So tell me, What got you interested in Quad?

[Q-Eight]

Curious to see what everybody else's fascination with quad stems from! I guess I'll go first:

While I'm too young to have been around to experience quad in it's hey-day, I had never really experienced quad until I'd built my own little system. But, my first exposure to quad goes back to high school. Being the outcast that I was, I spent numerous hours in the library and that's where I stumbled across an old book that talked all about "Hi Fi" systems. The book went on into detail about the "newest" quadraphonic systems of Tape, SQ and CD-4. The name of the book escapes me at the moment but I remember it being quite a read.

Since I've always been into 70's rock and mostly ANYTHING having to do with the 60's and 70's (Big muscle car fan here too) I had quite the extensive 8-track collection. One day, going thru the record/tape/book store we have in town, I was digging thru the stacks of 8-tracks and found my first quad tape!

"Burt Bacharach's Reach Out"

I was fascinated by it, plunked down all of 50 cents for it and ran to my Honda to try it out. It was then that I realized ya needs a special player for these suckers! DOH!

Fast forward 4 or 5 years and I'd gotten a job, got rid of my Honda, my father had died (and left me a healthy inheritance), there was a '73 AMC Javelin in my garage and a whole lotta money. By this time, ebay was the rage, and I'd been buying stereo 8-tracks and LP's off ebay. One day I stumbled upon my Burt Bacharach Q8 and decided "I want to hear quad!"

Since this is getting a little long winded, I'll wind it up! My entire quad system was built mostly with ebay purchases, except the speakers, reel-to-reel and Panasonic CD-4 demod. Now, I've got 50+ Quad 8's, a couple of home-brew quad reels, about 5 CD-4 records and 10 SQ records .... and two cars are equipped with mobile quad!! My friends think I'm a retard and think I should junk it all and buy a CD player. Nuts to that! I don't need another copy of the "White Album" kicking around!!

So, what's your story?

 

[BrownRB]

I got into quad in real time as it came out. Built a system with Heathkit components, KEF speakers, Lafayette SQ-W and later added a Sansui QSD-2. Friends were amazed at the sound, but only one friend out of many went quad. Cost and where to put the rear speakers were the main reasons they didn't go for it.

 

[Scottmoose]

I first became actively interested following a magazine article some years ago -I think it was in Hifi Choice about synthing surround from stereo. Prior to that, one of my former neighbours had a moderate quad system which I remembered enjoying as a child. The fact that stereo never sounded ideal to my ears also might have had something to do with it, as the notion of surround always made more sense to me, and, being of the historical persuasion, I wondered how it all started, and the whole tale of the rise and fall of quadraphonics fascinated me enough to want to try it out for myself.
I won't be going back, that's for certain.

 

[Cai Campbell]

Five words: Dark Side of the Moon.

 

[bizmopeen]

Five words: Dark Side of the Moon.

Same here. I missed the "glory days" of quad, but back in the early 80's heard this LP decoded over the quad setup in the local record emporium/head shop. It blew me away, and this was in SQ, no less!!! I've beens a frothing lunatic about the subject ever since...

 

[winopener]

Blown away as a kid in long gone 1973 with a SQ Caravanserai played on a Grundig hifi setup; then nothing else - quad had been a very short-lived issue in Italy, confirmed by the real scarcity of italian quad releases - until, diggin' for quad back again some years ago, i stumbled across DTS and then found the Quad world on the net. Got some DTS cd... the rest is history.
And for sure i'm not going back to 2 speaker anytime!

