The Stereo Console
Posted by Tom Purcell at 4/20/2008 9:11 PM and is filed under uncategorized 
I'm writing a book about growing up in the early 70s -- am sitting in an Irish pub right now trying to work on a chapter though am struggling -- and one of the chapters will focus on our old stereo console. Ours sat in our dining room and looked very much like the one above.
Virtually every suburban home had one. They sucked a lot of electricity, as they ran on old tubes that burned out now and then, prompting a visit to Daniel's Hardware for a replacement. The old tube technology took up a lot of space, which is why stereos then were made to look like a big piece of furniture.
Ours played a big role in our family. My mother flipped on the Sinatra radio station and whistled to the tunes as she did the dishes after dinner (mothers came in two varieties then, whistlers and hummers, and my mother was a whistler... because her father was... and, in fact, I'm something of a whistler as a result).
Sunday nights after dinner my father would put on his John Philip Sousa albums and march around the house, all of us behind him laughing hysterically.
Thus... the old console holds a bit of power over me. I wrote a column about it a year back and got a surprising amount of mail. You can read it here.
I remember ours too! It played the old 78's and had an attachment to play the 45's. I sang to the big band songs while I was scrubbing floors on Saturday. Love hearing your tales about the 70's. My tales are from the early fifties. Same furniture.
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Wow, that's a big fancy console! Our family's turntable had a hard plastic lid & was on top of a small stand with sliding doors. The small speakers were on the floor on either side of it. A lot of LP's could fit in behind those doors. It was to the left of the telephone stand beneath the coo coo clock in the livingroom.
I can remember when we had company the adults would sit & listen to Bill Cosby's newest comedy album & laugh themselves silly. My Uncle Harold was affectionately given the nickname "Old Weird Harold" because he liked that album so much.
One of my mother's favorites was Nat King Cole.
It was such a simpler time. Good luck with your book, Tom.
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Back in the '60s, I worked as a copywriter for the ad agency that handled the H.H. Scott account. They made hi-fi components and some of the biggest, fanciest stereo consoles around. They were actually quite advanced for the time, using transistors instead of tubes. I still have my Scott LR88 stereo receiver, complete with Scott speakers and a Dual 1009SK turntable...pretty hot stuff back in 1968!
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