I remember these, but I didn't know they didn't have FM stereo. If memory serves, these came with smallish plastic speakers with 4" full range drivers. This video is a reminder that Crosley didn't invent cheap/nasty, they just took it to the next level.
I agree with halfwayuphill and radiotvphononut - these are NOT 'hi-fi' or 'audiophile quality' by ANY stretch of the human imagination, though these cheapo units are still a huge step up from the average Crosley units sold everywhere today!!!
Cheap, but a lot better deal than buying a new Crosley just to wind up in the landfill a year later. The improvement in the record drive was amazing, clean and oil.
The sound at 5:00 is similar to what I would expect from hooking up those speakers to my "Made in Japan" 6 Transistor 9 Volt Battery AM pocket radio which I received as a gift in 1962. Provided the radio could support speakers from its mono plug jack meant for an ear plug commonly used back then!! That radio joined the landfill over 50 years ago.
I love your commentary. I remember in '71 my dad got a free Japanese 'pocket transistor radio' for opening a checking account. I was coming into my own at that time, being 12, and counted the transistors: 5. It sounded horrible. I've never heard a 'modern Crosley' but I'm sure they sound like that 'pocket transistor'. Oh, I have a fully restored Crosley 56TV-0.. and I lovingly restuffed all the caps, used the original wax to reseal them, etc. That Crosly sounds glorious :)
When I was about 12 in 1980, I wanted one of these things, but my Mom didn't have enough money to afford 1! So I just stuck with my dump-found 1958 Wards AIrline Am/Phono "suitcase" Hi-Fi, LOL!
Great 👍 stereo. I think 🤔 I remember seeing one at some point in my life, but I don’t remember where or when. “Oooohh!!, we can get, this is old, I can put this on eBay and get 500 dollars 💵 for it” still cracks me up. Sounds like they probably got $250.00 for this unit. Again, not a 1950’s or such unit, but it has a good AC motor. It’s a Concert Hall, and has decent circuitry. Built of plastic, but the better of. The knob shafts are probably metal. Came long before the 2010 Crosley record player radios. These were probably still the prize winner as to a Crosley of today, or junkier units of the 1970’s.
to most this would be junk to others it may bring back alot of Great memories from their childhood listening to records. so i guess its all how you look at the world. I respect and appreciate it all that includes old record players lol. By the way i loved your video great to see you saving the old relic
Thank the show American Pickers for the ridiculous prices you now see on E-bay and everywhere else, they pay crazy $$$ for rust, and everyone and their brother expects the same when they sell on E-bay,and Craig's list
Looks just like the unit one of my friends got for his birthday in middle school. He was so proud and thought is sounded great. Didn't have the heart to tell him my Dad's Allied receiver with a Garrard record changer sounded WAY better! Keep up the good work on the videos!
34:25 - I recently found out that the way they get the cheapparts with free shipping is that China Post has a deal with the UN such that if a Chinese companyis the source of the order, the US Postal Service MUST BY LAW ship from US port of entry to the customer FOR FREE!! Ain't that a kick in the head!!!
Great video as always... and yes, the crap that was marketed and sold in the late 1970's-1980's was crap by component standards of that era, but even with that, the crap of that era is high end, compared to the current era Crosley, etc. crap. Probably one of the few things I miss by not being on Facebook anymore is the Record Player group you lead there, and the antique radio groups. Facebook removed me in late March, and I will not be back there... so I'll just follow you here, and if you ever get over to MeWe, I'll keep an eye out for you there.
it really is amazing how crappy "cheap" electronics have gotten worse over the years. We went from cheap but easy to fix, to cheap , cant fix, and EOL them :P
I was for a brief period in the early 1980s a warranty servicenter for a lot of the dept store brands such as Soundesign, RJMacdonald, Lloyds, etc. Big mistake. For the most part I took in these units only for people I knew could not afford anything else. I'd fix it, and then charge them a very modest amount, which was nowhere near worth my time. I certainly appreciate your instructive videos, and consider you to be a top-notch tech. But I can't figure out why you spend your valuable time on such as this. Maybe some elderly person with a bunch of 101 Strings vinyl will appreciate it for what it is.
David Locke, he told you in the video. Sometimes he does stuff like this just to have some fun. He knows it's a piece of junk but sometimes it's just fun to tinker with them. I used to do the same thing until my eyes got to bothering me so badly I had to give it up. Far too many years spend staring through a Stereoscope building and repairing printed circuit boards with resistors and caps that weren't much bigger than an ink dot. I miss those days when I could do things like this "just for fun". One thing he didn't tell you is that doing things like this helps keep your troubleshooting skills alive.
