2020 Hindsight: 50 Years of Quadishness

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Quad Linda

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This thread has been in the works since January. Now seemed like the perfect time to unleash it.

Please share your 1970 experiences, or your favorite music (any format, incl. 2ch) and/or Quad gear. If you weren't there, feel free to discuss your fave 1970 releases. Have Fun!!

It was 1970. My first exposure to Surround Sound, aka Quad.
I was in high school. Did they have electricity back then? Yes, but it was a new invention!!

Had a '65 Chevy 283 V8 under the hood. No pollution gear. Even used to change my own oil & filters. You couldn't pay me enough to do that now!! Used to drag race on the county backroads. Hey, is there a statute of limitations on drag racing?

Did landscaping in the summer for a friend whose house was "Playboy Pad of the Month." The article listed one of his friends as owner, so he wouldn't get bothered. House burned down in early 2000's.

Used to shoot pool at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, WI. How'd that happen when I was 16? It was only 20 miles up the road. A gold key card somehow found its' way to my mailbox. Shit Happens!

Even got served alcohol in many establishments in Wisconsin. 4 to 1 gin martinis and gimlets. Lots of beer. 18 was legal there at that time. Hacker Brau and Pschorr Brau were two different beers at that point. How about that, beer hounds?

It was the first time I had heard Quad. AND I WAS BLOWN AWAY!! Still am... And it was in my own house!!

Two Chicago FM stations simulcast for Quad. One station did the fronts. The other did the rears. Just an experimental broadcast, not a regular thing. I brought my Dad's system into my room and set it up as the rear channels. Vanguard reels were the source of the entire program. INSTANT QUAD! Just add 4 speakers.

It would be two more years before I bought my first Quad record. In three years, I would begin buying Quad gear and every piece of Quad software I was interested in.

I subscribed to Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Audio (Lirpa!!), and Radio Electronics. Stereo Review gave away RCA "flexi discs" of Nilsson & John Denver inserted in their mag!

My bookshelf also had Allied Radio, Lafayette, Newark, Allied Electronics, Olson, Fairchild Semiconductor and Radio Shack catalogs.

Built a workbench in the basement, so that I could leave things I was working on. Then, I could come back to it without cluttering up Dad's workbench, or having to set up all over again. Mounted 2 6x9 speakers in the ceiling above the bench.

Soldered several times/week. I probably haven't soldered anything in the last five years! Had a vice mounted to the workbench. "Vice? I have no vice. I'm as pure as the driven snow." - Jerome "Curly" Howard.

Got my second cassette machine. Stereo this time. Got my first color TV, Sony 12." KV-1212: KV-1212 Television Sony Corporation; Tokyo, build 1972, 5 pi

It had a better picture than any non-HD set I ever bought. Trinitron! Also had a far better pic than Dad's RCA color set.

Built a switchbox w/rotary switch and some toggle switches. 2 tape monitors, dubbing, stereo/mono switch. My Dad made the case for me. 7 years later, I bought a prototype Russound QT-1 Quad switcher from Gaylord Russell himself.

Korvettes near Chicago was my main record source. They had just opened their 6th store here in Arlington Heights, IL. I also bought lots of LP's from Brookfield Music in Brookfield Square mall in Brookfield, WI (Milwaukee). It also had Allied Radio, before and after it merged with Radio Shack. It was far better before the merger. Radio Doctors in Milwaukee and Rose Records in Chicago were also places I shopped.

I drooled at Quad gear at Allied, Polk Brothers (Chicago) and Flanner & Hafoos (Wauwatosa, WI.) Sansui, Fisher and early Q8 & Q4's were on display and I couldn't afford any of it. Drat!

Music I listened to and owned in 1970:
Dreams (Brecker Bros., Billy Cobham, John Abercrombie!)
Don Ellis at Fillmore
Phil Ochs Greatest Hits (an album of NEW MATERIAL!)
Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel
Chicago II
Ladies of the Canyon - Joni Mitchell
World's Greatest Blues Singer - Bessie Smith
You Never Know Who Your Friends Are - Al Kooper
Blood, Sweat & Tears 3
Stillness - Sergio Mendes
Christmas and the Beads of Sweat - Laura Nyro
Bach Organ Favorites Vol. 4 - E. Power Biggs
Marrying Maiden - It's a Beautiful Day (Jerry Garcia guests)
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
Tchaikovsky : Symphony #6 - Ormandy/Philadelphia
Benefit - Jethro Tull
Abraxas - Santana
Bitches Brew - Miles
Harry - Nilsson
Tumbleweed Connection - Elton John
 
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🤯 So damn hip Quad Goddess!!!

