remember the old days

just the other day i found a old shaft style Kraco tape deck. man brought back some memories. anyone remember the old days of car audio, not that old, talking bout mid 80's early 90's. brands of what was considered good gear: Sparkomatic(6x9's with the orange surround) audiiovox, jenesen, kraco, sayno, and more. i remember helping my dad as a kid mount EQ's under dashboards. the common speaker grounds, jig saw to rear deck lid to squeeze in 6x9's. the first pull-out tape deck,lol. i remember target and sears would sell those kraco tape decks with the colored faceplate. car audio has come a long way.....before amps with built in x-overs, aux inputs, screens, etc. i cant even remember who introduced the first cd player in cars. i need to find some of my old issues of Car Stereo Review. (remember that mag) Go BIG or go Home                                    it might not be broke, but lets fix it anyway

Lol - yeah, I installed my first stereo in my 79 f-150 back in 88 (shafted type Sherwood)... I just wonder why they still put the shaft pieces on most of the kits STILL!! First Car CD Player: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Corporation -Old School

I found a Sparkomatic 8 track player at the shop just the other day.  This baby was a jewel. If had the outboard amplifier.  The amp was connected to the deck via a 6 foot long bundle of wires.  Screw terminals on the amp for speaker connections. 

Do you remember the Record Players that had the AM modulator?

what about when "AMS"(automatic music search) technology came out for cassette decks when you could sometimes fast forward or rewind tracks on tape! lol , when the single din radios "flat" radios became popular i would try my best to install those shaft style radios as flat as possible with the dashboard. and i used to study those cructhfield catalogs for the install specs on the installation guide (before the internet hit it big) i just had to know speaker size and locations for different cars.Go BIG or go Home                                    it might not be broke, but lets fix it anyway

I do remember that every time we visited the US in the mid 70s on we'd bring back Jensen speakers and trap the local Snap-On guy for tools at half of what we paid in the UK. Ah the early cordless drills! Or as already mentioned, cutting the back shelves of original Minis and squeezing in 6 x9s, underhang boxes for the radios and of course spacers on the spindle shafts as above. Then along came proper amps, trips to pick up Soundstream, Boston and Nak. You couldn't imagine how cheap the US prices were compared to Europe.

great thread! does anyone remember the Sony amps that connected with DIN cables? I had a pair of the aforementioned Sparkmatic 6x9's with the orange surround, I think they were advertised as 300 watts or something like that.

I had a Sony XM-1 and an XM-40.  They were the ones that were silver in color and had the same facial print.  The 1 which was the larger amp was about twice as long as the 40,  Had the EQ as well.  I think it was the XE-9.  They replaced the XM-1 with the XM-120.  That was garbage.  The XM-120 had protection, it did not like to be run anywhere below 4 ohms.  The XM-1 would run below 2 ohms all day long.

My first "large sub amp" was a Crutchfield blue 50x2 that would also cut out at lower than 2 ohms (I found out about speaker impedance the hard way after hooking all my home speakers up in the back seat). Hehehe