If an IC was getting hot and the amp distorting, then have you got an intermittent problem on the bias supply for the IC? Or perhaps negative feedback is failing (which I suspect would be within the IC).
Just to keep in mind that Concert Hall made cheap stereo system like Crosley did, and so does my GE Show N' Tell. Concert Hall made other type of record players in the mid to late 70's and early 80's including the Wildcat portable stereo record player with a BSR changer, and that was after GE stopped production on the Wildcat and other cheap record players, but this one is not the best than the modern stereo systems, it's just a cheap AM/FM stereo with a turntable and no features like an 8-track player or a cassette recorder that are not part of the unit.
I actually owned a unit that was a peg below that unit. At least that unit In your video had an AC motor and idler drive. I owned a Dorchester all in one radio record player that had a DC motor and belt drive just like the Crosley and it's ilk of today.
I once had one that was in the middle between this Concert Hall and your Dorchester. It was a Candle (Canadian brand of Jutan International Ltd) that had a DC motor and idler drive.
Funny 6:19, Mundelein is named so for Cardinal George Mundelein because Mundelein houses a large seminary. All those prayers did not help this Concert Hall reach superstar status. Most of its brethren did not obtain eternal life either.
Found a GX or Yorks once dumped outside a Residence that a Freind lived @ !!! Gutted that Pieice of Plastic - had a DC motor and Plastic Hi-resonance turntable!!!!! used that thing for a Low amperage variable power supply source. nevr tried the Reciver that much!!!
Fragile, you mean "frajeelee, that must be Italian!" (A Christmas Story). I seen some of those cheapo record players in a store that are a perfect copy of a Crosley but now this had "Victor" on it instead. Another example of using a name that had to do with quality in the past being pasted on a piece of junk.
WoW that super low distortion from a 200 watts music power (if plugged in the same wall outlet as a 3 way 150 watt lamp). It figures they made those crappy plastic talking book rekee players. I think the olny thing in a TB player that they made was the very crappy amplifiers.
Sadly, I have come to find that an ever increasing amount of the higher priced, "better quality", domestically purchased items are just repackaged cheap chinese stuff, bought in bulk by a domestic distributer. The only difference, other than the 500 - 1000% mark up in price, is that you don't have to wait a month and a half for the "slow boat" to arrive from China. Unfortunately, as much as I might want to buy American, I find that I can't afford to or that there is simply no American made options left, other than new-old stock. Most of my projects are alot like this one; just not worth spending any real money on, so I order from China and I wait.
All that crap, wrap is same here...all packaged and homogenized for dead ears! That stuff all sounds the same...junk [my kind word]. Have done many of those S.R.'s.
1marcelfilms , same here. We have one AM station left and after dark the Mexicans take over the dial, much as they have our country. I haven't used my radio function on my component system in decades. As radiotvphononut referred to, all we get are "canned" stations and none of that current racket is worth wasting the electricity on. Funny that I never really appreciated the quality of my old reel-to-reel tapes and my huge vinyl collection until there was no real music left to listen to. Now I pay them all the time.
For the life of me, I can't understand why a company would build such cheap stuff. Inevitably, the unit won't perform very well and eventually fail, sooner rather than later. The customer thinks less of the company and their reputation suffers. In the long run, it can't be good for business. Tom
THOMMGB I think that it is just boils down to price, technology, and competition. If somebody actually built a nice quality unit that cost 20% more than the other comparable units on the store shelf, few people would be willing to pay up for it because they either have not educated themselves on the difference or just don't care. So, nobody builds anything any better than the competition. If you want it, here it is - take it or leave it! Retailer like Wal Mart squeeze manufacturers to build cheaper models specifically for them to keep prices at the lowest at the point of sale when negotiating contacts with the manufactures. Companies, such as Snapper lawn mowers, who refuse to cut quality as a demand of retailers end up losing massive market share. Couple all of this with products filled with technology that become out of date, if not obsolete, within two years and the rational to make high quality, long lasting (especially electronic) mass market products just does not exist anymore.
i still cant believe people actually buy those crosley things, at the price they are.., saw one in a local maplin store, and its even more s#!t than i thought!
