View Full Version : Xam


TVTim
12-19-2013, 06:01 PM
Anyone out there have an XAM TV?

They were sold by EJ Korvettes.

Sandy G
12-19-2013, 06:14 PM
New one on me... But we didn't have EJ Korvette's down here..

Username1
12-19-2013, 06:19 PM
had a bunch years ago.... Nice sets, I think they were GE's

TVTim
12-19-2013, 06:52 PM
I believe Korvettes was in the Long Island/Westchester NY area. NYC too.

Username1
12-19-2013, 07:19 PM
Yes we had them in NYC area & Subs.... Nice store, they had a great photography department, If Kodak made it, they had it ! ! ! I use to get all my chemicals there, paper, you name it..... I miss that store ! ! !

TVTim
12-19-2013, 08:08 PM
Yes we had them in NYC area & Subs.... Nice store, they had a great photography department, If Kodak made it, they had it ! ! ! I use to get all my chemicals there, paper, you name it..... I miss that store ! ! !

Korvettes went to retail heaven when I was a teenager. What a great store. I remember buying records there as well as model trains. I still have a locomotive that my dad bought me at the Melville NY Korvettes.

consoleguy67
12-20-2013, 04:48 AM
We had a Korvettes in Lake Grove,NY, near the SmithHaven Mall.

Tony V
12-20-2013, 05:19 PM
I have a XAM set of speakers but never saw their tv's

stromberg6
12-20-2013, 06:31 PM
Some of their high fidelity components were/are very high quality, and sought after by audiophools and other folks who like good "stuff". :yes:

TVTim
12-20-2013, 06:32 PM
Some of their high fidelity components were/are very high quality, and sought after by audiophools and other folks who like good "stuff". :yes:

Did not know that! The audio department was rather big at the store we went to.

ChrisW6ATV
12-21-2013, 01:00 AM
There were Korvettes stores in Illinois in the 1970s, too. My brother's first stereo and multi-band radio (both XAM) came from there, bought with money from his first real job.

kvflyer
12-22-2013, 07:04 AM
E. J. Korvette used various manufacturers for their electronic equipment. Roland of Japan made their "Rolecor" brand of transistor receiver. EV also made a tuner for them. I am not sure who made their XAM speakers.

I worked for Korvette for 18 months until going into the army. That was in Baltimore, MD, store #57. They were good to work for. I ended up in my favorite department, the Audio Department. Fun selling high end state-of-the-art audio equipment.

But I digress... Sorry.

EDIT: I worked for Korvette from June 1966 to December 1967

ChrisW6ATV
12-22-2013, 01:00 PM
Interesting to hear of a store roughly equivalent to today's Target selling "high end" audio equipment. At Target, the electronics are middling at best, and certainly near bottom-of-the-barrel in audio.

Username1
12-22-2013, 02:35 PM
Korvettes had a very large audio department, their photography department was second to none in our area. But remember competition back then. There were actual photography stores, and there were high end stereo stores, so they had to come close to the quality others were offering in the area, or they would have been laughed out of business..... In the area where our Korvettes was, there was 3 stereo stores, and 4 stereo stores devoted to quality car audio....

I remember going into these stores when I was a kid, (already driving so '1981+) and a stereo guru would be waiting, and lets say you wanted to look at speakers.... I remember several times going in and the store sales people would ask you what you were interested in today...? One time I wanted to look at speakers and they took me over to the speaker room, asked what record I wanted to hear... "Blondie Parallel Lines" I said... He put on the record, and he had this large hand held switching thing and we went through about 9 single speaker sets, 10 2-way speaker sets, then 10 more 3-way speaker sets..... An amazing shopping day.... Same experience could be had for receivers, turn tables, and tape decks..... So that was what Korvettes had for competition, so you know they had to be on top of it....... Before driving I use to get records at the store, they were the best! After they closed, second choice was Caldor, they always had lines of kids buying 45's and LP's each weekend when the sales fliers came out..... Caldor also had photography but not what Korvettes had, and after the competition went away, they dropped most of their chemicals and paper.... They pretty much went to film and processing.....

Photography with developing your own prints, another thing kids today will never experience...

zenith2134
12-22-2013, 02:37 PM
I have owned roughly 3 or 4 black and white XAM TVs from the seventies.
One, a '71 all tube 12" b/w, was made in Japan by Toshiba. The next, which I still have, is a 13" metal cabinet b/w tube transistor hybrid made in Japan by some unknown manufacturer..1975.

Their color TVs were not half bad...all made by Toshiba, with Blacktripe inline gun tubes. The 1976 13" metal cabinet set, has instant on which is defeatable. On that set, there is a plug-in socket which looks just like a tube socket, in the HV section. It of course is a plug-in rectifier pack. The chassis before it probably had tube rectification.

kvflyer
12-23-2013, 08:28 AM
Korvettes had a very large audio department, their photography department was second to none in our area. But remember competition back then. There were actual photography stores, and there were high end stereo stores, so they had to come close to the quality others were offering in the area, or they would have been laughed out of business..... In the area where our Korvettes was, there was 3 stereo stores, and 4 stereo stores devoted to quality car audio....

I remember going into these stores when I was a kid, (already driving so '1981+) and a stereo guru would be waiting, and lets say you wanted to look at speakers.... I remember several times going in and the store sales people would ask you what you were interested in today...? One time I wanted to look at speakers and they took me over to the speaker room, asked what record I wanted to hear... "Blondie Parallel Lines" I said... He put on the record, and he had this large hand held switching thing and we went through about 9 single speaker sets, 10 2-way speaker sets, then 10 more 3-way speaker sets..... An amazing shopping day.... Same experience could be had for receivers, turn tables, and tape decks..... So that was what Korvettes had for competition, so you know they had to be on top of it....... Before driving I use to get records at the store, they were the best! After they closed, second choice was Caldor, they always had lines of kids buying 45's and LP's each weekend when the sales fliers came out..... Caldor also had photography but not what Korvettes had, and after the competition went away, they dropped most of their chemicals and paper.... They pretty much went to film and processing.....

Photography with developing your own prints, another thing kids today will never experience...

When I post with a quote, I usually snip it. But there is so much information above that is spot on albeit at a later date.

When I worked at Korvette, we had a patch panel with connecting cables and could connect any amplifier or receiver to any speaker. When customers came in, we could close the door and "let it rip". We had Empire speakers, Wharfedale, AR, etc. I only wish that I had gotten one of those huge Empire turntables. I have several Garrard Lab 80 MKII turntables, to include my original. Long range plan is to setup my old original system.

We would also get out a record that was in the customer's liking to demonstrate the equipment. We were not allowed to swipe records from the record department (right next to us ;) ) but shall we say, it did happen.

The "best" reel-to-reel that we had at the time was a Sony TC-660. I also remember HH Scott had come out with their compact systems. And Harman Kardon had compacts that included the new cassette player. You talk about rubbish! The high frequency response rolled off at no more than about 6-8K CPS. And it had lots of background tape hiss.

But it was fun times. I looked forward to going to work, being a teenager with an ear for good audio. As they say, had I been able to see into the future and purchased those HH Scott ScottKit and Fisher Stratakit amplifiers, and squirreled them away unassembled, I would have quite a collection. I did love to build kits but my only audio was Knight-Kit amplifiers (KG-870) and one Scott LT-112B-1 transistor tuner.

Sorry, I have strayed way too far off topic.

TVTim
07-23-2014, 10:07 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7i5KdtfJM8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrXlLnN2Icw

EJ Korvette's ads

Username1
07-23-2014, 11:19 PM
Re-reading this short thread really makes me want to borrow Robb's time machine......

.