It may take me months just to dredge up anything close to that kind of detail for 1970 (if it's not just altogether gone even.)

And my life didn't really start coming into focus until 1974 when I joined the military; which evidently snapped me out of my youthful haze.

Will ponder...
 
Five months for you to create and organize your thoughts and now we need to put those (very) old brain cells to use after all these years of dormancy. OK, I'll take the challenge but I must admit, I'll need the web to help refresh my memory of that specific year. For some reason, the early 70's are all mixed together as one great music time in my head.
 
One of my cherished memories, was a present I received from my parents for Christmas 1970 (age 16).
George Harrisons- All Things Must Pass.
I still have it.
Heavily scratched and battered through so many years of listening and lending to friends.
Will we see a surround version this year?
I already have up mixes of it.
In my opinion it hasn't aged one bit...wish I could say the same...although still young at heart.

Great recollections Linda.

(Only started getting into surround music around 2010!!)
 
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It wasn't the creation that took the time. I didn't want to post this in the middle of the conversion. Life has become complicated. It's a window into a bygone era.

Has it REALLY been 50 years?
Yup 50 years for me too. In fact November in 1970. I had read an article by J. Gordon Holt titled Hafler vs Scheiber: Four Channels on Disc. I have always been an electronics tinkerer, probably in another life time as well, so this article really intrigued me. I didn't have a quad record but I did have a spare speaker & a stereo record of Switched on Bach. I lashed that third speaker up in the differenceing mode and BOOM my head exploded with the magic it brought to plain 'ol stereo. Probably if I played something less adventurous than SoB I would not have been blown away as much. Since that day I have always, always had some sort of surround/quad set up.

May I ask what got your attention/interest up to give the FM set up a try?
 
One of the radio stations participating advertised it. Fortunately, we had the gear in our house to make that happen. I was eager to check out Quad. My life would never be the same.

I had been buying only 2ch albums after '64. Only in the last 20 years did I begin to collect mono mixes. They were things that I owned on 2ch for a long time. Mono mixes are novelty for me. Not my preferred way to listen. I'd rather listen to surround, or at least 2ch.
 
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.......... and one day you find 50 years have got behind you! :eek:

Late 1969, early 1970 I discovered Jimi Hendrix, Cream etc. so 12/13 and I got into Electronics, wanted to build stuff for music, then heard about Quad but wasn't sure what it could do, then it was circa 1972 when Practical Electronics published a design to build a Quad Amp and it was wow this looks good. My first Quad was Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" as an SQ LP but I didn't get to hear it in Quad until 1977 when at Uni I built a basic decoder, then I bought as many SQ LPs as I could find (and afford) then Quad vanished. Then in 2001-ish I discovered SACD & DVD-A and my fanatical devotion to surround restarted!
 
It wasn't the creation that took the time. I didn't want to post this in the middle of the conversion. Life has become complicated. It's a window into a bygone era.

Has it REALLY been 50 years?
Time is relative...
maybe that's why I got the Laugh In DVD box even though I was a 6 year old little lion...it got even LESS funny when I arrived in New Orleans last year and I remembered the terminal like it was the other day -- when we were travelling stand-by cause my Dad worked for Eastern and some nuns got there late and they threw us out so we had to hang around until the next flight...it's closed now but I got to see it again a few times before that...
NOLA Airport.png
 
In 1970 I was still in high school and never dreamed that I’d be listening to surround music 50 years later with 11 speakers and two subwoofers (7.2.4) or I could watch a concert on a TV with bigger than 26”. Or that I could play any album instantly with a remote control or I’d spend hours ‘chatting’ to others on a hand held device.

