Oh I forgot, those garbage can speakers
I made in 1970 used 10 inch Radio Shack coaxials.
You turn the plastic can upside down, cut the hole out
with a knife and put mounting holes in, stuff the inside
with something like a pillow, turn it back over and rock.
It was something you can do in the Army barracks
without much of anything.
greg
I love these kind of stories, I really do. You seem very much like myself
as a kid, not a lot of money, but an absolute LOVE of music and the gear
that plays the music. Oh, and a desire to listen at ear-bleeding levels.
Weren't we all soooo very creative when we had to be (nessesicity being the
mother of invention)? I mean, there were few components I actually bought
myself (I think the Technics turntable was the only one). My reciever I got
for my 11th birthday from my grandparents, my grandfather being a bit of an
audiophile himself. The reel-to-reel had been my Dad's and was, without a
doubt, the oldest component in my system (probably circa 1965), but the
great thing about open-reel is that they really had perfected that
technology a long time ago (I mean, this was how records were recorded).
You didn't need dolby as there was not any excessive hiss hoise, the trick,
however, was to use the fastest speed for optimum performance (it had 3, I
believe, different speed settings, the fastest being the best obviously) and
two nice big VU meters. Although it was technically a 4 track recorder as
you had access to four tracks, you could not record anything on ALL four
tracks at once, just two (it wasn't a proffesional model, BUT a high-end
consumer model). You switched between tracks 1&3, and then 2&4 on the
control panel. But like I said, despite it's age, I never found a cassette
deck (even much later into the 90's) that could equall the recording
quality. My first set of speakers were REALLY pathetic. There was only a
single driver, a 6" midrange with a whizzer cone around the dustcover for
high-frequency enhancement. We all know how well THOSE work.
But over
the years as
I got older and got my first part-time job, I started buying new pieces or
upgrading existing ones. I remember when I finally had enough money saved
to buy a new set of speakers. This was 1981, I believe, and like any kid I
was much more interested in the size of the woofer than the fact that these
were a "no-name" brand. There was this stereo store going out of business
and having a big "out of business sale" in Everett, close to where I lived,
so I talked my Mom into taking me there (was still a year away from having a
liscense) and got a pair of speakers (for the life of me, I honestly cannot
remember the brand, nor would anyone recognize it if I could). They were
HEAVEN comapred to my single driver speaker I was forced to make due with
for 5 some-odd years. They each had a 12" woofer, 5" midrange, and 1"
tweeter and I bought the pair new for $80. Now they weren't all that good
compared to speakers now, of course. But man, they were heaven to me. The
sonic inprovments were dramatic.
And then we move on to the "borrowing" of that Ampeg bass-guitar amplifier
that I used as a subwoofer. FINALLY, I had what I considered serious
fire-power.
I actually continued to use those single driver speakers as I placed them in
the other corners of my bedroom to create a quasi-surround sound system.
THANK GOD my Pioneer reciever could take the parelling of the two, so it now
saw 4 ohms per channel. I had NO IDEA that what I was doing could be
potentially harmful to my reciever, NO CLUE AT ALL. But I did notice a
roomful of sound. Oh, you know, I do remember that the Pioneer suddenly ran
much warmer than before. But it never quite on me, ever. I eventually gave
it to a friend when I upgraded to a better reciever much, much later (after
college).
Anyway, just some more remenicing.....
MOSFET