WHEN DID EVERYONE GET INVOLVED WITH QUAD , ANY FORMAT AND EQUIPMENT (THIS INCLUDES MODS)

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My first quad album was EV-4 , Enoch Light 4channel Stereo hits , in 1973 .
And then many Columbia (CBS) SQ albums , Santana-Abraxis , Edgar Winter-They Only Come Out At Night , Ten Years After - A Space In Time , Santana -Welcome , Santana -Caravanserai , Johnny Winter- Still Alive And Well , West , Bruce And Laing ,-Why Doncha , Janis Joplin -.Pearl . First QS was Joe Walsh , Smoker You Drink player You Get , Joan Baez - Come From The Shadows , also in SQ Vanguard , Red Buddha , and Country Joe and The Fish - From Haight Ashbury to Woodstock.

Equipment came in Fall 1973 or very early in1974.:

Metrotec Amplifier/Decoder , 4 small JBL'S , Dual Turntable , Shure standard cartridge , soon after upgraded my Amp to a Sony Quad Preamp and a Sony SQA 2030 with Decent SQ matrix and RM .AND STARTED Collecting CD-4 Albums like Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers , Frank Zappa -Apostrophe, and Frank Zappa/Mothers -Overnight Sensation , Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar -Babies , DEEP Purple - Machine Head Doobie Brothers , Captain And Me, plus many more on RCA , Asylum , Doors on Electra , plus others on WEA North America , not long after I purchased a Harmon Kardon 44+ Demodulator and JVC 4MD-20X Shibata cartridge .
Got into Q8'S in 74 , with the purchase of all Moody Blues tapes and a variety on United Artists , GRT and Ampex ...with a Sanyo Q8 Player.

So 1973 - 1974 was my main start with all things quad.

Fizzy
 
Quad was too expensive for me in the '70s, by the early '80s I already had some quad LPs, because of their different mixes, then I discovered Q8s...In 1983 I bought my first quad receiver, a heavy Sony, probably their top model, I think it was 100 watts per channel. It had a problematic transistor and was replaced by a Marantz 4060 a couple of years later, that thing lasted until just a few years ago, but I have a bunch of units now. I tried a few different Q8 players, the first was a Channel Master, I eventually settled on a Harman-Kardon 8+, my first quad RTR was a TEAC A-3340.
 
My second foray with quad upgrading started with obtaining an awful lot of imports from EMI'S pop rock titles , Pink Floyd -Both AHM , DSOTM , and a few others , including Cosmic Couriers SQ albums.Also by this time I was ordering from Sound Concepts plenty of great Quad Albums , some very hard to get , anywhere , especially here in my city.
By the late 70's maybe 77 I got my first decent CD-4 Cartridge. The Shure M24 H and then I got my first Sansui Decoder the QSD 2 , and some crappy quad headphones. Later on for next to nothing in price ,I picked up a Russound QT 1 and an ElectroVoice ,EV-4 Decoder. Then around 82 or 83 I obtained my Fosgate TATE II 101A., through Larry Clifton. And fwiw I had to send it to Fosgate for a minor problem. It was good on Jim Fosgate to add some upgrades to my Fosgate SQ TATE with a letter explaining his work on my unit . Worked like a charm after that.

:giggle:
 
About a week ago. I was just browsing for turntables on Facebook Marketplace. I found a Panasonic record changer for $20 from a nearby seller. It was dirty and the platter was stuck solid. I didn't know what it was till I got it home and started working on it.
It's a Panasonic SL-721 CD-4 with a EPS451QD cartridge, original stylus, and built in CD-4 Decoder.
I've cleaned it up and freed up some stuck parts, there is still more to do, but it's works.
I've hooked it to a Radio Shack mini amp and using headphones to test with regular stereo LPs.
The turntable is actually a BSR C141R1. The idler drive is working, 33 rpm speed is close.
I don't yet have any CD-4 LPs to test it with, but it works for stereo.
So I've now got the ability to play CD-4 Quadradiscs and here I am joining this forum.
 