Back then I listened to an old valve radio in my bedroom (AM only) but my dad had a nice HiFi system so my dream was to one day have my own HiFi and turntable.

My dad bought me a cassette player (Weighed about 2lbs and the size of a brick) and I used to record songs from the radio onto it (via a microphone!) and I could play my favourite tracks later. This was just the start (little did I know...)

I couldn’t get enough of George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord. What a song! Bad finger: No Matter What. Credence and The Guess Who too. Santana. I’ve been a guitar music freak ever since.
 
You asked for it QL, so here's my story.....

Ever since I was a little kid I've been one of those gullible morons who fell for all of the hype advertising for whatever was the newest and greatest technology "thing" that came out in the electronics world. My wife would be the first to remind me of all of the bandwagons I've jumped on over the years. It's really not worth going through them all, as it's a sad story as you can imagine.

Anyway, as a teenager in the late '60s, music was an undeniably important part of one's life. Music was your best friend and the artist you "adopted" became your close mates, in your head anyway. You would defend them to the death to those who didn't hear what you heard. We would share albums and listen in groups - yes, friends would come over, sit in your living room and quietly LISTEN to a whole album. All the way through! Egad! The horror.

Anyway, I entered the US Navy in 1972 for many reasons, and was home on leave when my Mom told me that she wanted to get a new stereo for the living room, and would I go check one out. OH YEAH! AYFKM? I remember I went straight to Lafayette Electronics, and picked out an LA-84 amp and companion tuner to create a nice quad setup. I figured I'd go for it.

Sadly, I was shot down due to cost, but that started my quad bug. While in the service as an Aviation Electronics Technician, I used the GI Bill and signed up for that Cleveland Institute of Electronics course, and one of the deals with that was I got to build a Heathkit Color TV! Very Cool. I remember it was pretty big. Anyway, when that was done I wanted more, so I went to the local Heathkit store (yes, they had those) and bought one of their quad receiver kits and built that. Prior to that move I had heard a fellow sailor's demo of a quad reel playback of "Snowflakes are Dancing". His system was big, he had 4, yes 4 Bose 901 speakers hanging from chains in his apartment, and that monster TEAC reel to reel playing Tomita. That was all I needed to go down the sad and lonely quad road.

A year or so later I got assigned to a carrier in the Med, was unleashed in the military audio store in Naples, Italy where I bought a Sansui QRX-999 and the rest is history.
 
You asked for it QL, so here's my story.....

Ever since I was a little kid I've been one of those gullible morons who fell for all of the hype advertising for whatever was the newest and greatest technology "thing" that came out in the electronics world. My wife would be the first to remind me of all of the bandwagons I've jumped on over the years. It's really not worth going through them all, as it's a sad story as you can imagine.

Anyway, as a teenager in the late '60s, music was an undeniably important part of one's life. Music was your best friend and the artist you "adopted" became your close mates, in your head anyway. You would defend them to the death to those who didn't hear what you heard. We would share albums and listen in groups - yes, friends would come over, sit in your living room and quietly LISTEN to a whole album. All the way through! Egad! The horror.

Anyway, I entered the US Navy in 1972 for many reasons, and was home on leave when my Mom told me that she wanted to get a new stereo for the living room, and would I go check one out. OH YEAH! AYFKM? I remember I went straight to Lafayette Electronics, and picked out an LA-84 amp and companion tuner to create a nice quad setup. I figured I'd go for it.

Sadly, I was shot down due to cost, but that started my quad bug. While in the service as an Aviation Electronics Technician, I used the GI Bill and signed up for that Cleveland Institute of Electronics course, and one of the deals with that was I got to build a Heathkit Color TV! Very Cool. I remember it was pretty big. Anyway, when that was done I wanted more, so I went to the local Heathkit store (yes, they had those) and bought one of their quad receiver kits and built that. Prior to that move I had heard a fellow sailor's demo of a quad reel playback of "Snowflakes are Dancing". His system was big, he had 4, yes 4 Bose 901 speakers hanging from chains in his apartment, and that monster TEAC reel to reel playing Tomita. That was all I needed to go down the sad and lonely quad road.

A year or so later I got assigned to a carrier in the Med, was unleashed in the military audio store in Naples, Italy where I bought a Sansui QRX-999 and the rest is history.