Most stores are making a killing on those Chinese suitcase record players. They wholesale for under $40 US, usually in lots of 1000 units. alibaba.com is selling a Kingstar Model KXR-639, from Guangdong, China for $1-39.9/ unit, minimum order of 100 units. The Chinese are told we love these cheap things. They don't buy them, they're only for export. They buy better quality stuff, which they can afford nowadays. They laugh at us for what we buy, they know we can afford better, too.
you'd have to slow down when you're talking to your audience a little bit, because you tend to talk a little bit fay-est, and it's hard to follow yew... sometimes
I remember these, but I didn't know they didn't have FM stereo. If memory serves, these came with smallish plastic speakers with 4" full range drivers. This video is a reminder that Crosley didn't invent cheap/nasty, they just took it to the next level.
I agree with halfwayuphill and radiotvphononut - these are NOT 'hi-fi' or 'audiophile quality' by ANY stretch of the human imagination, though these cheapo units are still a huge step up from the average Crosley units sold everywhere today!!!
Cheap, but a lot better deal than buying a new Crosley just to wind up in the landfill a year later. The improvement in the record drive was amazing, clean and oil.
halfwayuphill your 100 percent right even my cheap 2 speed yorx is better and it still works with no work needed but I'm still going to lubricate it
+ratchet5500 video's ...just remember that you can't use ordinary oil on plastic parts!!
Rap crap fits that analogy very well!
That’s if it even lasts a year!
Congrats to Radiotvphononut! This video was recommended to me several times, looks like you’re on the good side of TH-cam’s algorithm 👍
The sound at 5:00 is similar to what I would expect from hooking up those speakers to my "Made in Japan" 6 Transistor 9 Volt Battery AM pocket radio which I received as a gift in 1962. Provided the radio could support speakers from its mono plug jack meant for an ear plug commonly used back then!! That radio joined the landfill over 50 years ago.
I love your commentary. I remember in '71 my dad got a free Japanese 'pocket transistor radio' for opening a checking account. I was coming into my own at that time, being 12, and counted the transistors: 5. It sounded horrible. I've never heard a 'modern Crosley' but I'm sure they sound like that 'pocket transistor'. Oh, I have a fully restored Crosley 56TV-0.. and I lovingly restuffed all the caps, used the original wax to reseal them, etc. That Crosly sounds glorious :)
When I was about 12 in 1980, I wanted one of these things, but my Mom didn't have enough money to afford 1! So I just stuck with my dump-found 1958 Wards AIrline Am/Phono "suitcase" Hi-Fi, LOL!
yes that 45 brings back fond memories that song came out in September of 1970
Great 👍 stereo. I think 🤔 I remember seeing one at some point in my life, but I don’t remember where or when. “Oooohh!!, we can get, this is old, I can put this on eBay and get 500 dollars 💵 for it” still cracks me up. Sounds like they probably got $250.00 for this unit. Again, not a 1950’s or such unit, but it has a good AC motor. It’s a Concert Hall, and has decent circuitry. Built of plastic, but the better of. The knob shafts are probably metal. Came long before the 2010 Crosley record player radios. These were probably still the prize winner as to a Crosley of today, or junkier units of the 1970’s.
Cool record!(Sugarloaf) Found it now here on YT. never heard this total awesome song before....
to most this would be junk to others it may bring back alot of Great memories from their childhood listening to records. so i guess its all how you look at the world. I respect and appreciate it all that includes old record players lol. By the way i loved your video great to see you saving the old relic
Thank the show American Pickers for the ridiculous prices you now see on E-bay and everywhere else, they pay crazy $$$ for rust, and everyone and their brother expects the same when they sell on E-bay,and Craig's list
Yes and Barrett Jackson on junk cars.
The video's teach me so much. I like how it say' s manfuctrured in the USA. We need to go back to that
Looks just like the unit one of my friends got for his birthday in middle school. He was so proud and thought is sounded great. Didn't have the heart to tell him my Dad's Allied receiver with a Garrard record changer sounded WAY better! Keep up the good work on the videos!
Even the cheap stuff in the 80s was better than Crosley. Here in the UK a certain so called up market store was selling Crosley could not believe it.
I saw your reflection. I always wonder who mystery people on TH-cam channels look like.
That stereo is nice for casual listening. Not for jamming out.
wow super cheap! Its kind of close to a Crosley, but this is better made. Love the green eyed lady 45, thats in my collection
3:12 Radio Shack speakers were no slouch. Most of the time they were rebadged Pioneers.
34:25 - I recently found out that the way they get the cheapparts with free shipping is that China Post has a deal with the UN such that if a Chinese companyis the source of the order, the US Postal Service MUST BY LAW ship from US port of entry to the customer FOR FREE!! Ain't that a kick in the head!!!
Thank you for this... 100% right all the way through... BTW, love the country music comment... that's not country...
