HiFi & History & Technical Wojtek on 19 Nov 2006 11:16 pm
Vintage HiFi - what’s that ?
So, you probably have heard of vintage wine, vintage salami and so forth. In the High Fidelity world exists also a “vintage” term, most commonly known as vintage HiFi. So, what does it mean ? Well, as the “vintage” word implies, it generally means older HiFi equipment, be it turntables, amplifiers and other audio gear and in some cases even old TV sets and VCR’s also count.
Vintage video ain’t exactly my region of interest (well maybe except LD’s, but as far as I know people don’t put the “vintage” tag on this technology yet), so I’ll mostly stick to the vintage audio part of old HiFi…
So, when does vintage audio start ? Now that’s simple, since Edison’s phonograph, I guess (although some people call that age more like “prehistoric audio” then vintage), but to be frank, audio products prior to the 50’s can’t quite be compared to today’s inventions in the terms of sound quality, so it’s accepted that when someone speaks of vintage audio era, he means the 50’s and later years. When does it end ? Well, today we can say that audio gear before the 90’s is vintage now, but some folks only acknowledge pre-80’s equipment as vintage. Why do they think like that ? That’s because at the beginning of the 80’s the, so called “digital era” began and so audio companies started putting computer chips in their equipment to make it more compact, more futuristic and (presumably) more “efficient”. Also, since the 80’s marketing started to be a serious issue, economy wasn’t always as good as it should be and so the companies started to get a bit on the cheapo-cheapo side and throwing mass-produced gear on the audio market. Since the 80’s, the build quality was just not the same as before. Today, for the most part, things haven’t changed much since the 80’s on the mass-market range of audio products.
For example: today, when we say “mass-market product”, would you say from the start that it’s of the highest quality ? No. Because today’s mass-market products aren’t made to be like that. Companies want you buy their product now and then buy another one after 5 years. In vintage audio days, it was the other way around. The sentence “built like a tank” probably comes from those days.
To quote Rick Stout, a known vintage audio enthusiast from stereomanuals.com:
“We don’t need no stinkin’ robot-assembled, computer-controlled black plastic throw away stuff pretending to be audio gear.”
OK, now you ask: “So what’s so special about vintage audio ? It’s over 20 years old so it’s worse than today’s products, right?” Answer: WRONG! No question.
Back “in the old days”, audio companies like Pioneer, Sansui (which, on a side note, has pretty much disappeared from the audio market since the 80’s and now tries to make a comeback with a series of tube amplifiers), Marantz had a pretty simple scheme for introducing their products. They thought something similar to: “let’s bet on quality, quality and once more quality engineering” and also “our products MUST be the best on the market”. The firms had their customers mostly in higher esteem than today (Hell, some of them even enclosed (next to the user’s manual) a service manual or schematic to their products, so that Do-It-Yourself style talented people could do things themselves or just could take their precious equipment to every consumer electronics service and the techs there should be able to take care of the problem while having the service manual at hand and not ordering it from the manufacturer for example). The market competition was more fierce. Accountants didn’t have that much to say at the production stage. That’s why the companies catalog price ranges were from “affordable for the Average Joe” to “buy this or a new car” and this was not just for show. Most products (especially those from the higher catalog shelves) were worth every penny.
That’s why many vintage audio enthusiasts are guys who bought these babies back when they still sold new and still use and cherish them till today (after a bit of servicing of course). It’s just like owning a youngtimer car. Some of those enthusiasts remember those great pieces of engineering from their child days and always have dreamt of them, but no amount of time spent on delivering newspapers or yard mowing would be enough in order to obtain them. That’s why that particular group hunts for vintage gear on yard/garage sales, newspaper and internet ads and also eBay’s very popular in this domain.
We also need to add a sly monetary factor here. If you know the general differences (which I kinda described above) between vintage and new audio gear, what would you choose while deciding on buying something: buy a new one and spend 400 bucks OR buy a vintage one (which cost ia fortune in it’s heyday) and spend, let’s say half of that price and get a machine which outclasses the new one ?
The choice is pretty obvious, but it needs to be said that in most cases you can’t get vintage equipment as so called “old-new stock” (although I’ve seen such auctions on eBay), meaning that someone had it lying around for all these years unused in an unopened box, instead vintage pieces are simply put “used goods” and so they are prone to be needing service or even extential repairs in order to have them work like a charm again (the “youngtimer car comparison” works here too).
One other factor is that back in the 70’s (and prior) everything was still hand-built and these processes didn’t happen using cheap labor from Taiwan or Africa (not even the product’s components were made there), but the proud words “Made in Japan/Germany/U.S.A.” (or “Designed in U.S.A., Produced in Japan” on Marantz’s works) shone at the backs of mass-market audio products (I know that today many brands still say that their products are from Japan, but they surely can’t guarantee that every component has been made there).
Now let’s get out of the 60’s and 70’s era and move back to the 80’s. Compact discs were introduced back in 1979 in their prototype stage and were brought to the market in the early 80’s. The first CD players were very very expensive (as the new and “revolutionary” medium), but although they could be called as simply “next-get” prototypes, their built quality was very high. That’s why many people also praise vintage CD players, because they were better made back in the beginning of CD. They are also popular as cheap, but good audio-tuning bases for DIY enthusiasts. Some of the vintage CD players gained legendary status (as many other vintage audio products) and although the technology used is a bit outdated, it’s still pretty expensive and hard to buy even a used one (again, think of legendary youngtimer cars, like the original 1st generation Porsche 911).
If you still have doubts about the sound quality coming out of vintage machines then please take into account that we’re talking analog vs. digital here. Today’s amplifiers have analog output (I wonder when and if that will change ? We’d probably need digital hearing if the output were also digital), the interior mostly ain’t “all analog”. There’s always one or two or dozens of microchips lying around in there. Although microchips aren’t always a bad thing in audio equipment. They can be superb while implemented properly in, let’s say, tape recorders mechanisms for example. Nakamichi was well know for it’s computer-controlled tape recorders. But if we’re talking digital in the audio signal path (any digital filters or digital sound processors) then that ain’t a good thing.
I don’t want to get into details just now, cause regarding the “analog vs. digital” topic, I’ve got a future post brewin’ so please stay tuned.
Whew, seems like I’ve written a lot of historical/economical type of smarty mumbo-jumbo today. Wonder if you’ll find it interesting.
That’s all about vintage audio in a nutshell, for now. You never know if there won’t be a part 2 or 3 of this post in the future, cause this topic’s pretty vast. Maybe a vintage audio shopping guide? (if that’s even possible :D).
In the next few days I’ll try to add some vintage audio related links on the blog’s Links page (you know where to find it, don’t you?).
To sum things up, I guess that I don’t need to tell you which kind of audio gear I prefer buying? ;)