You are killing me with the Bose hanging from chains comments. I too was exposed (not mine) to a quad setup locally in a small town called Fairbury (which we lovingly called Furburger)...ahem. That dude had the exact same setup...hanging from ropes, not chains. But damn.....I've never been so enamored with a setup as his. Ah, the memories.
 
What can I say, Quad Linda? You were one badass young lady!!!

Unfortunately, I was never exposed to quad back then. I was 13 and lucky enough to have an older brother who was and still is a massive music lover. Through him and his influence, 1970 yielded an enormous smorgasbord of mind-blowing music by an amazing assortment of young and innovative bands:

Santana, CCR, Zep, TYA, Tull, Chicago, Savoy Brown, Steppenwolf, Grand Funk Railroad, Frijid Pink, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Eric Burdon & War, Mountain, the Guess Who, Sugarloaf, Sabbath, the Allman Brothers - and the list goes on and on.

It was simply pure magic to my young ears. Even AM radio in 1970 played a ton of decent songs by these and other bands - something that would never happen today.
 
1970 was the year I was introduced to quad and the year I first encoded some matrix quad.

I built a Dynaco diamond in July of 1970 shortly after I read the Hafler article in Audio Magazine. I was blown away even though I had no quad records.

I also got my Collaro TSC-640/F200 used in 1970. In modified form, it is still my favorite turntable.

I also sat down after reading of the Scheiber system in an article and sketched out 3 possibilities.
1. The first sketch was SQ, a year before Columbia thought of it.
2. The second was CD-4. I rejected it.
3. The third really was the Scheiber system, 2 months before details were published.

I decided that sketch 3 was the correct one, because it was better for ambience.
I think I still have that piece or paper.

I miss the '57 Chevy we had. We had it for 21 years.

I had just graduated high school and was starting college.

I did light shows for local bands and fixed record changers.

In November 1970, a friend asked me if there was a way to synchronize 5 tape recorders. The local high school wanted a way to make ghost voices come from around the auditorium for a play.

I did it with the Dynaco Diamond, one stereo tape recorder, a stereo amplifier, and 4 huge stage speakers. I designed my own encoder. The play happened in February 1971. We had ghost voices, thunder, and other sound effects.

I bought one quad record (The Ovation sampler) in 1971 and got two more free (the Dynaco demonstration record and an SQ demo disc sent by Ben Bauer). I also have several records that worked very well on the Dynaco Diamond:

The Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles: Let it Be
Melanie: Candles in the Rain (good soundfield)
Simon and Garfunkel: Sounds of Silence
The Groovin' Strings and Things
Several classical albums.
There was one classical album I have where the main orchestra is in the back.

I also subscribed to Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Audio, Popular Electronics, and Radio Electronics. I had all of those catalogs too. Tell Dr. Lirpa that I am running an octophonic system (but it has 4 corners and 4 sides, not the corners of a stop sign).

I still build electronic projects. Most of them I design myself. I just hope I can still get parts. My supplier closed for the lockdown and I wonder if they will open again.

I built an SQ decoder that goes after the power amplifier like a Dynaquad.

My second cassette machine was a changer. My first CD player was a changer.

I have been to that Korvettes when I stayed in Palatine for a convention! I saw a record I wanted there, but because I was flying home, I could not buy it there. It took me 20 years to find that record again.

I couldn't afford any quad gear either. I made my own. I still can't afford anything expensive. I do have a TASCAM Portastudio, several mixers, and studio software. I designed an RM encoder that plugs into 4-bus mixers. I have even done surround sound events with live bands and DJs.
 
Used to shoot pool at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, WI.
I used to shoot skeet there a couple years after you. In 1970 I was winning hearts and minds in sunny South Viet Nam. .
Enjoyed your memories, mine are much the same, living on the near west side of Chicago for 60 years until retirement and moving to Central FL.
Here's a pic of me around 1975 with my Marantz 2270 and the 2440 QuadRadial Adapter under it. It did SQ if I remember right and CD4 if you had the extra plugin module if I remember right. I never did get that module. :(
Those were the days. LOL
Marantz1976.jpg
 
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