Pioneer Hifi from 1977 to 1980

[dbmtb]

This is all well and good, but where are the turntables on these systems? It's like a bike without wheels FFS!

 

[legrandefromage]

This is all well and good, but where are the turntables on these systems? It's like a bike without wheels FFS!

Will a Pioneer PL-12D with a Shure M75ED cartridge do you?

 

[dbmtb]

Meaningless without pics LGF....

 

[legrandefromage]

Meaningless without pics LGF....

its in the garage, no phono stage in the house so it sits out there until I get of my arse and buy one.

 

[JohnH]

Crikey, I'd forgotten about the old Pioneer PL-12. A legendary turntable...

 

[Gadro]

Here's mine

Just dragged down from the attic

 

[hova]

It was bonkers!

My absolute favourite era for the term 'hifi'. They made cracking car radios as well. Only Clarion came close at that time.

Just stumbled across this post... you've brought up some really special memories for me, BigCheese...

My father, who was and still is a serious audiophile, had a bunch of SPEC series equipment imported into Korea in the mid/late 70s/early 80s for his own use. RT-909, SPEC-1, SPEC-2, SPEC-3, SG-9800, SPEC-4, along with some other tasty bits. I remember seeing them in the living room growing up in the early 80s... they were certainly monsters. Humongous... and my mother absolutely hated them lurking against the wall.

Fast forward a decade or so to 1994... they'd since been boxed up (still in original boxes) and put into storage for many moons, making way for all manner of newer equipment he'd acquired... my father decided it would be great father-son bonding to take everything apart and clean EVERYTHING inside... but despite his meticulous care for everything over the years, there was SOO much dust everywhere. THICK. Some of the circuits had fractured - you can imagine the mess.

It took us a whole summer; we actually worked on it four nights a week for two months... cleaning, soldering, scratching heads. I still remember the day we connected everything back together with new cables (and now with pure silver speaker wire connecting to brand new Avantgarde Trios) and fired it up... still sounded grand. Very different in colour to his vacuum McIntoshes and solid state Mark Levinsons (which we used for comparison)... but I can still recall seeing the tears in his eyes that evening. It was a proud moment for me... I'd done terribly the semester previous at college and he'd given me a proper boIIocking... but I could tell he didn't care anymore.

He still has the original boxes (amazing how long molded polystyrene lasts), but the SPEC system doesn't live in them darn boxes anymore... others have come and gone but the SPEC towers now live in custom glass enclosures with exhaust fans pumping out the back.

I'll take a pic and upload next time I'm visiting the old fart!