Great video as always... and yes, the crap that was marketed and sold in the late 1970's-1980's was crap by component standards of that era, but even with that, the crap of that era is high end, compared to the current era Crosley, etc. crap.
Probably one of the few things I miss by not being on Facebook anymore is the Record Player group you lead there, and the antique radio groups. Facebook removed me in late March, and I will not be back there... so I'll just follow you here, and if you ever get over to MeWe, I'll keep an eye out for you there.
These were bedroom units for young teens..kids were happy to have a radio and could play records too.
it really is amazing how crappy "cheap" electronics have gotten worse over the years. We went from cheap but easy to fix, to cheap , cant fix, and EOL them :P
I was for a brief period in the early 1980s a warranty servicenter for a lot of the dept store brands such as Soundesign, RJMacdonald, Lloyds, etc. Big mistake. For the most part I took in these units only for people I knew could not afford anything else. I'd fix it, and then charge them a very modest amount, which was nowhere near worth my time. I certainly appreciate your instructive videos, and consider you to be a top-notch tech. But I can't figure out why you spend your valuable time on such as this. Maybe some elderly person with a bunch of 101 Strings vinyl will appreciate it for what it is.
David Locke, he told you in the video. Sometimes he does stuff like this just to have some fun. He knows it's a piece of junk but sometimes it's just fun to tinker with them. I used to do the same thing until my eyes got to bothering me so badly I had to give it up. Far too many years spend staring through a Stereoscope building and repairing printed circuit boards with resistors and caps that weren't much bigger than an ink dot. I miss those days when I could do things like this "just for fun". One thing he didn't tell you is that doing things like this helps keep your troubleshooting skills alive.
If an IC was getting hot and the amp distorting, then have you got an intermittent problem on the bias supply for the IC? Or perhaps negative feedback is failing (which I suspect would be within the IC).
It's good to know that
one can enjoy music
on vintage stereo equipment.
Toney Tillery Isaiah.
It takes a lot of money,time and patience
to restore vintage equipment.
Toney Tillery Isaiah.
That's a nice cheapie-set.
Vintage cheapie is definitely better than modern cheapie. :-)
Just to keep in mind that Concert Hall made cheap stereo system like Crosley did, and so does my GE Show N' Tell. Concert Hall made other type of record players in the mid to late 70's and early 80's including the Wildcat portable stereo record player with a BSR changer, and that was after GE stopped production on the Wildcat and other cheap record players, but this one is not the best than the modern stereo systems, it's just a cheap AM/FM stereo with a turntable and no features like an 8-track player or a cassette recorder that are not part of the unit.
I actually owned a unit that was a peg below that unit. At least that unit
In your video had an AC motor and idler drive. I owned a Dorchester all in one radio record player that had a DC motor and belt drive just like the Crosley and it's ilk of today.
I once had one that was in the middle between this Concert Hall and your Dorchester. It was a Candle (Canadian brand of Jutan International Ltd) that had a DC motor and idler drive.
it was the same "leetec" turntable , bean making them since the 80s
Does the FM play in stereo after all, or just the record player?
I was surprised to see that this was assembled in USA but if my memory is correct, Concert Hall was the old GE. Therefore it was made in Decatur, IL.
Oh, come on... The Postal Service only stacked 50 packages on top of this one😁. Seriously , nice job, as usual for you.
I got one of these with speakers and they were okay but the one you used are way better
just a thought when you have to insert multiple lead wires cut them to different lengths then you only have to fiddle with one at a time
Funny 6:19, Mundelein is named so for Cardinal George Mundelein because Mundelein houses a large seminary. All those prayers did not help this Concert Hall reach superstar status. Most of its brethren did not obtain eternal life either.
Found a GX or Yorks once dumped outside a Residence that a Freind lived @ !!! Gutted that Pieice of Plastic - had a DC motor and Plastic Hi-resonance turntable!!!!! used that thing for a Low amperage variable power supply source. nevr tried the Reciver that much!!!
Fragile, you mean "frajeelee, that must be Italian!" (A Christmas Story). I seen some of those cheapo record players in a store that are a perfect copy of a Crosley but now this had "Victor" on it instead. Another example of using a name that had to do with quality in the past being pasted on a piece of junk.
Wrap the dial string with aluminum foil when soldering near it.
It doesn’t sound like it’s playing too fast. That’s surprising, because BSR’s from the ‘70s and ‘80s, and most cheapos from that period did.
i use to have some speakers just like them.
at a flea market I found a channel master record player with a 4 speed BSR Changer and I got for $10 and nothing seems to be broken
ratchet5500 video's did it have an 8-Track in it?
