Today’s Question of the Day is a little bit more interactive than normal. Here’s the deal…the other night I was chatting with Kevin (Junkyard Digs on YouTube) about his project 1968 Pontiac LeMans. It’s currently in the “winter project” stage, with the oft-flooded A-body currently in the middle of getting it’s Swiss Cheese’d floor patched up. He’s hell-bent that the car will see road time next year, and is planning out the remaining aspects of the build that he has planned, which is going to be something fairly Dukes of Hazzard-like. One of the details that we were discussing was the sound system, of all things. He’s legitimately going to road-trip this car all over creation next year and he wants tunes, BUT he doesn’t want to just throw in something new and ready-to-thump. He wants to keep this period-correct as much as possible. I don’t think that he would mind new speakers, but as far as a head unit goes, the gist is that he wants a two-knob style like old.
I’m young enough that I missed that phase. If the car still had two knobs for the sound system, it was time to get to cutting for a basic DIN head unit, like the Alpine pictured (which I’m 95% convinced is the same head unit I first installed, ever, in my ’79 Caprice when I was barely in high school.) The idea is to have a twin-knob cassette player that connects up to a traditional four-speaker unit. Craig, Kraco, Alpine, Pioneer…do you have some good suggestions? Or, even better, do you know of any for sale that function and won’t eat cassettes? And if not, do you remember what the hot ticket was back in the day?
Alpine, with a Lambo key chain
I had a Pioneer Supertuner.
with the ” TSX-7″ box speakers mounted on the package tray. Everyone could look in the back window and see the big white letters on the boxes.
and the round yellow and black decal of “103 KDF ROCK ” right in the middle of the back glass !
Way back when, Mindblower speakers which were 6x9s with an individual amplifier mounted directly on the back. They didn\’t sound so great but they were LOUD. Then about 1980, Craig Powerplay was the hot ticket. Shortly after that the Alpines got popular followed by Kenwood, Pioneer, Blaupunkt. Most of these only had 4w per speaker. So we would add a 40w equalizer-booster to get 10w per speaker. This was enough to get at least reasonable sound, though it would suck compared to today\’s basic sound systems.
I preferred pioneer and had good service from them. A good auto-reverse cassette with am/fm was $400 in those days (1984.) Nowadays a $100 dollar DIN unit would kick its ass. It was a revelation in about 1982 when digital displays arrived and you could have a digital clock in your stereo.
There’s my man! Somebody over 50!
So I had the pioneer Auto reverse tape deck in a 78 Toyota Corolla I had to stand alone preamp with 7 bands of EQ and I had the white-faced 3-way pioneer six by nines in the back. After that my next car I had the Technics house speakers with a Sherwood amplifier that came from the flea market it was 240 Watts + 240 Watts I also had the Alpine radio in the dick with six six by nines in the back
Alpine 7400. Put one of these in my ’78 IH Scout in about 1994. It still works awesome! I was able to pick up another 7400 a year or two ago that had been refurbished, just to have on hand for any potential future projects. They fit the Scout dashboards nicely and have a classic look along with great sound.
Pioneer super tuner with a stand alone equalizer and four Quam 6x9s.
The big ballers in the 80’s had either the Alpine tape deck, or the Blaupunkt that the yuppies had in their BMW’s.
You young pups! ’70 Dart Swinger had an AM radio in the dash and an under dash Spark-O-Matic cassette deck, FM converter, and amp/equalizer pushin’ 6X9 co-axes in the back deck… Hardly had room fer my knees, but it was BOSS! Oh, and The Runaway Radio (WMMS 101) in the back window!
Ah yes, the Alpine with this big green buttons! That brings back memories of my 71 Nova with the 6×9’s in the rear deck!
A.D.S. power plate amp with Altec Lansing speakers & Nakamichi tape deck. True sound quality and could be heard coming down the block.
My sister was a manager at a Radio Shack in the early 80’s so she got me a smoking deal on a Realistic AM/FM Cassette that someone brought back because they said it “didn’t work”. It actually worked perfectly fine. Apparently they just didn’t wire it up right. It started out around 70 bucks but I got it for 27.
About the same time a guy in my high school had some “new” Pioneer 6X9’s for sale complete with half an entire wiring harness still attached. They were 100 bucks new but these were 30 if I didn’t ask any questions so I didn’t.
Then right after Christmas a record store had an absolute blow out sale on their left over stuff. I got a 50 watt Spark-o-matic power booster/equalizer complete with the dancing lights and everything for 40 bucks that was originally over 100.
This system absolutely cranked!! Whenever I came across somebody at a red light that wanted to “race their stereo” I never had one person ever be able to get over top of my noise. It was awesome!! I literally thought it was going to melt the back window of my Dart sometimes.
Nakamichi TD1200 motorized tape deck
Then onto the Alpine 7909 preamp only- CD with copper chassis
A/D/S 325i components
Orion 2100 and 425 HCCA amps
M&M Godfather subs
Ungobox alarm
Alpine pullout with Alpine preamp Kenwood 821and 721 fun times in 75 Cutlass
My late 70’s ride, a 69 Galaxie, had a radio on the left side of the column with the tuner and volume knobs right nest to each other so in dash units were out of the question. It did sound pretty good though with a Kraco Amp and Jensen Tri Axial “blues” speakers in the deck.
Three cheers for Jensen Tri-axials. Bought a new pair every time I bought another car.
I bought a 73 Pontiac Formula with an 8-track. Asked my brother for you of his old Cheech and Chong 8-tracks and damned if the thing worked. Sounded horrible but it worked.