[Dixielandjazz] Stereo vs. Mono?

[LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing]

I was going to mention the ping pong and other sounds.  I thought I had that
on a demo record but now that I think of it I must have heard it on the
radio.  I did have a stereo setup and demo record with some weird stuff on
it.

It took everybody quite a while to figure out what this stereo stuff was all
about and how to make it work.  We didn't have an FM at that time.  I
remember the KSD ones because they had an AM and TV station and could do it
at least that's what I remember.

It was pretty poor and any stereo effect was lost in the poor equipment of
the time.  Our AM radio was a small table top thing with probably a 4"
speaker and the TV wasn't much better.  No wonder I saw little future to it
especially compared to a good HI Fi.  My brother built his hi-fi from
scratch, amp and all.  He was something of an engineering and electrical
genius.  I remember him showing me his first computer.  I didn't even know
what they were but he built one that could add numbers.  This was in about
1957 or 1958.  No one even knew what they were.  He also developed a radio
direction finding antenna.  In the early 50's he had a recording lathe and
cut records in our basement.  We had a lot of musicians come by and make
records.  They were on an aluminum disk that had been dipped in hot vinyl or
some other plastic.  When he had a dud he would put the thing in hot water,
strip off the plastic and use the aluminum to make chassis for whatever he
was building that week.  He was pretty heavy into hydrophonic gardening too.
He died a few years after the Korean War from radiation (Brain cancer) that
he got while working with radar and microwaves.  He is the one that
introduced me to a lot of the music that helped shape me.  He would take me
to the Muny often and we would sit in the free seats.  We rode a street car
and then walked.  He was a musician too but didn't really do a lot with it.

I was in college before I built my first stereo which was about 1960.

Larry Walton
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve & Cathy Pendleton" <bestofbreed at mindspring.com>
To: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 5:56 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Stereo vs. Mono?


> Larry (and everyone else),
>
> After the TV experiment with stereo in St. Louis ('57-'58, I
> believe) they progressed to a demo in late '58-early '59 where you
> used your hi-fi FM radio and the standard AM radio.  This
> simultaneous broadcast occurred on Sunday afternoons.  The FM
> station was KCFM-St. Louis 94.7 and the AM was, maybe, KMOX or KWK
> (remember Ed Wilson, Larry?) or maybe it was another station.
>
> (KCFM taught me the melody to virtually every popular song extant
> from the 30's to the late 50's.  I was a studious kid (hah!! too bad
> all that studying never stuck) and I enjoyed a lot of indoor
> hobbies, and my mother had that station on for part of every evening
> and all weekends.)
>
> Anyway, around 2:00 on those Sundays Dad, would fire up the
> "Maggotbox" hi-fi radio and record player in the blond oak console,
> and he would set our little plastic AM receiver 8-10 feet away.
> Before the music started, there was always the demonstration of the
> game of ping-pong, the passing train,  two people conversing from
> across a room and  the flyby of that exciting new plane (either the
> Boeing 707 or Douglas DC-7.)  Then came the St. Louis symphony.
> Like you, Larry, this was a poor choice of subject to hype stereo.
> Everyone soon got up and found other things to do, anywhere but in
> the living room.
>
> We got our hi-fi in 1958, I think.  Our parents wondered why
> Famous-Barr  Department Store was having such big sales on them.  A
> lot of friends and relatives would come over to listen--hi-fi was
> definitely a thrill compared to tabletop radio, esp. when Dad put on
> "George Wright At The Mighty Wurlitzer" or similar.    (We were also
> the popular home in the community when we got a TV in 1953--but
> that's another story.)  However, a couple of months after our new
> purchase, stereo came out.  And, as Larry says, it was really no big
> deal.  In my limited view of the world then, I don't think stereo
> really took hold until us babyboomers started buying rock n' roll 33
> 1/3 LP albums from our favorite groups to play on our personal
> portable stereo record players, and that was '61 or '62.
>
> Thanks for indulging me.  A nice reminisce.  I had not thought about
> some of the above for 40 years!
>
> Steve Pendleton
>
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