Friday, November 18, 2016

_____________________ AN ANTIQUE SOUND SYSTEM _________________

In recent times cell phones and other small devices have been invented that will store and play a zillion soundtracks downloaded from the internet. There is something very useful about stereo phonic sound that you can put in your shirt pocket............ the trouble is what do you do with all the old technology? Well this bloke has installed his antique (or is that classic?) technology in his work shed. 

Only three of the original five speakers still work, but luckily they are the two main speakers and the centre speaker. I have mounted the centre speaker above the window and one of the main speakers high up in one corner of the workshop. The two small rear speakers won't be missed.

The other main speaker is at the opposite side of the shed along with my set of classical music tapes. These 'Tape Recordings' are an old system which records music onto spools of magnetic tape. Tapes superseded an even older complicated system where music was transferred from a metallic 'die' onto circular black plastic discs of varying sizes. The music was then picked up and relayed to speakers by an armature with a 'needle' on it which picked up the sound from grooves on the black disc ( I kid you not !!!!!!).

I do have a set of what's called 'CDs' (A more recent invention) which you may have heard of. I rotate these with my classical music tapes. When I want to listen to old popular music I listen to 'Coast FM' which plays all the old classic pop songs from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. If I wanted to raise my blood pressure for fun I listen to talk back radio.

It's nice to work away in the carport and listen to music. It's not something that I have done a lot of over the years. As a teacher for over 40 years I found that when I got home from work the last thing I wanted was noise of any sort. So it's nice to have the time now to catch up a bit.

2 comments:

Char said...

Looks great :)

Alden Smith said...

Thank you Charlotte - its sounds great as well! I have tapes, CDs, NZ National Radio, Coast Radio and the Radio NZ Concert Program - enough for an old fulla to be going on with!