Remembering Pacific Stereo

Once upon a time, in a land called audio, there was a chain called Pacific Stereo. They began in Berkeley, CA and expanded into landlocked places like Illinois, Georgia, Texas, Wisconsin and Missouri. Although Pacific was not on the East Coast, they were the largest hi-fi retailer in the nation with over 130 stores in the '70's and early '80's. We were owned by CBS. Can you say "lots of promo LP's from Columbia and Epic?" I knew you could! Several people on QQ were employees, myself included. Even more were customers. We had several proprietary or "house brand" lines, including: Quadraflex, Concept, Reference, Calibre, and TransAudio. We also had dozens of name brands. Thanks to Old Quad Guy for suggesting this thread. Does anyone have Pacific memories?



Late 70's/Early 80's logo & signage:


Concept 16.5 Receiver 165wRMS x 2:




1968 ad, when there were only 5 stores:


1971 ad:

Ok.. ..now I don't have any memories of Pacific Stereo, being an Australian...and Pacific not having any stores here, but I am curious about your opinion Linda of the various house brand models Pacific. I've read that the "Concept" stuff was first class. I've seen some photo's of Quadraflex stuff....some of the receivers I've seen look MASSIVE :yikes ....but were they (..and the others) any good soundwise vs the regular Japanese competition...??

As always...just curious....

P.S. I love that first shop Photo, very friendly looking 70's sort of facade....across time & space it makes me want to wander in and check it out...

Concept gear was Pacific's BEST house brand. The receivers sounded better than anything we carried except perhaps Harman/Kardon. Don't misunderstand, because we had seperates that blew Concept away. Concept speakers had a Heil air-motion transformer and were made for us by ESS.



The baby of the family:

Quadrockasaurus said:

Ok.. ..now I don't have any memories of Pacific Stereo, being an Australian...and Pacific not having any stores here, but I am curious about your opinion Linda of the various house brand models Pacific. I've read that the "Concept" stuff was first class. I've seen some photo's of Quadraflex stuff....some of the receivers I've seen look MASSIVE :yikes ....but were they (..and the others) any good soundwise vs the regular Japanese competition...??

As always...just curious....

P.S. I love that first shop Photo, very friendly looking 70's sort of facade....across time & space it makes me want to wander in and check it out...

Click to expand...

Quadraflex, on the other hand, was junk.

This would be the PS store on Convoy Street in San Diego, CA circa 1985-86. Tony Neel (answer my FB note!) was assistant manager and this was probably 45 seconds after closing time! I worked there for nearly a year while also working for the company I work for today. The Wherehouse was next door and the first compact discs I bought were Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense and Rush - Power Windows. The latter was very effective in the speaker demo room. I loved the very loud clear digital oomph of Manhattan Project and those big Infinity towers. This is when and where I discovered Proton's DPD power scheme that defied it's low wattage rating. Headroom? Plenty.

PARTY!! A typical PS get together. Anybody got wacky bats??

And then there were the incendiary foam grilles. There was an industrywide recall of these, because they proved to be highly flammable. JBL, etc provided us with lots of replacement grilles on a timely basis. For Quadraflex, we were told to confiscate the grilles from the customer and then tell them that we didn't have the replacement grilles in stock. How to win friends... :howl

Dick Schram, who sourced all of our proprrietary "house brand" components. He is seen here with a Parasound piece. Dick founded Parasound after leaving Pacific.

CBS, our parent company, was always keeping their eye on us.

Calibre, the last addition to our house brand lines. I still have the 225 that I bought for my parents. Second in quality to Concept. Mine is the front channels on my Quad system, with a Marantz 2440 as the rear amp/decoder. Calibre 240 had more wattage and built-in Dolby.

Transaudio 7200 receiver We sold them packaged with two Transaudio speakers and a BSR turntable for $299. How good could they be?




Transaudio 1800 belt drive turntable. I have one of these on my second system.

Concept 2QD turntable atop Concept 16.5 Receiver:


Concept ELC II Cassette Deck:


ELC:

Quad Linda said:

CBS, our parent company, was always keeping their eye on us.
View attachment 6001

Click to expand...

AKA "bug".

I really like the look of that Concept ELC II Cassette deck, reminds me of the top end late 70's Pioneer decks. There must be very very few of these Concept decks left now, I've never seen a photo of one before.

Does anyone know if Dick Schram designed this stuff himself and had it custom made, or did he just send out an general idea of what he wanted, and one of the major Japanese brands did all the design work as an OEM thing..??

It was outsourced by various Japanese manufacturers, as was his Parasound gear. None of our proprietary products were marketed in an other country outside the US.

Quadrockasaurus said:

I really like the look of that Concept ELC II Cassette deck, reminds me of the top end late 70's Pioneer decks. There must be very very few of these Concept decks left now, I've never seen a photo of one before.

Does anyone know if Dick Schram designed this stuff himself and had it custom made, or did he just send out an general idea of what he wanted, and one of the major Japanese brands did all the design work as an OEM thing..??

Click to expand...

Wow, Pacific Stereo!! Boy do I miss you. I actually have large Concept speakers (to go with my Concept Receiver) and they need new grills or fabric. They're molting foam from the back and the facing fabric is decomposing. So I've been wondering if it's worth money and effort to refresh them or whether to go with something smaller. Opinions?

Concept is among the BEST stuff we sold. The speakers are made by ESS. What model speakers and receiver do you have?

Welcome to QQ.

Thanks for the reply. My receiver is a 5.5, speakers are CE-2.





Concept is among the BEST stuff we sold. The speakers are made by ESS. What model speakers and receiver do you have?

Welcome to QQ.[/QUOTE]