teac – Preservation Sound

Highlights from the 1970 AES Convention, Los Angeles, CA

above: the GRT 500 audio-tape evaluator c. 1970

Just in case you were too-young/too-hypothetical to have attended, we are pleased to bring you highlights from the 1970 convention of the Audio Engineering Society (via ye olde DB Magazine, r.i.p.). You can download the whole shebang here…

DOWNLOAD: AES_1970_DB_mag

…and we’ve also reproduced it below for your browsing enjoyment. Products on offer at that time include: mixing consoles from Electrodyne, Gately, Quad-Eight, Spectra-sonics, Fairchild, Langevin, and Altec. Opamp labs had kits on offer as well. Tape machines include 3M, Otari ‘of Japan,’ Teac 7030, GRT 500, Norelco (Phillips) pro-51, Sony Superscope TC-850, and Ampex. Dolby’s model 360 N/R system debuted, as did the Melcor ‘all electronic’ reverb and the Urei LA-3. New microphones on offer included the Electro-voice DS-35 and the Shure SM-53.

Well alright… Cheryl from the Madison office is finally coming over to the condo for dinner. I think she said she liked John Denver and Jim Croce…

Gonna make pretty much the ultimate mix… man this is really gonna set the mood…

OK it’s almost 8… let’s get this tape up on the deck. Thanks to TEAC Auto-Reverse technology, the tape will play over and over and over and over again all night, regardless of how long the night ends up being.

What a fox. Oh yeah? Like the music? Yeah I love these guys too… Saw them at the OysterFest a few years ago… oh yeah, glad you dig it…

*************

*******

***

I am not making any of this up. This is an actual TEAC print-ad from January 1976. It features single-people in their mid-30s having a romantic evening at the gentleman’s home (condo). The selling proposition of this product is ‘Auto-Reverse,’ AKA, you don’t have to flip the tape over when the side ends. When we were growing up in the cassette-tape era, Auto-Reverse was still a premium-feature of the higher-priced tape players. I actually don’t think I ever had an auto-reverse walkman; they were just too expensive. Flipping the tape was just part of life. Good thing i was too young at the time to have any ladies to entertain. By the time I started dating, the CD was already in-play. ‘Repeat’ is of course a feature of all CD decks.

Anyhow, this advert is a good example of the ‘lifestyle-benefit’ advertising that consumer electronics manufacturers employed in the 70’s. Set a little stage, tell a little story, allow the consumer to insert themselves into the scenario. This was in some contrast to much electronics advertising of the 40s to 60s, much of which was focused on ‘fidelity’ and ‘value.’ By the 70s, 20-20k performance (OK, 30-15k) was a given in most equipment; transistors and PCBs had made this stuff affordable to most working-class folks; so the benefit of one brand over the other needs to be demonstrated in other ways. In this case, the increased romantic-potential of a dinner-date.