OK, what's the first Audio/Video gear you can remember?

[TheFactor]

My old neighbor deals a lot with old electronics...

He's got tube amps from their earliest days... old radios from the thirties and fourties...

Even an original Edison Bulb.

I should go over there sometime and get pictures for all of you. It's very cool.

That would be cool !!!

 

[TheFactor]

My grandparents used to have a radio similar to this:

They kept it on their enclosed front porch for many years, well into the 80's. As kids, we used to go out and play with it, spin the dial and try to get stations to tune in.

My parents also had the usual 70's style Sears console stereo and console TV. Any real audio gear we wanted we got as teenagers and we bought it ourselves.

Darn that radios beautiful

 

[ParadigmDawg]

My Grandmother (Mam Ma) had this Zenith TV with built in TT and radio. It still worked and she still used it up until her death 4 years ago.
http://nationalcity-california.olx.com/vintage-antique-1950-1960-fm-receiver-turntable-and-tv-all-work-200-iid-27137752

 

[tattoo_Dan]

This would have been a natural for a "vintage" forum, but here goes anyway.

My recall goes back to the early/mid fifties. My folks weren't really into that stuff so I'd say it boils down to three things. Most of what I note here didn't become apparent until much later in my life.

1) A big, hulking mahogany Du Mont B & W console TV, maybe 21" or so. IIRC, this would have been over four feet tall, three feet wide, and maybe more and had an actual tuning dial. No click stops but a circular tuning dial with a magic eye tuning indicator. Pop would yell when I gave it a good spin to go from the low to the high channels I was ahead of my time because between stations six and seven (I believe) it had the entire FM band. It was cool because it had a 10/12" speaker and even to my widdle ears it sounded dang good. This was condemned by my pop to rot in our cellar until I was in my mid teens and by then I thought it was obsolete junk. Actually, by then it kinda was so it was jettisoned.

2) A wooden Delco AM Radio. It was poorly designed because for as long as I can remember it always had a charred/burn spot on the top right over the output tube. Unbeknownset to me they replaced it with a Sony transistor AM/FM and threw it out when I was in the Air Force.

3) A burgundy leatherette covered Webcor one-tube phonograph. Used the motor as a dropping resistor for the tube filament. Felt covered platter, crystal cartridge, and a 4" speaker. Actually sounded better than it reads. I have fond memories of this. It provided Christmas music for many years until I got my first real stereo in the early 60's, when we gave it to my cousin.

So, get into the attics of your mind and clean off some of those cobwebs from your memories.

I remember a huge maybe 6' x 8' wall unit with a reel to reel and a turn table and built in speakers & amps and a tuner,that my father had that I always loved,and my first memory of HT was a RCA vcr with the pop up cassette door,

and that was also my first experience with blowing a speaker to the point of smoke,my dad was not home one day and I wanted to show my buddy the new Led Zep album I had(1973) and ,well,uh,I saw smoke come from one of the speakers.


I'm an "old guy"

 

[TheFactor]

This Thread brings back memories

 

[Mike19]

Around 1954, my father connected the TV (b&w) audio into the hi-fi system (Fisher receiver [tubes, mono, of course], 8" Jensen speaker in ceiling, Garrard record changer). For an 8 year old this was spectacular.

In 1956, when I started playing guitar, he made a connection into the hi-fi for my Danelectro from Sears.

Mike

 

[jwenthold99]

Ok, I am "only" 28 but didn't really have a tv growing up, so my first memories are stereo related. This is the first setup I remember, and my mom used to play classical music, I especially remember Herbert Von Karajan. This is the first one that we had:

This got me hooked on music, and it has been very important to me ever since.
Then we upgraded to this one:

(all pictures shamelessly ripped off of ebay)