About a week ago. I was just browsing for turntables on Facebook Marketplace. I found a Panasonic record changer for $20 from a nearby seller. It was dirty and the platter was stuck solid. I didn't know what it was till I got it home and started working on it.
It's a Panasonic SL-721 CD-4 with a EPS451QD cartridge, original stylus, and built in CD-4 Decoder.
I've cleaned it up and freed up some stuck parts, there is still more to do, but it's works.
I've hooked it to a Radio Shack mini amp and using headphones to test with regular stereo LPs.
The turntable is actually a BSR C141R1. The idler drive is working, 33 rpm speed is close.
I don't yet have any CD-4 LPs to test it with, but it works for stereo.
So I've now got the ability to play CD-4 Quadradiscs and here I am joining this forum.
Welcome, John. We hope to see more posts from you.
 
I Forgot to mention some unique equipment in Quad that i received in the mid to late 80's, namely ;

A Parsons "RM" ENCODER , and a Parsons built "SQ" ENCODER (front or back oriented).
Also an H , HJ , UHJ , Adapter ....for use with my Sansui QSD 2 when playing BBC MATRIX H lps and tapes
and BBC HJ as well . Also some UHJ CD'S and taps I had . It even had a bypass for QS .

All Parsons Limited (LTD) equipment .
👨‍🔧
 
In 1972 I think I called in to see one of my friends when I nocked on the door he answered and said come in the living room and hear this. When we got in the living room he showed me his new 8 track player ( which I had never heard of) and put on Santana Abraxas as soon as I head it I was hooked. Within two weeks I had a quad set up in my car and buying all the tapes I could. That was not easy as there was only one place around me that sold quad tapes all the others only sold stereo.
 
As a tech-obsessed audiofool since 1970 who started with a Dynaco PAT-4, ST-120, AR table, V-15 Type II, and a pair of AR-5 speakers, I subscribed to all the magazines and drooled over the new quad equipment as it came out. But it wasn't until I was mostly finished with grad school and working that I was able to afford my first quad setup in the mid-70's - a Phase Linear 4000 preamp, 2 PL 400's and added 2 more AR-5's for the rear channels. My next quad upgrade was to an Apt-Holman preamp and Lafayette full wave decoder plus a JVC CD-4 fed by a B&O 4002. Even though I was now working, adding a Tate wasn't in the budget.

As quad faded away I returned to stereo until sometime in the early 2000's when I found a non-functional Fosgate-Tate but was able to have Bob Popham bring it back to life with the 'magic' chip and cap updates. I still have it but am currently using an Involve II. I have a Technics SH-400 from the same time period but it isn't setup (yet), and I'm not sure of the condition of an AT12S I picked up to go with it. I never did go for an 8-track player and I kept my stereo R2R.

But I kept all my SQ, QS, EV4, Dynaquad and CD-4 albums. 😊
 
July 1970 I read the article in Audio Magazine on the Hafler system. I put one together using a bookshelf system and two extra speakers borrowed from a friend. I was hooked even though I didn't have any quad albums (none existed yet)

I then hooked up the Hafler 3 channel system after I returned the borrowed equipment. Using this and other equipment I had, I made a Hafler 4-channel recording for use in a school play. I also built the decoder for the auditorium. The play was held in February 1971.

The first quadraphonic record I got was the Ovation EW-4 sampler.

In 1971, I bought 4 speakers and built a Dynaquad-type decoder with full adjustability for front and back separation. It can play DD, DQ, EV4, QS, RM, and DS.
 
1973 when this landed under the Christmas tree
ge quad.jpg
 
For me, it was after discovering the forums here and making friends with Jon Urban, Cai Campbell & Philly Bob Squires, as well as Bob Romano.
The other guys came later (you know who you are) and I was introduced to vintage Quad in the form of the Alan Parsons mix of DSOTM.

Oh , I knew Jon Urban from his "Quadramensions" sales flyers in the 4 Quad/Evolution Monthly started by Jay Frank .(in 78 or 79)
And the Quad Quarterly/MCS Review reports from Larry Clifton.

That's where I met Brian Moura , Gerhard Thilgen , Gary Hendershot , Alan Turner , Deitrich Rasch , Ron Brain , Mike Robin , Dave Vacarro , Ken Parsons , Larry Clifton , Joel Kellner , R Scott Varner , Gabriel Kover and many more.
And was referred to for quad records ...The Quadrophonic Record Center in London , and Rather Ripped Records in California. As well as Peters International in New York who carried lots of imports into North America .
FWIW I already knew about Sound Concepts the HUGE DEALER in quad records in Peoria Illinois from a tiny 1975 Audio magazine advert.
 
