded pretty good, improved over the $35 Shure I had on there before. Then later it had a problem with one channel so I put the Shure back on it ... oh well.

 

I was buying stuff as Pacific Stereo as well as Rogersound Labs in 1984 - 1986 or so. Loved them both, and got some very nice deals by waiting for their sales to happen. Two JVC cassette decks I think were $89.00 each. Some Koss (real wood) mini speakers were so nice I got four of them and have never settled for only two speaker listening since. I VHS Hi-Fi deck went bad a day after warranty expired on it. That was a bummer. And the make discontinued marking in the US as well.

Anyway, great deals, loved that period of my life even if I was cash strapped.

 

Bought a Phillips GA-212 there back in early Seventies...I think I had a Shure V-15 Type 2 or 3 on it. It had those cool capacitance switches on it that were feather touch. Had a penny placed on the on switch and Tangerine Dream-Phaedra cued on the lead in groove to wake up before work.Had the whole system set to turn on with one of those old school Intermatic (AC Line) timers. I remember the rest of the system was Dynakit SCA-80Q and four JBL L-26's. Also had a B&K 1460 Oscilloscope hooked up to tape outs to display a lissajous pattern.. I had to get up around four in the morning...so this was a really mellow way to start the day.