 

[Quadrophenia]

I had a similar experience to Q-Eight's in many ways. In 7th or 8th grade I turned up a book in the library about audio that looked interesting. I had missed the quad era so this would have been the late 80s I suppose. It talked all the new 4 channel equipment, and I was blown away, why hadn't I seen any of this stuff? I had half forgotten about quad, and started collecting LPs and 8-tracks in high school. I remembered that Q8s should only have two programs, so had been keeping my eyes open for such tapes, and one day found two....I want to say Leroy Holmes and Loggins and Messina. Of course they were just a novelty as my 2 channel player didn't do much with them. A few years later, it happened....I was on my way to a class a the local community college, and stopped at the thrift store on the way....there I found a Panasonic RE-8190, my first quad reciever! :banana: It had a built in Q8 player, really cool looking tuner where the pointer is stationary and the station numbers are on a rotating drums, one for AM, one for FM.; and of course 4 seperate volume controls. I get it home and want to hook it up, but it says "16 ohm speakers only" and of course I don't have a set of 4 speakers...of any kind. So the next day I take a trip to the local surplus store and get 8 4" 8 ohm speaker, 2 in series for each channel. Not exactly hi-fi, but at this point I'm just experiementing anyway. As time goes on, I collect more tapes and records, I long for a way to make copies of what I've got, and trade with others, and I couldn't see a day when I would replace my 2 channel system completely with 4 channel. Well, I guess this is getting lengthy, long story short, I ended up w/ a DVD-A player and DTS, a bunch of tab's CDs, 2 quad reel recorders , and no desire to ever go back to 2 channels for anything other that some of the '60s vintage I still have. For the longest time I wondered if I'd ever see a day when I could go to the store and buy a new album in surround....

-Dan

 

[dr8track]

I had a similar experience to Q-Eight's in many ways. In 7th or 8th grade I turned up a book in the library about audio that looked interesting. I had missed the quad era so this would have been the late 80s I suppose. It talked all the new 4 channel equipment, and I was blown away, why hadn't I seen any of this stuff? I had half forgotten about quad, and started collecting LPs and 8-tracks in high school. I remembered that Q8s should only have two programs, so had been keeping my eyes open for such tapes, and one day found two....I want to say Leroy Holmes and Loggins and Messina. Of course they were just a novelty as my 2 channel player didn't do much with them. A few years later, it happened....I was on my way to a class a the local community college, and stopped at the thrift store on the way....there I found a Panasonic RE-8190, my first quad reciever! :banana: It had a built in Q8 player, really cool looking tuner where the pointer is stationary and the station numbers are on a rotating drums, one for AM, one for FM.; and of course 4 seperate volume controls. I get it home and want to hook it up, but it says "16 ohm speakers only" and of course I don't have a set of 4 speakers...of any kind. So the next day I take a trip to the local surplus store and get 8 4" 8 ohm speaker, 2 in series for each channel. Not exactly hi-fi, but at this point I'm just experiementing anyway. As time goes on, I collect more tapes and records, I long for a way to make copies of what I've got, and trade with others, and I couldn't see a day when I would replace my 2 channel system completely with 4 channel. Well, I guess this is getting lengthy, long story short, I ended up w/ a DVD-A player and DTS, a bunch of tab's CDs, 2 quad reel recorders , and no desire to ever go back to 2 channels for anything other that some of the '60s vintage I still have. For the longest time I wondered if I'd ever see a day when I could go to the store and buy a new album in surround....

-Dan

I got interested in quad when it first came out. I spotted a TOYO Quadio quad car deck in the Sears catalog and I had to have it. So, I saved my pennies, ordered it and installed it in my 67 Camaro. This was around 1971. I lived in a town with a population of 5,000, so my quad system was definitely a hit with my friends. I think I'm safe to say that I was the only teenager in town w/ a quad car stereo. Edgar Winter's Frankenstein was one of the most memorable tapes I had at the time.

 

[proufo]

I was for the first time in my life in a position to get a good system and Quad was the latest rage. The concept was very appealing to a young man and the promise of special effects gave me huge kicks.

I later became frustrated with the limitations of the technology and the scarcity of quad albums.

And then I discovered just plain music.

