{"id":2053,"date":"2011-08-04T16:59:19","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T22:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2053"},"modified":"2011-08-04T18:03:16","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T00:03:16","slug":"the-mystery-hi-fi-am-tuner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2053","title":{"rendered":"The Mystery Hi-Fi AM Tuner and Amp"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jeffs1974StereoSystem.jpg\"Here’s a challenge for some of my older readers, particularly those who were in the hi-fi hobby in the 1960s. While looking for the photo of Carol’s banner mentioned in my entry for July 31st<\/a>, I ran across a blurry photo of my basement office in 1975, including the portion shown at left. The unit on the top of the pile is definitely a Heathkit FM-4 monaural FM tuner. I had it for quite a few years after 1975, and may still have the manual somewhere. I don’t clearly remember the identity of the other two. The middle item is an interesting one: an AM-only hi-fi tuner. I dumped both the AM tuner and the stereo amp on the bottom shortly after I married Carol and bought a Realistic STA-64 AM\/FM stereo amp unit for Christmas 1976. Bogglingly (but why dump it if it works well?) the Realistic is still our main stereo here.<\/p>\n

AM hi-fi tuners are something of an oddity, and unless I misrecall, the unit shown above had very good sound for the bass-deprived, static-enhanced AM pop radio signals we all listened to in the 1960s. I think it’s an AJ-21, the AM partner to the Heath AJ-31 FM tuner<\/a>. The color scheme is about right, including the red Heathkit logo on the lower-left edge of the front panel. The knobs look wrong, but it’s as close as I’ve come in scanning Heathkit photos on Google Images.<\/p>\n

As for the stereo amp, I have utterly no clue. I’m almost certain it wasn’t a Heathkit. Any ideas?<\/p>\n

The system worked very well as a sort of college-kid junker “stereo” (both tuners were purely mono) from 1971 or so to 1976. I am not an audiophile and don’t have an especially good ear, so equipment like that may have been precisely what I needed at the time, as it was all hamfest-cheap. I don’t need a tube stereo amp anymore (I built my own back in 2005<\/a>) but it would be interesting to see what the two Heath tuners would do with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a challenge for some of my older readers, particularly those who were in the hi-fi hobby in the 1960s. While looking for the photo of Carol’s banner mentioned in my entry for July 31st, I ran across a blurry photo of my basement office in 1975, including the portion shown at left. The unit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-2053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daybook","tag-electronics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2053"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2058,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2053\/revisions\/2058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}