Great HiFi sound and MCS, from JC Penney. Yeah, that's what MCS was known for.

Hey that MCS 3233 shown in both of those commercials was my first stereo, this very young lad worked his ass of to save the money for it. That and my Quadraflex ST19 speakers, I was the shit that summer. Had it hooked up to the color organ I made in my electronics class in Jr High School.

I used to put the speakers in my bedroom window and piss of the neighborhood. great times!

Still have it in the garage.

The 3125 receiver was a beast and still gets 300 to 400 on flea bay.

[Link: ebay.com]

The Marantz "Imperial" line might be what they're referring to in the video when they say "pressboard bottoms." I once saw an Imperial monster with the top off. There was a PC board for the amplifier, a PC board for the tuner/preamp, a completely separate 8-track player... and I saw at least one unit with a turntable built in. All the modules were screwed onto a particle board bottom.

The videotape mistracking is just the finest bit of detail, isn't it?


I was done with color organs by about 1972. In 1974 I built a sort of color organ. Thing is, it was all white, using those little 19 watt 120 volt bulbs you used to see on liquor store signs, the ones that turn on and off making a chasing effect.

My color organ used two ICs, the LM3914 (or 15 or 16) to create a stack of lights eight feet high. It was very cool. What I was not ready for was that when setting it up to represent level logarithmically, most of the lights were on all the time, but changing to linear made that puppy pop up and down incredibly!

This thing had all the challenges you'd expect from taking an audio signal and turning power on and off up to 120 times per second while keeping the audio isolated from the power line. Great fun.

Mine was, hell I don't remember the electronics, I was in seventh grade.
It has three pots for level control of bass, mids and highs.
It had a three strings of Christmas lights, Red,Blue and Green inside a wooden box I made with a cover where you could slide in and out different fluorescent light covers like in drop ceilings, for different patterns.
Which led to black painted bedroom windows, strobe lights and you know where this is going.

Which in turn is responsible for the "When is the last time you just turned off the lights and listened to the music thread"

Damn thing kept taking out tweeters every couple months, so after the last tweeter replacement before warranty expired it went away.

Loved the warranty on those house brand Quadraflex ST19 speakers.

Edit, there is a ton of them in kit form online with led lighting, cant find one big enough.

Those had phenolic ring tweeters, right? We called those 'phallic ring'.

Had a guy working at the store and when someone would ask him if a particular set of speakers would handle 200 W, he'd say "Two hundred, yeah, sure, they'll handle 200 Watts. Once.".

I worked at Rogersound Labs about 8 months after they opened. The entire showroom was about 20 x 18. Our thing was to make speakers that sounded like famous speakers but, because we made them with quality components and took profit like a rep would, they cost a LOT less to the customer.

At one point Harvey Mudd college sent us a love note including a photo of about fifty RSL speakers and their owners. They had taken all those speakers out into a parking lot and piled them up, then took a photo of that to send with their note of appreciation.

At one point we decided we had to buy a Pacific stereo speaker to see what it had in it. The crap crossover was no surprise. The surprise was that the woofers were held in by construction staples through the screw holes, which held them together while the Henry's cured!


As I said, I built a color organ 8 ft high. Used a 2" x 4" steel panduit channel, mounted real sockets in it, etc. The hint is this: you can use a transformer to isolate your audio from the color organ; then you feed the LED voltages into Triacs that turn 120Volts on and off to turn the lights on and off, and use something like those 19W incandescents I used. (Actually, it's the zero crossing of the 60 Hz that turns the Triacs off, but that's too fast for us to see.)

In fact, screw the light organ. One of these: the LM3914, 3915, or 3916, sets up a linear division of the input voltage and that is the most impressive; use two of those cascaded for 20 bulbs. Since you've got the audio isolated from the low voltage circuits, all you have to do is wrap up all that circuitry so nobody can touch it and it's safe.

So, other than that, we've pretty much beat this topic to death, haven't we?

And who the HELL would have ever thought that those stupid 1966 Sony clock radios with the numbers that flipped down would ever be classics?

Especially when it doesn't have A THING on this clock from the forties, called a "Hotel Clock":



Those metal pins around the outside could be pulled out to set an alarm during every half hour. It's the wake-up call clock.

Thank you Davey for the detailed overview.

I recently acquired pioneer vsx-9900s, and i also have got some
4 other amps such as sansui G6000, sansui A60 Pioneer vsx-d939tx. But I have to admit this 9900s beats all of them hands down in clarity and detail.
When I listen to orchestra this amp is able to play the slightest hint of music or even the page ruffling. never heard such detail before among this price range. bought one used in 60$ some buttons not working but the amp is overall in good shape.

Davey is absolutely right if you get this or its big brother pioneer DS1 never give it a second thought. I think i found my match. for now :p

Thanks Davey you effort is much appreciated.