 

[Bob Romano]

My dad and I were at Polk Brothers (a department store in Chicago) and we heard the Zenith Allegro quad system. It had a turntable, AM/FM, and a quad 8track. We bought Chicago II, Best Of Buddy Rich, and a few others and I was blown away by being able to hear the horns pretty much separated from the rest of the band. I was hooked. But eventually the stereo bit the dust and quad was dead. When I found out about DTS and DTS conversions of the quad stuff I freaked!! It was like being 12 or 13 years old all over again. That was about 3 years ago now and I am still going crazy looking for the conversions and surround music in general (I really can't afford what a quad 8/quad reel would cost now so I have to settle for the next best thing )

 

[quadgdiaz]

My dad and I were at Polk Brothers (a department store in Chicago) and we heard the Zenith Allegro quad system. It had a turntable, AM/FM, and a quad 8track. We bought Chicago II, Best Of Buddy Rich, and a few others and I was blown away by being able to hear the horns pretty much separated from the rest of the band. I was hooked. But eventually the stereo bit the dust and quad was dead. When I found out about DTS and DTS conversions of the quad stuff I freaked!! It was like being 12 or 13 years old all over again. That was about 3 years ago now and I am still going crazy looking for the conversions and surround music in general (I really can't afford what a quad 8/quad reel would cost now so I have to settle for the next best thing )

i got into Quad late in the game 1974 i was working for Fed Mart in Calexico when they finally stock some Q8's, i bought a LLoyd's AM/FM phono & Q8 player with 4 little speakers and i was hook. bought some more Q8's and SQ & CD-4's but i wasn't happy with the phono at all so i gave up on records, i bought a 1970 OPEL GT and installed a under dash Pioneer Q8 player. by 1978 i wasn't able to find any more Q8 tapes at the Valley . i move to San Diego in 1979 found this place called Swap a Tape and the guy had 100's of Q8, got some more tapes, then the guy died and the place closed , 1980 i gave up quad totally.sold most of my stuff but kept my Q8's and quad records. i don't know why ??????? then in 1993 meet Quadbob thru a newspaper add that he was looking for quad stuff. gave him a call to sell him my Q8 tapes, after we talked for hours and listening to his quad set up . i end up buying a home Q8 player and some Q8,s and the rest is history. thanks Gerardo

 

[Obbop]

If my feeble memory is correct it was the B-1 building on the Subic Bay Naval Base that housed an incredible amount of audio equipment sold by the Navy Exchange.

Reduced prices; 40-60% less than USA prices and no tax.

Due to money and space limitations I bought a Pioneer stereo system with a Technics SL-1300 turntable. I priced the same system in the USA for $1,300. That was in 1975 dollars, folks..... back when a new car could be bought for $2,800!!!!!

But, while drooling inside that building i stared in admiration at all the top-of-the-line quad stuff. It was beautiful!!!! Marantz, Sony, Pioneer, Sansui, and a dozen more brands.

Very few of us young sailors bought quad stuff. First there was the price. Then, we had to haul the stuff to the ship, find a place to stick it, hail it back to the states, haul it off the ship, take it home or to an apartment, then, every time we moved we knew it would all need to be hauled around again.

Knowing that most of us decided to stick with stereo. Hey!!! We were young and mobile!!!!

The years passed and quad slipped out of my mind until that day in 1993 when I espied an Am/FM Q8 unit in the Starvation Army store. "Wow!!!!!" I yelled aloud inside my mind, "An old quad unit!!!!" Paying the $15 I bought the Masterworks unit and rushed home and hooked it up. Whoops!!! Need a couple more speakers!!!! And, a quad vinyl record to play on the Technics SL-1300 I still had from the 1975 purchase and still use today.

A couple hours of poking around led to a various artists quad LP and 2 more speakers. Hooked it up and positioned the speakers. Black Magic Woman rotated around my head. I knew the unit was not of the highest caliber but I was enthralled with the music's movement.

Thus began the procurement of quad, delayed from the "golden years" for the reasons mentioned.

Time and patience led to a large collection of Q8s, a quad R-R, a Sansui QRX-9001, and assorted goodies. By 1995 I was set-up as well as most but lacked the highest-end stuff such as a Tate.

However, in 1996 or so, tiring of messing with this and that the collection was sold off.... most but not all of it. The early days of eBay brought top dollar for the vinyl... even the common stuff that doesn't sell at all today brought good money in 1996 since there wasn't all that much quad stuff being sold on eBay..... at least compared to the last few years when the amound of quad offerings greatly increased.

