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Whoa! Missed a lot of discussion when being away.
Hmm. Seeing the danger of hi-jacking the thread once more, I´d like to say a few words...
Interesting, Sandy, your thoughts of what-would-have been-if... I had such thoughts about german 70´s HiFi and japanese monster-recievers... And Old, I searched hours in the net to find someone fixing my Pioneer SX-D5000. So I share your observation about aliens brought to be repaired.
I must say, that I don´t know any american radio live. So I won´t give any justice about them (but I really like the style, indeed).
Just some impressions I got ruining radios in my youth and restorating other radios, when I got wise.
I don´t know how much material you got to get your impression of german radios down those years.
About the half I got to know are little, hazardous beasts, some without a galvanic seperation from the net. Better not touch any metallic part. 220 V are waiting for you. Tube heating rate is reached by connecting those things serial, leave the rest to an urdox.
A quarter of the radios I know is good middleclass. Not to much equipment, but well sounding. Their cabinet is big enough to allow some good, weak sounding speaker. But those things even had their price: a good month´s wage for a radio?
The last quarter are sophisticated, big bombers with 2 EL 84, sometimes a seperated amp for the tweeters, and fart and flintstone (vulgar german expression for: comes with everything). Examples?
6-band equalizer (grundig), automatic tuning and volume allowing cable-remote (saba), a hell lot of speakers (graetz , kuba), dynamic expanders (körting), high-end amps (Loewe: In mono push-pull, switched to stereo ultralinear a with the same output-transformers) and whatever.
These things got the same problem like a ´59 Fleetwood with 300 servos to close the roof and move the seat.
What´s the end?
The quality in germany went down in the late 50´s, the 60´s gear is very simpler, but still got a lot of mechanic inside (station preset, no modular boards). What happened? First we laughed about little japanese transistors. A few years later the little pioneer rec. (550?) was the new trend. Whats inside an sx 550? Here it was really good stereo. Philips had amps with 2x6 W those days.
An sx 990 was 1500 deutschmarks!
Hmm.
Greetings (gonna be on a short holiday)
Alex
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