1975: Magnavox R471 AM/FM Stereo 8-Track System

Say you are having a pool party, and you want to have something playing music for your guests. Pop in that iPhone and start streaming that Pandora station with just about any music your heart desires. Or, you could open up iTunes and set your library of 30,000 songs on shuffle and just let it play. If you want to hear a particular song, a quick search on YouTube will yield it with lyrics, live performances, cover bands, and crappy amateur renditions of that song. And you can hear every single instrument and voice in the music, in super high quality. Music is so easy to listen to today, no matter how specific and obscure your tastes are.

Let's go back to the mid-1970s, and experience what it was like before that. You had to tune into a radio station if you wanted a continuous mix of music. To hear your favorite song, you had to own the album, and if you happened to buy the 8-track, listen to 3 or 4 songs before it, with no way to rewind or flash forward. The closest to pirating music you could get was a tape recorder held up to the speaker while it's playing on the radio. And on top of everything, there was that tinny or garbled quality, with a few cracks and pops here and there, that gave it a certain special sound. And you would probably be using a stereo system close to my Magnavox R471 AM/FM Stereo 8-Track System.

Origin:

Here I have one of the signatures of my collection, my Magnavox stereo. Wood-grain and fake-metal colored plastic give it that authentic retro look. A backlight for the radio dial illuminates behind a plastic window, with red lights indicating 8 track channel, plus a light to tell you when you are getting a radio station in stereo sound. It also has a removable dust cover for the turntable.

 I inherited this from my mother, who acquired it in the mid-70s. She had it as her stereo for close to 30 years before buying a cheap CD player. It was then placed behind a shelf in my dad's room for a few years.

I remember asking about it, I think maybe it was going to be thrown away, and I asked if I could have it. It was caked with dust and every crevice was dirty...it didn't look to be in very good shape. She said I could have it though and I plugged it in to see how it worked.

Repairs:

The radio functioned fine, so I borrowed an 8 track from my dad and some records from my mom. The 8 track player wouldn't change channels, but I was able to fidget with the head to get it moving again, and then it worked just fine. The turntable was a big problem though

The turntable was completely seized up, I couldn't hand turn it with even considerable force, and the needle was gone, so I had to buy a new one, which was easier to find than I thought, bought one off a website for $6 or so. I know it had been turning as late as 1996, there is a home movie where it is playing a David Cassidy record...

I took it apart, removed all the crusty old grease, and used some motor oil to lube all the moving parts. I did the best I could and it started turning again, with a small slowdown every revolution that has improved to almost nothing over the past couple years of use.

How well does it work?

This was built with two stereo outputs for multiple speakers, regular RCA jacks you can find on television (though back then they hadn't discovered color-coding right and left channels yet...). It has one RCA auxiliary input that you could use for a cassette player back then, or you could use an iPod today. It also has a headphone jack...but the huge 1/4" kind you find on guitars and amps today. It also has an arrangement of screws to attach an FM antenna, but it has its own built in antenna if you don't have one. It also has a tape output...that I assume outputs only sound for the 8-track player. It has bass, treble, balance, tuning and volume control knobs.

Radio:

The sound quality from the radio is superb. I currently have it plugged into computer speakers and it just seems to sound better than even the computer playing music, with excellent highs, and deep lows, with minimum static. This stereo has something not seen on anything today: a meter that measures the strength of the FM radio signal, so you could fine tune your station for the highest signal.

The 70s station in Dallas comes in at over 4....units?

8 Track Player:

For those of you unfamiliar with 8-tracks: a quick description. It was developed in the mid-60s as a cartridge you could use in your car and that was more compact than vinyl records, the format died in the early 80s as cassettes became mainstream. An 8 track cartridge had 4 channels, each channel had 2 tracks (left and right for stereo sound), hence the name 8 track. Most players could only play, with no fast forward or rewind. You can manually select from the 4 channels, when the tape comes to the end of the channel, a special magnetic section of the tape tells the player to automatically switch to the next channel.

Nothing says the 70s like an ELO 8-track.

My 8-track player works very well, I own 3 8-tracks, two inherited from my dad and 1 I bought online. One reason I don't let people touch my 8-track player is that if you push the button to change 8-Track channels manually without an 8 track loaded, you will break the head and I have to fidget with it to fix it. The sound is pretty bad, you lose a lot of highs and lows and it sounds muted and dull, similar to cassettes. 8 tracks present some interesting problems though. My best-condition cartridge is my Fleetwood Mac Rumours, it plays with minimal track bleed and seems to have the best sound quality. One 8 track my dad found buried in his closet plays OK for a few minutes, then gradually jams up and slows down to make a creepy low, slow music, that even sounds hilarious sometimes. My ELO cartridge seems to be misaligned, and causes track bleeding. It's so bad that the song gets very muted and suddenly I'm listening to the song on the next track at the same time. It's caused by the movable head being aligned wrong, plus the poor quality of the cartridge copy made when it was manufactured. I found a solution though:

Seriously, what did they use before there were iPhone chargers??

Turns out an iPhone charger cord is the perfect size to jam in there, and it moves the cartridge enough to get it to play right. Man, how did they survive back before iPhones??

Turntable:

Most people have at least a little familiarity with records, so I won't go into detail with that. My turntable took a lot of work to get running again, and it sounds great.

Record player in action!

It plays 33 LPs and 45s. It's also unique in that it plays older 78s, a feature not found on record players made after the 60s and 70s. It has an automatic load, where you put the record on the top of the spindle, put the spring loaded arm on top of it, selected the record diameter and pulled the switch to auto.

Automatic load

It would drop the record down, automatically lift the arm and place it at the beginning of the record. When it finished, it automatically lifts the arm, puts it back into place, and shuts itself off. The sound is actually very good, nearly CD quality, minus some pops and noise from running along the record itself. All my records play great, I have 33s from my parents, a couple I bought, and a 45 I bought online.

Conclusion & Future

I use my stereo pretty regularly, right now it is plugged into some computer speakers I have with decent sound quality. I try to play an 8 track and a record every so often to keep the mechanical parts moving and from seizing up, but I try to take it easy since it is so old. It is the centerpiece of my retro-tech corner in my apartment, and I expect it will keep going for years to come. In a few years, it will be nearly 40 years old. Ultimately, I would like to have it wired into a surround-sound system I want for my TV, and be a part of my media center. One day, I'll probably be the last person that can play an ELO 8 track cartridge.

Thanks for reading, next week I'll do a piece on my 1976 Sony Trinitron Portable Television!