How lo-fi was your first "hi fi"?

[Pigmy Pony]

Christmas 1971, Ernie was riding high in the charts on his milk cart, and I got a secondhand portable Philips reel to reel from Santa.

I used it to record "Top OF The Pops" by hanging the microphone over the back of a chair in front of the telly. The resultant recordings were littered with extra sounds, like doors opening and closing, my mums's voice shouting "Don't answer the door, it's the rent man", "who's ate all the lard?" and "do you have to do that in here?"

Songs like Chicory Tip's "Son of My Father" with added budgie chirps became the norm, and sounded bare without them.

I would love to still have those recordings, more for the sound of my parents' and Arthur's voices superimposed on Middle Of The Road's "Soley Soley". Arthur was the budgie.

[Batty]

674404-amstrad_tp12d_turntable.jpgMy first HiFi was DIY, As an apprentice in the Army we made a Receiver, it was 2.5 watts RMS into 15 ohms.
When I say made I mean we built the case during sheet metalwork class, etched the PCBs in fact we even made the tuning indicator out of string and a cocktail stick.
The speakers were single driver full range affairs. All pretty basic. I added a Amstrad TP12D TT (rega copy) with a shure M55e cart and later a Goldring G800 then Nagaoka MP11.
That was great for me for about 5 years.

[steve-z]

My first setup was circa 1973, all purchased from Comet who at that time was just a sales counter you queued up to with the newspaper like price list of all they stocked.
I bought a BSR MP60 turntable complete with an ADC cartridge for £17, an Amstrad IC2000 amp for £29 and a pair of Celestion County speakers which cost £33 so I got £1 change out of £80, at the time I probably thought it sounded great, first LP I played on it was 6 Wives of Henry VIII by Rick Wakeman, those were the days


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[Pete The Cat]

Christmas 1971, Ernie was riding high in the charts on his milk cart, and I got a secondhand portable Philips reel to reel from Santa.

I used it to record "Top OF The Pops" by hanging the microphone over the back of a chair in front of the telly. The resultant recordings were littered with extra sounds, like doors opening and closing, my mums's voice shouting "Don't answer the door, it's the rent man", "who's ate all the lard?" and "do you have to do that in here?"

Songs like Chicory Tip's "Son of My Father" with added budgie chirps became the norm, and sounded bare without them.

I would love to still have those recordings, more for the sound of my parents' and Arthur's voices superimposed on Middle Of The Road's "Soley Soley". Arthur was the budgie.

I recorded the Christmas 1975 TOTP on a portable cassette recorder / player. The mike fell off the TV stand during David Essex's "Hold Me Close" and the sound became somewhat ambient after that, I still have the cassette somewhere.

My first "lo-fi" was an Eagle D7500 turntable with a Glanz cartridge, Bryan 9000 amp and Pioneer car speakers (using their cardboard packaging as cabinets with holes cut out for the drivers). I stil have them all somewhere too.

Our loft is full of sh1te.

Pete

[struth]

one of these was my pride and joy at time

[walpurgis]

About 1971.







It was bloody awful.

[Vinyl turner]

About 1971.



It was bloody awful.

My first was an Amstrad TT and matching amp neither of which can I remember the model number for (but I think I may still have the amp instructions somewhere !!). They were coupled to a pair of Wharfedale Lintons, which I still have. Sadly () neither of the Amstrad stuff survived.
All of which was bought from Comet.

A few older lads used to say that the best thing to do was to get a Garrard deck and mount an SME arm onto it. Well, I did buy a Garrard deck - just like Walpurgis's. I remember it had a smoked black acrylic lid (not hinged). That came from one of those second hand shops that sell fishing rods and Bullworkers and electric guitars, must have been less than £5.
I never did get the SME arm for it.
At the time I thought it was darn good.

[walpurgis]

Hmm. SP25 Mk.III with an SME? Has it been tried I wonder? Possibly. All sorts of 'horrors' crop up in Hi-Fi! (using the term loosely )

[Oddball]

I think I still have my old unit up in the dusty old loft.
I shall have to display its charms on the old bay of pigs maybe .

Either that or shoot it up with an air rifle

[Barry]

Hmm. SP25 Mk.III with an SME? Has it been tried I wonder? Possibly. All sorts of 'horrors' crop up in Hi-Fi! (using the term loosely )

I think the phrase was "a Garrard deck", so I assume Mark meant either a Garrard 301 or a 401.

Recognising that the most valuable part of my system were the records themselves, within a year of acquiring a Garrard SP25 it was replaced with an SME arm mounted on a Collaro 2010 TT (a "poor man's" 301) with a Shure M55E (the latter being a noticable improvement over the Shure M3D).