Today I mostly go for synthesizing a surround sound using a 2 channel Circle Surround processor that feeds into my 9001's Vario-Matrix decoder. I do have around 20 burned CDs with encoded SQ and QS I play now and then. But, the tapes and their players are gone. Only 6 vinyl quad LPs remain, and the Technics SL-1300 TT just keeps on revolving........ likely to outlive me.

 

[soesbeout]

My first overseas trip I didn't buy anything,not enough room on a destroyer.Returned home and listened to shipmates QRX-6500 with four monster Sansui speakers and that was it, I was hooked like I was on crack.
Got transfered to an Ammo ship, hit the Philippines when the QRX-7500 just came out and bought it at the PX,along with 4 Sansui speakers, brought it all back on ship.It's just the wife and I at home now, and I took one the kids rooms to set it all up(she hated the size of that receiver).I have had more time to hunt Lps now,have about 25 quad one's.Been transferring the SQ stuff to CD's,I think its the one of best hobbies one can have.

 

[john e. bogus]

In the early 1980's, I was just starting to collect live tapes. There was a radio station in the small town that I lived in at the time that had a weekly "record collecting show", hosted by a collector who would share rare and unusual recordings with the audience....since he often played live tapes, and I had very few trading connections at the time, I called him up and asked him if he wanted to trade some material. I suddenly found myself over at his house quite often, spending hours BSing about music. One day he decided to turn me onto quad material, explaning that quad records were not only collectable because they were quad (fewer pressed), but also that many of them were mixed differently if played back in stereo and the pressing quality was better. I remember that he was running a V15 (can't remember the turntable), Marantz 4270, and 4 massive identical EPI speakers. He set Paranoid on the turntable, cranked up the volume, and flipped a switch about 30 seconds into War Pigs, suddenly filling the room with glorious discrete surround.....when that extra bass track came out of one of the rear speakers and kicked me in the head, I was astounded that there was so much more to the music than I had ever imagined. By the time we were halfway through Overnite Sensation, I knew I eventually HAD to have one of these things. He soon found another *mint* copy of Paranoid and sold it to me for around $6....for years it was the only quad recording in my collection, and it's been agonizing to only listen to it in stereo for over 20 years. I never personally met anyone else who was set up for quad. I tried connecting rear speakers out of phase, but never found that to really do it for me....and I never saw any used quad equipment for sale locally. My craving for hearing good hifi quad again was shelved until meeting my wife a couple of years ago....she had (still has) a mid-fi Kenwood receiver with a couple little buttons for "dolby prologic" and "dolby 3" and a moderate 5.0 speaker setup. I thought that hearing movie soundtracks in surround was pretty neat, but wondering why those buttons didn't do anything for music led me to start searching for information online. Lo and behold, I discovered lots of information....and lots of old quad equipment for sale. So now I have a JVC 4-dd5, a QRX-6001 that I just started restoring, and a 4 track cassette deck for taping live shows in quad. Next few items will be a new power supply and Ortofon for my good 'ol Thorens (which has been mothballed since the power supply went up in the early 1990's....can't wait to finally start listening to my VINYL again!), building an SQ encoder, getting set up with a new digital MC preamp, disc player (sure glad that I held out and never bought a CD player or CD's....wow, I wasn't the only one in the world?), and being able to record digitally in MC. Maybe someday I'll run into a couple of broken Tates and be able to assemble one good one out of them, and I'd also like to experiment with ambisonics too. I think it's wonderful that quad has now been reborn in quality digital formats, and that quad titles are being reissued.....so now, over 20 years after that first quad experience, I'm finally able to jump right in with both feet as quickly and deeply as finances will permit! My collection of music in quad is slowly growing, and of course will continue to do so.....

