Speaking of Lo-fi music technology, this was our family record player for most of the 1970s, a fact which may have influenced my memory of how music sounded back then. It’s a Fidelity HF42 which, according to my research, only cost £13.95 from Argos in 1976 which seems ridiculously low even for 40 year ago. It was mono and made of plastic — even the “wood” bits — with a whopping output of 1 1/2 watts of tinny music power. Sad to say, my mum probably bought it because it was the cheapest one there was — we were poor, you know.
The Fidelity was where I first played such epochal albums of my youth as All Mod Cons (I’m amazed I could hear Bruce Foxton’s bass), but the record I most associate with it is the 45 of “Telephone Line” which I played incessantly for a while. I think I literally played it a dozen times in a row the day I bought it. I listened to a lot of ELO records on that thing and was probably only hearing about 25% of the sumptuous production, but Jeff Lynne’s songs were so strong they still sounded great on a shitty record player, or radio.
Download: Telephone Line – Electric Light Orchestra (mp3)
We eventually got a Panasonic music centre at the end of the decade which felt like a top-of-the-line Bang & Olufsen system to me — two speakers!
cryingallthewaytothechipshop.wordpress.com 
I got a similar piece of kit for Christmas 1971 and it gave me several years of loyal service, before I finally coughed up for a stereo later in the 70s. In spite of never being used again, it took me 40 years to get rid of it and I’ve kind of regretted doing so ever since.
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Our was similar – but with two speakers. which was handed down and in my bedroom til winter 82. When it was replaced by the might Amstrad music centre (with tape to tape and EQ. Thus:
http://planetmondo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/80s-12-teaser_22.html
After this a Sanyo midi system, then Technics separates, finally a NAD amp and mixed separates.
Now one of these (red) in the kitchen
And a Bose soundlink mini in the bedroom
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We had one of those stacked music centres in the 80s too (think everyone did), and the Panasonic ended up in my bedroom
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that’s about the standard of mine to this day. and there’s the mrs’s portable philips wonder. years of dansettes and getting covered in beer at popular nightspots have left my poor records incapable of hi fi
x
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I had a weird dansette type thing mono, handed to me after a friend’s gran died and nobody wanted it. That was 1982, my first record player. It lasted about 3 months then the bass hum at the end of Going Underground blew the speaker.
For my 14th birthday, Feb 1983 I got something similar to the above from Argos, for similar reasons to yours I think. The speakers lasted all of six months before guess what? Going Underground’s bass hum blew out the right speaker.
I dug my old stereo out of the cupboard this week, plan on listening to music through it rather than the ipod/speaker dock combo that’s been the norm for about 7 years.
Loud and proud and bass heavy the stereo is, it’s a late 90s vintage, built to take the results of the loudness wars of the time.
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Regardless of lack of record player to play them on, I had been buying records since 1981, had owned albums on vinyl since the late 70s. I used to look at them and imagine playing them. Sometimes I played a cassette of the top 40 they were in and again, pretended to listen.
Seriously. I was a weird little kid.
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backs away slowly
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