theorbscureddj
Member
I'm far too young to remember the all but brief heyday of the various quadraphonic formats that graced the music listening public here in the UK, but later on, during my time as a Mike Oldfield fan, later fanzine editor (which went on to become part of the official Mike Oldfield fanzine in the early 1990’s) the topic of Mike and his foray into multichannel releases of his early catalogue was something any collector of Mile's material would have been aware of. Indeed, QS versions of Tubular Bells, Ommadawn, Boxed and Exposed still grace my vinyl collection, but I'd never had the opportunity to spin them on dedicated equipment. The advent of multichannel 5.1 DVD-A then ensured that the chances of me sampling these early vinyl records would be put very much on the back burner… until now...
As part of my regular trawls through eBay, a rare search for quadraphonic records and equipment led me to a “But It Now” advert for a complete JVC DF19E full 4-channel console CD-4 system which, according to the advert, has the ability to also play SQ & QS formats. Great, I thought, finally a single solution to enable me to play my QS encoded discs on! Before I carry on with my story, here are a selection of the better photos, taken from the eBay auction, showing the system in question:
At £350 ($460) collected, it seemed reasonable and the seller was sure that it was in full working order and the cartridge had less than 30 hours use. But on closer inspection, even though it was a UK listing, I found that it was located some 370+ miles (600km) away from me in South London, with the seller being situated in Dundee, Scotland. Now I realise that for some of you guys across the pond, that’s a local trip up the road, but for somebody who doesn’t drive, that pretty much put an end to the idea. Or that is what I thought… By a remarkable twist of fate, a member on another forum (Paul/Maverick on the WAM) noted my disappointment on a Quadraphonic thread there and suggested that as he was travelling to Dundee and could pick it up for me and get it 200 miles south to Huddersfield. OK, that still left 170 miles to go, but as he was able to offer safe dry storage, it seemed too good an offer to turn down.
So this is where I am now. Paul kindly collected the unit and as can be seen by the photos below, its now sat in storage waiting for me to arrange collection from him.
The longer term plan, once its been tested, is for the whole system to be exhibited at the WAM Scalford HiFi Show, in March 2018, with a view to enable visitors with Quad discs bring them along and enjoy them, perhaps for the very first time. As previously mentioned, I already have a selection of QS encoded discs and a nice clean looking copy of the QudraSound CD-4 Tubular Bells arrived from Canada (via Discogs) this week. I also have around 15 CD-4 discs saved on my Discogs (grabbed from the CD-4 test disc thread here) want list and plan to grab them once the unit arrives and tests as working.
So I’ll update this thread with my journey to bring quad to the 2-channel masses
As part of my regular trawls through eBay, a rare search for quadraphonic records and equipment led me to a “But It Now” advert for a complete JVC DF19E full 4-channel console CD-4 system which, according to the advert, has the ability to also play SQ & QS formats. Great, I thought, finally a single solution to enable me to play my QS encoded discs on! Before I carry on with my story, here are a selection of the better photos, taken from the eBay auction, showing the system in question:
At £350 ($460) collected, it seemed reasonable and the seller was sure that it was in full working order and the cartridge had less than 30 hours use. But on closer inspection, even though it was a UK listing, I found that it was located some 370+ miles (600km) away from me in South London, with the seller being situated in Dundee, Scotland. Now I realise that for some of you guys across the pond, that’s a local trip up the road, but for somebody who doesn’t drive, that pretty much put an end to the idea. Or that is what I thought… By a remarkable twist of fate, a member on another forum (Paul/Maverick on the WAM) noted my disappointment on a Quadraphonic thread there and suggested that as he was travelling to Dundee and could pick it up for me and get it 200 miles south to Huddersfield. OK, that still left 170 miles to go, but as he was able to offer safe dry storage, it seemed too good an offer to turn down.
So this is where I am now. Paul kindly collected the unit and as can be seen by the photos below, its now sat in storage waiting for me to arrange collection from him.
The longer term plan, once its been tested, is for the whole system to be exhibited at the WAM Scalford HiFi Show, in March 2018, with a view to enable visitors with Quad discs bring them along and enjoy them, perhaps for the very first time. As previously mentioned, I already have a selection of QS encoded discs and a nice clean looking copy of the QudraSound CD-4 Tubular Bells arrived from Canada (via Discogs) this week. I also have around 15 CD-4 discs saved on my Discogs (grabbed from the CD-4 test disc thread here) want list and plan to grab them once the unit arrives and tests as working.
So I’ll update this thread with my journey to bring quad to the 2-channel masses
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