Yours Truly,
john e. bogus

 

[sspsandy]

My first introduction to quad was in late 1973 while in high school I made the acquaintance of a gentleman who was putting together an alternative radio station here in NJ, (WEFP for Earth Family Project). This guy had state of the art quadraphonic equipment with 4 enormous JBL speakers, 2 high end turntables, one for matrix, the other for CD-4, a four track reel to reel, Phase Linear amp and preamp, the Pioneer receiver with the x shaped meters just for radio. This dude was an audio engineer, so the whole system was hot rodded out. It was set up in the front upstairs room of a Victorian row house with two recliners side by side facing out the gabled windows and was referred to as "The Spaceship" (it was like sitting on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise). Every wall in this whole upstairs was stacked floor to ceiling with milk crates filled with albums, any band you could think of was in there, all their albums as well as rare bootlegs etc. Probably 10,000 albums or more. Not to mention reels, since quad was being broadcast he had hours of shows archived to reel. There used to be some awesome quad parties at this place.
Fast forward to 2 years ago, after only listening to stereo from 1977 on (I had left NJ for traveling around), I was at a friend's house here in NJ, and noticed he had a Marantz 4270 receiver that was being used for stereo. We talked about getting it set-up for quad, and ultimately got a demodulator and SQA-1 module, as well as some quad lp's to try it out. It was awesome, just like we had remembered from the 70's. So I ultimately set out to build my own quad setup. Went from adding a Pioneer rear channel amp/decoder to my trusty Marantz model 26, upgraded to the Technics SA-6700X receiver with the 4 channel scope, and got ahold of a Tate II. The Tate is easily the best investment of the whole deal, it transforms everything into discrete quad, even TV broadcast. Finally added in DVD-A and SACD players, as well as upgrading the turntables (one for matrix, one for CD-4), is been a lot of fun. Managed to get quite a few quad lps, although I like playing mono lps through the Tate in mono mode, the sound is excellent (many mono lps have alternate mixes too). Now that surround is back in all different forms, it's like the quad era again to the 10th power!

 

[ss9001]

A demo at a Cleveland area audio show in 1972, put on by Sansui: 4 track reel-to-reel recording in a large room with seating, followed by some QS encoded LP's in a smaller gear room. Fresh out of college, on a mission to buy a decent audio system. I was looking for decent stereo and ended up being blown away by 4 channels!

Couldn't afford a Sansui QS receiver, so ended up with a Harmon Kardon 150+, Dual turntable (still have and use), and 4 EPI bookshelfs, Advent-like but less money. Still have the EPI's, too. I use 2 of them as my back channel EX/ES speakers. The H-K had minimal front-rear separation with SQ, so I used it a lot for quad synth. Started buying quad LP's as I found interesting titles.

Bought a H-K 44+ CD4 demodulator in '78. Neither H-K was a great purchase, with the 44+ being DOA out of the box. But I hung in there. I finally graduated to real quad in '79 with a Sansui QRX9001. Upgraded to Magnepan speakers for fronts.

Favorites LP's in these days were DSOTM & WYWH (no surprises), Santana Abraxis, Spaced Out Bach, Grover Washington Jr.'s Soul Box, several Gordon Lightfoot CD-4's, Jefferson Airplane Volunteers & Red Octopus, Paul Simon's Still Crazy after All These Years, Tubular Bells. I even bought some Henry Mancini titles, Sousa marches and the like, Tomita and so it goes. Some Enoch Light big band stuff, but stopped short of getting anything by the Ray Conniff Singers Favorites for QS synth included Eagles One of These Nights and Alan Parsons Project, I Robot. I subscribed to a newsletter "mag" I think it was called Quad Quarterly, or Quad News (?). It may have been put out by Larry Clifton, but not sure. Bought some off-brand titles thru that publication as quad died in the stores. I have to agree that DSOTM was one of the most potent quad recordings of its time. The laughter in Brain Damage to this day cracks me up when I hear it in quad, and no way is the SACD rendition of this song better! Us &Them and Brain Damage rule in SQ!

Never pursued 4 track or Q8 at all. Cassettes only.

Along the way, I got one of the 1st consumer Dolby surround decoders for cinema, by SSI, I believe, and went thru 2 Pioneer Dolby receivers. Which brings me to the present still with the Sansui, a Pioneer Elite 59TXi. Finally got a Audionics S&IC restored this year by QB and it's been great.

