Amstrad tower system

[old Guy]

Yes you hear me right. My question on the Thesis of Anything you can imagine in your head no matter how bizarre. has happened or is happening to someone

I wonder it there someone who bought an Armstrad Tower system out the Sunday Paper all those years ago. . Still has it still uses it and Loves it. They never heard anything else to compare it with. They play their Records and cassette tapes. They think its the Dog's Testies of audio equipment

Sorry just a whimsical passing thought

 

[garn63]

An ex girlfriend had one. I remember Black furniture must have been in at the time. Something went caput on the tape section. Took the back off & had a peep, screwed it back on, ..& think I got her a big ghettoblaster instead.
* The £5 car cassette player/ radio was the highlight. God loves a tryer. The Apprentice.

 

[Andy Stephenson]

Yes you hear me right. My question on the Thesis of Anything you can imagine in your head no matter how bizarre. has happened or is happening to someone

I wonder it there someone who bought an Armstrad Tower system out the Sunday Paper all those years ago. . Still has it still uses it and Loves it. They never heard anything else to compare it with. They play their Records and cassette tapes. They think its the Dog's Testies of audio equipment

Sorry just a whimsical passing thought

No, but my first TT was an Amstrad, a TP12D if anyone wants to google it for an image.

It was actually better than it had any right to be bearing in mind:

A: The price, £39.95 when I got it.
B: The story, possibly apocryphal, that Alan Sugar wouldn't use any component if a cheaper one was available.

Andy

 

[old Guy]

oops

 

[Andy Stephenson]

oops

That's it. Quite reminiscent of the early Rega Planet.

 

[Jules_S]

I had the dubious pleasure of trying to sell those piles of cr$p (along with the Matsui equivalents) when I had my Saturday job in Currys when at college. So many came back for a variety of repairs (I used to deal with managing that too, one afternoon a week). They really were nothing more than a cheap and mainly empty plastic box with the lowest-quality components. "Shoddy" doesn't even begin to describe them.

Even as a somewhat naive late-teenager I knew how unspeakably appalling they were, and would try anything and everything to persuade people to spend a chunk more on one of the other offerings we had, mainly Aiwa, Technics, etc. They too, were pretty ropey it has to be said but by comparison it was like trading up to a Mark Levinson! At least the ones around the £1000 mark were listenable (as long as you didn't listen too closely)

Amstrad? No flowers.

 

[audio_PHIL_e]

They really were nothing more than a cheap and mainly empty plastic box with the lowest-quality components.

Correct. I took something like that apart and although the plastic moulding on the front made you think it was a "stack" of a CD/cassette/Tuner/amplifier it was a mainly empty box with a couple of pcbs on the bottom.

 

[old Guy]

Great learning curve here here i did not realise the Amstrad tower system was less than it seemed. no cassette i always assumed it had one.

 

[garn63]

You could be forgiven thinking it was a major step up from a radiogramme...from a yard or two away ?

 

[Nifkin]

It was that evolutionary step from a stereogram-sideboard-thing to something that looked a bit like it was separate components (a word that got bandied about a lot on decals stuck to cheap stereos in the 80s) which obviously took it's cue from early proper hifi (the brushed aluminium fronted, teak sided stuff of the 70s) I remember as a kid being dazzled by those Amstrad tower adverts on the telly. I think maybe they were (ironically, considering how crap they were) what put me on the trail to a proper sound system.

 

[garn63]

It was that evolutionary step from a stereogram-sideboard-thing to something that looked a bit like it was separate components (a word that got bandied about a lot on decals stuck to cheap stereos in the 80s) which obviously took it's cue from early proper hifi (the brushed aluminium fronted, teak sided stuff of the 70s) I remember as a kid being dazzled by those Amstrad tower adverts on the telly. I think maybe they were (ironically, considering how crap they were) what put me on the trail to a proper sound system.

Is that a piece of card at the back of "the power meter" ? We were easy pickings in those days.

 

[Ian]

To be fair they now cost less than a new LP !

 

[DIB]

My brother in law had one, he never used it, no idea why he bought it actually.

When I got married in 1984 I treated myself to a Pioneer stack system from Lewis's store in Manchester, something like this. It was awesome

 

[Jules_S]

To be fair they now cost less than a new LP !

I'd rather buy half an LP than be forced to endure that steaming pile of excrement

 

[tackleberry]

But if it was that or no music at all?….

 

[flapland]

Sold loads of Amstrad, Lloytron and similar at Woolco Middleton (basically a Woolworths department store). It was a Saturday job and along with the Ferguson 14" portable TV's and VHS recorders where our biggest sellers.

When twin tape decks came into fashion they were useful for copying the Spectrum games we also sold.

Best quality item we ever had, and never sold was the Mitsubishi Vertical record system. Something like the one below.

https://openearaudio.com/mitsubishi-x10-vertical-music-centre/

 

[bigfish786]

I remember my Sony Stack System was £550 out of mums catalogue back in 1988. I briefly had an awful amstrad one that I sent back as it ate my one and only CD at the time, I remember looking at the hifi stuff for hours on end in that catalogue, it had those cheap separates too… Acoustic Solutions.

 

[Jezzer]

When I was at school I dated a girl who had one in her bedroom and I do recall it being complete rubbish because not only did it sound terrible but it had what looked like a six band graphic equaliser on the front when in fact if you moved one slider it moved two sliders…



Utter shite ☝

At the age of 15 I already had some points of reference as to what ‘good’ looked like - my dad’s Sansui system and my own Aiwa midi system (which I bought for a great price because my uncle worked for Aiwa - it was he who got me into hifi). Another thing about the Aiwa system was that the supplied speakers weren’t very good. So my uncle swapped them out for a pair of JBL TLX3s.

 

[Jules_S]

But if it was that or no music at all?….

Honestly? I'd probably take no music, in preference. Being forced to listen to my much-loved music on such appalling equipment would probably turn me off it for life.

 

[Klassik]

Sold loads of Amstrad, Lloytron and similar at Woolco Middleton (basically a Woolworths department store). It was a Saturday job and along with the Ferguson 14" portable TV's and VHS recorders where our biggest sellers.

While Klassik knows that Woolworth was in the UK, El Klassiko did not realize that Woolco was in the UK as well. They were a pretty major competitor to the Kmart and Targets of the world here in the US. Here's a 1979 newspaper ad from a US Woolco in the Houston area showing their selection of 'fine' Electrophonic stereo systems.

Klassik wonders if the 4-Way Disco Juke Box made it to the UK Woolcos. It has a BSR record changer so it does have a touch of the UK.

Newspaper ad link: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1066451/m1/3/

It probably goes without saying that in the US at least, Woolco was a better place to buy albums than it was to buy audio equipment.