Anyone grow up with those all in one stereo cabinets?

[MaximumRD]

Was not sure how to describe it in title but see the image:

As a little kid, we had something very similar living in Toronto Ontario Canada on Booth Ave, minus the reel-to-reel. 😎😝Of course even as a little kid eventually I turned it over only to see all the tech slotted in with the components and wires hanging about exposed, a mostly hollow cabinet of particle board covered in faux woodgrain. Still very nostalgic. 

[RickR]

YES!  We had one in my family too.  Ours was a Zenith, and it had a turntable and AM/FM radio only.  Also a built in bin to hold records.  The speakers had little shutter doors that I remember playing with a lot as kid.  I'll try to find a picture of it later.

When I had to sell off my parents' estate, I thought very long and hard about keeping that unit.  Maybe taking the old broken guts out and putting in a modern bluetooth setup.  But in the end, I decided no.  We just don't have room for something like that. 

 

[RickR]

Here it is!  This is it, sitting in the garage covered in stuff, after my dad died. 

 

[RickR]

Oh!  Sorry for all the separate replies, but I also have this picture of the identical unit that I found on Facebook marketplace a few years ago.  I wasn't looking to buy or anything, but it came up in my feed and I immediately knew it was the identical unit.  I wondered if they had bought it at our estate sale, so I contacted the seller, but they didn't.  Identical! 

 

[sramirez2008]

My aunt/uncle had a Zenith console. It had a stereo and a tv in the middle. I was ~6/7 years ago. I always thought that thing one cool piece of furniture. 

[TrekMD]

Oh yes, my uncle had one of those!  How could I forget?  It was fun

[GRay Defender]

Someone donated a small one to me a year or so ago.  It had a few 8-tracks, which still play.  I haven't tried the turn table yet... 🙂

 

 

[TrekMD]

OMG, 8-Tracks!  Some good memories there.  🙂

[Atari 5200 Guy]

My great grandmother use to get on to me when I was a toddler. Mom would sit me in the floor in front of great grandma’s stereo and I figured out how to spin the knobs off the front of it.  She’d slap my hands and tell me to leave her knobs alone.  Worked for about five seconds. I ended up with that stereo.  They had a huge sound.  
 

Our family TV when I was little was an all-in-one RCA unit.  It was about a 25” TV with stereo/8-track on one side and record player on the other.  I will see if I can find a picture of it online as I have absolutely no family photos.

[Atari 5200 Guy]

This is the closest image I could find. Not my picture.

I use to keep my feet under the TV to keep them warm from the heat the TV would put off.

[Atari 5200 Guy]

On 11/8/2023 at 7:30 PM, GRay Defender said:

Someone donated a small one to me a year or so ago.  It had a few 8-tracks, which still play.  I haven't tried the turn table yet... 🙂

 

 

I’ve got a small bunch if 8-tracks I found but no way to play them. One tape is the Grease soundtrack and I have Three Dog Night with the song Old Fashioned Love Song.

[TrekMD]

I should have mentioned that my parents never owned one of all-in-one units but I had an aunt who did.  We always had fun playing with the equipment when we visited. She even had a TV with an early remote control that actually moved the channel dial when you pressed the button to change channels!  That was so cool!

[- Ω -]

My parents had a Magnavox brand console stereo for a few years.  It was fried twice in Italy due to failing/faulty power converters.  Then somewhere between 76 & 78 Dad switched to a component setup, which was real nice.  It's interesting now that many people do not even have stereos anymore, but use bluetooth soundbars to use with their cell phone or TV.

[RickR]

2 hours ago, - Ω - said:

It's interesting now that many people do not even have stereos anymore

Very true!  I have a small stack in my attic (turntable, tape deck).  I sold off the analog receivers long ago.  Although I still use a digital receiver under our family room TV setup.  It drives a 3.1 set of Bose speakers that has a nice "boom" to it. 

I've contemplated changing to a soundbar system, but in the end, I'd really miss that ability to switch between input sources so easily.  We have a blu-ray player for movies, a USB drive for music, a Roku, and two loose HDMI connections for connecting a laptop or game system. 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by RickR

[DegasElite]

My family had an all-in-one stereo at one time, with a record player, radio and 8-track player. We eventually got rid of it. The record player was needing repairs, but everything else worked on it. I would listen to Chicago on the 8-track tape player. Glorious sound.

[- Ω -]

57 minutes ago, DegasElite said:

My family had an all-in-one stereo at one time, with a record player, radio and 8-track player. We eventually got rid of it. The record player was needing repairs, but everything else worked on it. I would listen to Chicago on the 8-track tape player. Glorious sound.

 

[Atari 5200 Guy]

5 hours ago, - Ω - said:

My parents had a Magnavox brand console stereo for a few years.  It was fried twice in Italy due to failing/faulty power converters.  Then somewhere between 76 & 78 Dad switched to a component setup, which was real nice.  It's interesting now that many people do not even have stereos anymore, but use bluetooth soundbars to use with their cell phone or TV.

I have pieced together a “hi-fi” sound system.  Every piece of it bought not working at Goodwill.  I fixed all of it up.  It includes a 600-watt analog receiver with AM/FM, 5 Disc Changer (you can change other discs while one plays), dual cassette decks with Auto Reverse (remember when that was a huge thing), and two Technics turntables; one direct drive from a radio station according to Goodwill, the other is a fully automatic belt drive model. Both have new stylus setups and the belt drive has a new belt.  Everything else is Sony other than the two TTs.  When I get home I’ll take pics of it.  
 

I know some people say they like the fact they can have all their music in the palm of their hand.  I get it.  I love my iPod and iPhone too but there is just something more interesting, interactive, involving using analog gear that can’t be experienced any other way.

 I’d prefer vinyl and cassettes over MP3s any day.  CDs are even starting to be phased out looks like.  You can’t find a Discman anymore. I’d like to find an old Emerson personal cassette player like I had back in high school. I played the heck out of that thing.  I had my own stereo setup then with tons of vinyl, I’d make mix tapes and take them with me to school.  When teachers were done I’d put headphones on and do my school work.

You have not lived until you have spent hours picking out songs, adjusting the recoding volume per song, timing everything, just for about an hour and a half’s worth of ear pleasure.  I never had a tape that had more than 10 seconds of blank space on the ends.

[Atari 5200 Guy]

I’ve had an all-in-one personal stereo ldentical to this one:

Mom was a crazy picky about stereo gear and I don’t know where she got it from.  If the tape decks did not have Auto Reverse she was not interested…at all.  
 

When I turned 15 my mother took me to wal-mart to find me a birthday gift. I couldn’t find anything.  NES games were of no interest, a lot of the music then was not interesting to me.  Mom said to help her find a cassette tape and then we would go someplace else.  
 

Our Wal-Mart had a habit of placing non-Sony branded Walkman units in the middle of their tape shelves.  That’s where we found that little unit above.  I still remember it being $20.  I got a few blank tapes, some of the early gray Koss earbuds for like $5.  And some batteries.
 

 I have to admit that little player impressed me.  It had a really good sound.  Every year after that Mom replaced my players with new Emerson models and would grab her one as well to listen to when she laid out in the sun.  But that model above was my go to unit.  I loved it.