Even though I started with H-K gear that wasn't particularly reliable, it's really all Sansui's fault!

 

[JonUrban]

.......... I subscribed to a newsletter "mag" I think it was called Quad Quarterly, or Quad News (?). It may have been put out by Larry Clifton, but not sure. .......

Yes, that was our own 2Q member Larry Clifton!

PS - These are great posts, by the way, keep them up! And "Good Job" to Q-Eight for starting this thread!

 

[QR-GUY]

In the spring of 2002 my mom told me she had found a box of reel to reel tapes in the garage and that she thought there was recordings of me from the early sixties. Wondering what was on the tapes I went out to find a reel to reel machine. I found a Teac 3440 at a pawn shop outside Philadelphia. After getting home I realized that the Teac would not play my 3 3/4 ips tapes. There was a tape left on the machine when I bought it, Enoch Light. Being a musician and having a music studio in my house I hooked up the Teac to my system. What I heard just blew me away. I'm die-hard rock n roller from the 70's and couldn't believe that I was listening to music like that. The sound was out of this world. I was 10 years old when Quad came out but never heard it. After the last two years that I discovered quad I've collected over 60 quad tapes off of Ebay. And thanks to Quadbob and Qps I'm into DTS, DVD-A, and SACD cds and really enjoying it. I know I'm a late bloomer but better late than never. Being a sound junkie I think I'm hooked !!!

 

[The Quadfather]

My story begins with monophonic sound. I started with home built gear made from junk from a radio-TV shop across the street. I aquired an old Bogen tube amplifier which had a dual power amp, but the mixer was monophonic. With some study, I determined that the two channels could be separated, and I set about doing that. I was in Tech school at the time studying Electronics. The stereo connversion was successful, and I was impressed with the improvement in the sound. I had been reading about quad, so I built a vacuum tube decoder based on the Dynaco principle since that was technically easy to manage. Not having the amplification, sadly I never got to hear my creation in a quad setup. I visited a hifi store, Roadrunner Electronics, and asked to hear a quad setup. The lady used an eight track cart, and a Sansui receiver to play what sounded like pure magic to me. However, not having the money, it ended right there. I did get to hear quad, a friend got a quad player for his car. It was several years later when that friend who worked at the afore mentioned radio and TV shop sold me a used Pioneer quad receiver. It was not real impressive in terms of quad, but the sound quality was excellent, and I enjoyed it very much. I set about collecting quad recordings and improving my setup, when i saw this little ad in the back of a hifi magazine written in a hippie kind of font, that advertised a box that would bring my SQ records to life and improve separation over commercially produced quad SQ decoders. So I wrote a letter to Audionics of Oregon, who sent me some literature, and I nearly choked on the price! The lure of the promise was too much and I went to the bank and took a loan out on my car. for $750.00 Audionics gave me a discount, as I pleaded poverty. The banker said that the decoder would lose it's value quickly. I bought the decoder without ever having heard it. I figured it had to be better than the Pioneer's decoder. It was. The Dodge I took out a loan on got it's own quad setup with two Motorola graphic equalizers and 21 inch woofers in the back. Later I converted to Sanyo PAS6050 amplifiers, which I still use on my Clarion system today in my Dodge pickup. (That's Dodge Ram- Eats Fords, Craps Chevys) Anyway, the rest is history, my sound system grew into the monster that it is today. The Ironic thing is that although it has many pieces of Sansui gear, it has no QS decode capability. Anyway, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

The Quadfather

 

[Army]

My story is pretty simple really.
I've been an active member over at Audiokarma.org since last Februay. And have been biten big time by the vintage bug. I recently picked up a Marantz 4400 in need of repair. I would love to hear it the way it was intended to be heard.
I figure this is the place to learn about the Big Quad from the experts
I vaguely remember hearing a few quads when I was in high school which were pretty impressive. Just couldn't afford one then...
So rather than just lurk and steal the info. I thought maybe I'd jump in and make a few new friends here too. I've noticed a few of my AK friends are already here. ( Hi Wiggy )
So here's to meeting old friends and making new " Hi All "
Cheers
Army