Do you own a stereo?

[HardyGirl]

I just came back from visiting my older brother and family in Seattle. Now back in the day, he was a music junkie! He always had some sort of music going. Record player, boom box, 8-tracks, radio....but now when I visit him, nothing. There is never any music playing in his house at all. There is no stereo equipment of any sort in his house. I think he uses some sort of digital music player when he goes on walks, but that's it. I have 2 stereo systems in my house; the all in one in my room (turntable, dual tape deck, radio, receiver), and in the living room is my mom's old set-up, turntable, receiver, 5 disc CD player (courtesy of my brother), dual tape deck and radio. i also have a few portable radios and tape recorders.

What I wanna know is in this day of the digital music players like MP3, I Pad, tablets, phones, etc. does anyone even own a stereo anymore?

[boss]

I have a home theater receiver. Does that count?

[starsky]

yeah i still got my boombox as it's the only thing that plays my old mix cassette tapes. lol

[Mikey]

I have a $30.00 Walmart special Sony Radio/Cassette/CD boombox I bought a few years ago.

I mostly only use it when the electric goes out.

When I feel like listening to music my cable TV has music channels

[HardyGirl]

Hmmm...not exactly. Unless it's hooked up to some sorta of music player, (even the radio).

I have a home theater receiver. Does that count?

[HardyGirl]

Cool! You still play cassettes? Me too!

yeah i still got my boombox as it's the only thing that plays my old mix cassette tapes. lol

[Werewolf]

I have a turntable stereo too. Vinyl is actually make a bit of a comeback and you can get a lot of new releases on LP. Even stuff like the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack is available on vinyl. The book store chains Books a million and Barnes and Nobles carry LPs in their stores.

[ShadowAvenger]

My cassette/radio/cd boombox from Walmart finally died about a year ago and I have yet to replace it with another. Instead, I got a Discman that I found for a few dollars at a local thrift store even though I can play cds on my desktop computer. I have tons of cassettes collecting dust now even after I got rid of a bunch of them. I have been thinking of getting one of those cassette to digital machines and transferring some to cds.

My mom still has a cassette/radio/record stereo next to her tv but it's not plugged in and hasn't been used for about five years. We got rid of a lot of 45 and 33 records several years ago. The last record played on the stereo was a Tennessee Ernie Ford 33 record and it still sounded great.

[Gorn Captain]

I wish I still had a record player and tape deck, but they died on me.
I'm looking for a replacement, I have over 400 movie soundtracks on LP, so I need this!

[Donkey Hoatie]

We've got one of those cheap-o Target, all-in-one stereos (turntable, tape deck, radio, CD player). Sound is "meh," but it's fun to have around. We've also got an iPod player for jamming some tunes anywhere in the house. My daughter has a CD player in her room. But, my favorite piece is a Sony boombox out in my garage. This is the exact same model I had as my first boombox back in 1982, when I saved up my lawn mowing money to get it. It died in about 1989 or so, when the motor on the tape deck konked out and I figured that I'd rather get one with a CD player next, instead of spending money to fix it. A couple years ago, one of my eBay notifications finally kicked in with someone selling one, in the original box, for $25. I play mixed tapes NONSTOP when I'm out working in the garage for hours on end.

[Apositive]

No. Don't own one.

[HardyGirl]

Sounds like a ball! Partytime in Donkey's garage!

We've got one of those cheap-o Target, all-in-one stereos (turntable, tape deck, radio, CD player). Sound is "meh," but it's fun to have around. We've also got an iPod player for jamming some tunes anywhere in the house. My daughter has a CD player in her room. But, my favorite piece is a Sony boombox out in my garage. This is the exact same model I had as my first boombox back in 1982, when I saved up my lawn mowing money to get it. It died in about 1989 or so, when the motor on the tape deck konked out and I figured that I'd rather get one with a CD player next, instead of spending money to fix it. A couple years ago, one of my eBay notifications finally kicked in with someone selling one, in the original box, for $25. I play mixed tapes NONSTOP when I'm out working in the garage for hours on end.

[Donkey Hoatie]

Sounds like a ball! Partytime in Donkey's garage!

946403_10202050293160890_274452590_n.jpg

Eeeeeeeeeyanh! Come on over, any time. As long as you don't mind smelling like gasoline, engine oil, and sawdust. Hoping the weather stays nice this weekend, so I can spend an afternoon building a bunch of shutters for the house. Using a table saw is always more enjoyable with the Best of Oingo Boingo playing in the background, along with early 90's era mixed tapes.

Here's the story behind the stereo:

This is the Sony CFS-300 portable radio. I saved my lawn-mowing money for a long time in order to purchase one of these back around the fall of 1982. I think it retailed for about $70 back then. At that time, in the 80s, the trend was for big huge boom boxes with detachable speakers and equalizers that no one really knew how to use except to make the bass reaaaaaaaalllllly loud and distort stuff. But the Sony CFS-300 was deceptive. It wasn't the greatest-sounding radio, but it was better than most of the pieces of junk other people were listening to. You could crank the volume all the way up and it would stay pretty true, whereas all the bigger boom boxes would get all static-y at the halfway mark. Plus, this was a lot smaller than other radios, and while it uses 6 D batteries, it's not terribly heavy when all is said and done. But, in a great fore-thinking move by Sony, this was the first radio to use a scanning technology to skip songs on tape. By pressing the FF or REW button along with the play button, the tape would run and automatically begin playing when it detected a 3-second section of silence on tape (the standard gap between songs). If there was a crappy song on one of your albums, it was no problem to skip it.

I was in 6th grade when I bought my original one. I remember buying a bunch of blank tapes at the same time and holing myself up in my room, FM radio blaring, waiting for my favorite songs to come on to record them. First song I ever recorded with this? Men at Work, Down Under. To this day, Colin Hay (lead singer of MAW) is still my favorite musical artist of all time and I've seen him play live easily a dozen times.

Over the years, this radio made plenty of trips with me. Whether it was to a sleepover at a friend's house, to camping in the woods of Wisconsin. Through it all, this sturdy box took a beating and kept on playing glorious tunes until one night in the fall of 88 when the auto-stop button decided to crap out on me one night as I decided to sleep to a pirated copy of Def Leppard's Hysteria album. Side one never clicked off and the tape deck burned itself out. The next day, I said a sad goodbye to my friend and started putting away cash for a new radio, this one with a CD player.

I had a couple other stereos since then, but none of them carried the same memories as this one. There's something awesome about that first time in your life when radio music really starts to MEAN something to you and you begin developing the musical tastes that stick with you for the rest of your life. For me, 6th grade, and 1982 was that time, and I'm just happy to have my friend back with me to crank up in the garage when I'm working on stuff.

[Mego Magyar]

Yup, I've still got one with a 5 channel graphic equalizer for each speaker, tape decks, radio and inputs for a tv. I haven't used it in years but I'm not parting with it. I recently was given a turntable that has linear tracking but I haven't even tried it out.
I used to listen to music a lot but hardly ever any more and when I do it's usually a cd in the car or mp3's on my phone.

[Mikey]

Getting nostalgic here ......

Back in the 70's I had an all-in-one home stereo with an 8-track recorder.

Man, that 8-track recorder made me everyone's buddy