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I was in high school. I hooked up a Dynaquad system sans the Dynaquad Quadaptor. I had four unmatched speakers. :eek: My first quad album was the Columbia SQ introductory disc. Remarkably, Chase‘s horns in Open Up Wide seemed to rotate around the room despite this crude setup and not having an SQ decoder.

I had the same experience with my starter Hafler system (for which I made my own box I still have) except the record was "The Full Spectrum of Quadraphonic Sound" on Realistic, made by Columbia.

Doug
 
My first quad system was a Zenith Allegro combo with AM/FM, stereo turntable and quad 8track player that my dad bought from Polk Brothers. Our first two
tapes were Ventures - Hawaii Five O and Best of Buddy Rich, both United Artist Quadrasonic tapes. I think it was probably around 1973 or 74

s-l1600.jpg
 
I got interested in about 1998 or 1999. I live in the land that time forgot, so our High School library at the time had many NEW books from 1973, 1974, 1975.... Several of them were about home audio and a few described these wonderful, NEW, going-to-be-very-big-soon Quadraphonic Hi-fi setups.

Wait a tick.... It's 35 years later and we still don't have this stuff. And so the curiosity began....

My first receiver was almost one of the smaller, Sony units. It was at a thrift store one town over but by the time I went to get cash and come back, somebody had already snapped it up. I did come home with my first Q8 that day .... the Enoch Light 4 channel Sampler. About that time was when eBay was first becoming a thing and web forums like this one began to pop up. The rest we can sort of say is history.

My first receiver turned out to be a Pioneer QX-9900. I've actually had two of them. The first one cost me $100, was reported as fully working, only to have a dead right rear channel. My friend Rick still has that one - he did manage to get it sort of working, but he's more of a stereo guy anyway. So as long as the front channels work, he's happy.
My second receiver was another 9900. That's the one I'm still running 20-some years later. The "4" indicator for 4-channel operation has burned out, but one of the VU's that was always lazy came back to life after the last cleaning.

I'd always been into 8-tracks since I was a kid. The parents' vehicles were a 1980 GMC half ton with an Audiovox aftermarket AM/FM tape, and mom's car was a '75 Valiant Brougham with a Motorola underdash unit. Oh yeah, I have to mention my dead uncle Peter's Lincoln. Legend has it he won the car in a game of golf making bets with rich folks: a 1974 Robin's Egg blue Lincoln Continental Mark IV with matching blue leather interior. It also had a Quadrasonic 8-track deck in it. Maybe that was my first introduction to Quad because I remember asking my father about it, but he didn't know anything about it. My uncle John wound up inheriting the car and we would borrow it for family vacations.

Never actually did get to hear any Quad come out of that car though.
 
Discovered a Panasonic Q8 player/recorder in an Army Px and for some reason I was instantly into it as a concept. After getting it and a few carts I was hooked (it came with 4 large bookshelf speakers that weren't too bad!). Don't remember exactly which titles but I do know I had DSOTM pretty shortly after I heard about it.
Most all my gear was bought overseas, although I had to get a go between after I got out of the Army. I had a variety of Quad Receivers; several Kenwoods, a Sansui; Infinity 1001 speakers, Thorenz TT, couple of cassette decks as well to archive my LP's on, A Teac and a 3 head Technics.
After all was said and done I had a Kenwood that cost me $555 (retail supposedly about $1000) that had a CD4 demodulator that slid into the chassis from the back (model I have no idea now) , the Thorenz TT with I believe an Audio-Technica cart and shibata stylus, the Teac (A350??) cassette deck still, Infinity speakers and the Panny Q8 deck. My ex got the Q8 deck in '76 for some reason that escapes me now.
After some hard times in the late 70's I sold off my gear. Then one day I wandered into QQ and my surround enthusiasm was boosted immensely. Eventually I signed up here and been more or less lurking around since. Thanks Jon!

EDIT: only true quad titles I have left from those days is a JT-One Man Dog CD-4, Mahavishnu Orchestra SQ LP, and maybe two more LP's I can't recall right now.
 
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