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[par4ken]

That is something that never would have occurred to me! Of course ceiling mounted speakers are all the rage nowadays thanks to ATMOS. You were ahead of your time. FWIW I have experimented with good quality 6.5" car speakers mounted in my ceiling. Much to my surprise if one is mounted forward of you & one behind, in line, pans from front to back have almost no effect. Mount the overhead to the sides & over head pans left to right give an amazing & almost scary sensation of height.

The speakers weren't actually in the ceiling but hung from it. I remember a few people used to do the same thing, hanging their speakers by macramé type hangers. A local bar/disco had Bose 901's hanging from the ceiling as well. I did install speakers in my daughters basement bedroom in the ceiling though. When she moved out I reused the drivers in my homebuilt living room transmission line speaker systems (to be described in another post). I've yet to repopulate the ceiling enclosures.

 

[par4ken]

Haha my 1st speaker "project" in my early teens involved utilizing a my bed's nightstand cabinet. I pnly had to mount a front baffle, cut a hole, and mount the speaker. The speaker was a 12" paper cone high compliance with a whizzer cone also & purchased from Olson Electronics. I was the only in my family with a color TV (JC Penney 21" round tube) so I immediately hooked it up to that. One rotary switch later & I could select the TV, Lucor R2R, and my AM/FM clock radio. Long before the introduction of stereo to my house hold.

A friend bought a pair of 18" woofers, we mounted one to a board and placed it in front of the clothes dryer, with the door open to use it as a cabinet. The bass really shook the house! He latter sold them to a local musician, they were better suited as musical instrument speakers rather than as hifi ones.

 

[par4ken]

In my early teen years we got our first colour TV, the old B&W went first to the basement and then to my bedroom. I had gotten a car radio from an old Chevy, and an article from an old electronics magazine sparked my interest. Simply replace the radios vibrator with a 6.3V filament transformer and it was converted to a house radio. I connected it to the TV speaker and the sound was amazing, better than the TV audio! Tubes sound fantastic! Well I just had to play around with it and eventually damaged it, but then I found another article about turning your old TV into an oscilloscope, that was also kind of cool!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

In my early teen years we got our first colour TV, the old B&W went first to the basement and then to my bedroom. I had gotten a car radio from an old Chevy, and an article from an old electronics magazine sparked my interest. Simply replace the radios vibrator with a 6.3V filament transformer and it was converted to a house radio. I connected it to the TV speaker and the sound was amazing, better than the TV audio! Tubes sound fantastic! Well I just had to play around with it and eventually damaged it, but then I found another article about turning your old TV into an oscilloscope, that was also kind of cool!

Yeah I saw an article similar to that. It said " Junk the car, Save the radio." My old long gone girlfriend Jann was more interested in saving the radio's vibrator.

 

[Clint Eastwood]

Yeah I saw an article similar to that. It said " Junk the car, Save the radio." My old long gone girlfriend Jann was more interested in saving the radio's vibrator.

Since I was not technically inclined at that age...the more relevant passage for me was "leave the gun...take the cannoli"

 

[Sonik Wiz]

A friend bought a pair of 18" woofers, we mounted one to a board and placed it in front of the clothes dryer, with the door open to use it as a cabinet. The bass really shook the house! He latter sold them to a local musician, they were better suited as musical instrument speakers rather than as hifi ones.

Crazy memories your bringing back. In the early 70's it seemed everyone I knew either wanted to be a musician or wanted the best audio gear to listen to music. The term "best" is pretty flexible for back then and certainly experimental.

A friend worked at McGee Electronics here in town which, along with Burstein-Applbee made spontaneous audio purchases quite easy. So this friend took 2, 55 gallon cardboard drums like this:

& made the quickest & dirtiest speaker enclosure you can imagine out of them. He simply cut out the lid to fit (I think) a 15" woofer in the lid. He used some sorta compression horn mid-range/ tweeter mounted above the top of the drum. The woofer faced up, the tweeter straight ahead.

Like your clothes dryer woofer this combination of large volume & no damping made for a huge amount of mid-bass. I was really impressed, novice listener that we all were back then. I mean that baby BOOMED!

Ironically I bought some Empire Jupiter speakers a few years later that looked like giant salt & pepper shakers. They were cylindrical, and the woofer was on the bottom pointed straight down at the base stand. Mid & tweet conventionally faced forward. Now that I type this, it makes me wonder if my old friend ever worked & Empire & created this design...

And who hasn't listned to Whole Lotta Love through a Fender amp cranked sky high? It seemed so right back then, the logic of playing back music through equipment that it was originally intended for.

 

[1968rt]

I am a newbie here. I am trying to see if I can figure out how to post pics, so I will try showing you an Akai R2R I recently picked up. I think I stole it for $35. It has a small flat spot on the pinch roller and some veneer missing from the front, but other than that it seems to be in good shape. So here goes, let's see if this photo comes out any good. By the way, it is a 1730 DSS.

 

[bigbillquad]

I am a newbie here. I am trying to see if I can figure out how to post pics, so I will try showing you an Akai R2R I recently picked up. I think I stole it for $35. It has a small flat spot on the pinch roller and some veneer missing from the front, but other than that it seems to be in good shape. So here goes, let's see if this photo comes out any good. By the way, it is a 1730 DSS.View attachment 59577

Hi. 1968rt

I have three of these RtoR`s they are good work horses not to fancy but do a good job but the down side is buying Quad Reel`s, the good ones can be dear to buy, but some times you can get lucky.
BBQ...