I think that the cheap and crappy variable capacitor can be replaced by vari-cap diodes and use a multi-turn 1M resistor as the tuning control.
DAVID GREGORY KERR is it worth bothering though with this?
Looks similar to the Emerson crap that was sold at about the same time.
Looks like white van fodder
I love this channel!
"This is old" 2:50. Your friend, Jeff.
I have loved country music for years and now can't listen to it.
Aw man 3038 the beegees more than a woman I’m a huge fan of the beegees luv the little stereo system to
WoW that super low distortion from a 200 watts music power (if plugged in the same wall outlet as a 3 way 150 watt lamp). It figures they made those crappy plastic talking book rekee players. I think the olny thing in a TB player that they made was the very crappy amplifiers.
It is all Horrible.....I agree with U...we need it to be back to basics...50s 60s and 70s ... enough with the same music that sounds all the same!!!!
Sadly, I have come to find that an ever increasing amount of the higher priced, "better quality", domestically purchased items are just repackaged cheap chinese stuff, bought in bulk by a domestic distributer. The only difference, other than the 500 - 1000% mark up in price, is that you don't have to wait a month and a half for the "slow boat" to arrive from China. Unfortunately, as much as I might want to buy American, I find that I can't afford to or that there is simply no American made options left, other than new-old stock. Most of my projects are alot like this one; just not worth spending any real money on, so I order from China and I wait.
Cheap player, but better than some of the cheap stuff that is currently selling out there. Maybe a bad capacitor or transistor in the AM section.
Cheap or not, it still works, as is.
If you are looking for a dedicated oldies station, you should check out WTDK.
Then you have WINO...."Wonderful WINO" from one of the earlier comedians.
Only 400 boxes on top of it? Your estimate is a bit low, my friend...
I got one new in the box the speaker cones were plastic
you know you are allowed to run your own low-power AM station, that would probably be very therapeutic and enjoyable for "yew"....
Approved by the First Church of Vanity Fair Concert Hall
All that crap, wrap is same here...all packaged and homogenized for dead ears! That stuff all sounds the same...junk [my kind word]. Have done many of those S.R.'s.
I have to agree the radio isn't worth listening to.
Here its all the same but with way less stations to pick from.
1marcelfilms
, same here. We have one AM station left and after dark the Mexicans take over the dial, much as they have our country. I haven't used my radio function on my component system in decades. As radiotvphononut referred to, all we get are "canned" stations and none of that current racket is worth wasting the electricity on. Funny that I never really appreciated the quality of my old reel-to-reel tapes and my huge vinyl collection until there was no real music left to listen to. Now I pay them all the time.
For the life of me, I can't understand why a company would build such cheap stuff. Inevitably, the unit won't perform very well and eventually fail, sooner rather than later. The customer thinks less of the company and their reputation suffers. In the long run, it can't be good for business.
Tom
THOMMGB I think that it is just boils down to price, technology, and competition. If somebody actually built a nice quality unit that cost 20% more than the other comparable units on the store shelf, few people would be willing to pay up for it because they either have not educated themselves on the difference or just don't care. So, nobody builds anything any better than the competition. If you want it, here it is - take it or leave it! Retailer like Wal Mart squeeze manufacturers to build cheaper models specifically for them to keep prices at the lowest at the point of sale when negotiating contacts with the manufactures. Companies, such as Snapper lawn mowers, who refuse to cut quality as a demand of retailers end up losing massive market share. Couple all of this with products filled with technology that become out of date, if not obsolete, within two years and the rational to make high quality, long lasting (especially electronic) mass market products just does not exist anymore.
Radio Stations today are nothing!!!
I guess 'criminally cheap' is not a new invention.
That is in bad shape... when it is crackly on FM!!!!..... where is Long Wave and Short Wave???.... Still never made them to get anything!!!!
'almost a crosley'..??..nah....much better.. 😉😁
i still cant believe people actually buy those crosley things, at the price they are.., saw one in a local maplin store, and its even more s#!t than i thought!
Most stores are making a killing on those Chinese suitcase record players. They wholesale for under $40 US, usually in lots of 1000 units. alibaba.com is selling a Kingstar Model KXR-639, from Guangdong, China for $1-39.9/ unit, minimum order of 100 units. The Chinese are told we love these cheap things. They don't buy them, they're only for export. They buy better quality stuff, which they can afford nowadays. They laugh at us for what we buy, they know we can afford better, too.
8:52 Face reveal
Put it back in the garbage!!
you'd have to slow down when you're talking to your audience a little bit, because you tend to talk a little bit fay-est, and it's hard to follow yew... sometimes