 

[esimms86]

I am a newbie here. I am trying to see if I can figure out how to post pics, so I will try showing you an Akai R2R I recently picked up. I think I stole it for $35. It has a small flat spot on the pinch roller and some veneer missing from the front, but other than that it seems to be in good shape. So here goes, let's see if this photo comes out any good. By the way, it is a 1730 DSS.View attachment 59577

Congrats on your purchase. Hopefully, you won’t have to sink an exorbitant amount of money in it to get it fully functional. Even so, you have very little invested in it and, worse case scenario, should easily get more than your money back if you sold it for parts(not that that is your plan, obviously).

 

[1968rt]

This is the quad receiver that I consider to be #2 in my collection. Marantz 4430, sold 1972 - 1978, 30w x 4, $599.95 retail. Disappointingly, they don't include the typical for Marantz mid-range tone control. The bass and treble are split between front and rear. Marantz had an optional wired remote that controlled balance, volume, and loudness which could be used with this model. Unlike some other Marantz quads, this model was not capable of bridging the amps. 4 channel decoding was not built in, but rather it was accomplished by means of a plug-in decoder, which installed in the bottom. The wood cabinet was also optional, and they are highly prized by collectors today. As with many Marantz receivers, this model has an RCA jack on the rear panel labeled "FM Quadradial Output" for a 4 channel adaptor that never materialized.
IMHO these style Marantz receivers were the best looking of the era. I love the blue dial lights with the lighted Lucite pointer and the thumbwheel tuning.
I snagged this one, with a separate cost for the remote, at an estate sale for a very good price.

 

[1968rt]

Here is my Heathkit AR2020. 15w x 4, $250 in 1974. It has an unusual system for speaker balance, with a volume control and then 4 level controls, one for each channel. I don't know if this is true in the quad arena, but in my tube and transistor radio collector life, Heathkit items are very sought after. Especially test equipment. I built a rudimentary Heathkit short wave receiver as a kid. It had about 6 coils that were swapped out to change frequencies.

 

[quattroatl]

Your profile says nothing about Marantz or Pioneer. Emotiva? Oppo( there it is on the left) and where is the Denon AVR?

I have a dedicated home theater room running a 9.2 setup. But I tend to spin vinyl more these days

 

[Green Driver]

A pic of my recently acquired National Panasonic 4 channel receiver. No decoder but it came with a remote balance control

 

[1968rt]

Great looking radio. Cool looking remote. Reminds me of an Atari controller. What model? How many watts? What is the Marantz on the bottom?

 

[1968rt]

Your profile says nothing about Marantz or Pioneer

Looks like a 2325 and a 4300. Nice!

 

[Green Driver]

The receiver is a recapped and serviced 1972 NATIONAL PANASONIC (pre Technics) SA 6400X 4 Channel Receiver. 4 x 18w. The Marantz is a serviced and recapped model 1070.

Great looking radio. Cool looking remote. Reminds me of an Atari controller. What model? How many watts? What is the Marantz on the bottom?

The receiver is a recapped and serviced 1972 NATIONAL PANASONIC (pre Technics) SA 6400X 4 Channel Receiver. 4 x 18w. The Marantz is a serviced and recapped model 1070. I use it for listening to headphones.

 

[Green Driver]

The Panasonic SA6400X in action

 

[Green Driver]

Actually, this is mine. The previous pic is a Technics version.

 

[1968rt]

Here is the baddest quad receiver in my collection, and also one of the best vintage quad receivers ever made. Marantz 4400. Made 1974 - 1978. Retail $1250.00. 50 wpc in quad, 125 wpc in stereo. It has a built in Dolby System. The oscilloscope can indicate center of channel, multipath, or audio output. It has a 400 hz tone generator. Can be used with the optional wired remote, although I think it was a mistake to put the remote/local switch on the back panel. Some of the other Marantz quad receivers and adaptors have it on the front panel. It uses a plug in 4 channel decoder. It also has a quad matrix system that can synthesize 4 channels from any stereo source.

 

[JonUrban]

Here is my Heathkit AR2020. 15w x 4, $250 in 1974. It has an unusual system for speaker balance, with a volume control and then 4 level controls, one for each channel. I don't know if this is true in the quad arena, but in my tube and transistor radio collector life, Heathkit items are very sought after. Especially test equipment. I built a rudimentary Heathkit short wave receiver as a kid. It had about 6 coils that were swapped out to change frequencies.

View attachment 59682View attachment 59683

Cool! I built an AR2020 back around '76, and it was my first quad receiver and is what got me into quad. I had Bose 301's and a JVC CD-4 demodulator and I was rockin' an apartment in Virginia Beach, VA, looking for quads to play. I can't remember what I had for a Q8 player, but I was lusting for a CR-80D-SS, which was no longer to be found at retail. I did track one down at a stereo place (Dixie Hi-Fi?) near Washington D.C. Drove up there on a weekend, but it had been sold. Brings back some serious memories.