My sister is moving house and emptying what was a shared house she has lived in for almost 25 years. She doesn't drive so keeps asking me to take things to the charity shop or tip. The Bristol Oxfam Books and Record store is now well stocked with 1970s prog rock LPs while I have kept a couple like the Kate Bush LP I posted about recently. However, I am now wondering if the equipment they were probably played on is fit for anything but the tip's WEE area. When it came to computers I always thought the nickname Amscrap was a bit unfair but this stereo truly deserves it. Made to look impressive in a Catalogue, and compete with brands such as Philips you quickly find all is not as it looks. The six band graphic equalizer actually only has three bands. Move one slider and the one next to it moves as well. The same with the twin volume controls. The turntable platter is plastic and closer to a frisbee than the cast metal platter on a low end Panasonic. Look inside and the circuitry is about the same that you would find in a £30 boombox from the time. So what happened to the company who produced such items? Well as mentioned earlier they went on to make Europes most successsful range of computers in the 1ate 1980s, and their founder Alan Sugar is now a Lord, the main man in the UK version of "The Apprentice",and is a Billionaire ! Several times recently, people here have asked recently why cassettes have a bad name. I suspect that equipment like this, bought by people who didn't know any better, explains it. Does anyone in the UK want to preserve the Amstrad ? All the controls are extremely scratchy, I couldn't get any sound from the record deck, and the perspex cover is cracked. You could probably get one in better condition for a tenner on Ebay. However, UK members are welcome to this one for the price of carriage.
Yes Amstrad made crap dressed up to look like something better than it is. Amstrad buys the cheapest end of line components to make their products. The only thing Amstrad I ever owned was a computer CPC 6128, I learned to program the Z80 CPU on it. Alan Sugar being a Billionaire? I don’t think so, he is not worth that much.
The were hideous then and hideous now, we had Fisher over here, I still see people grabbing the "monster" speakers that went with that crap at the thrifts. Technics also put out really crappy "monster" speakers, it was sad seeing them follow Fisher's lead but the 80's were pretty cut-throat for audio.
Even Pioneer, Marantz, and Sansui put out crap speakers during the 80s. But hey, if you were like me and all you listened to in the 80's was rap or house music, cheap speakers were good enough.
According to the Sunday Times Rich List he has been since 2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sugar What is doesn't say is how much of his money came from electronics although he famously started out selling car radio aerials from the back of a van. Quite a few years ago in the final of The Apprentice he announced that he had just brought IBMs headquarters on the South Bank. The finalists task was to come up with a scheme for a replacement building. Trying to research who owns the building now I suspect he sold it on at a profit.
Such irony: My brother's first [compact] stereo was a Fischer... bought at the same K-Mart my parents bought their Capehart compact stereo with dual 8-track decks, just a few years before! Me? I bided my time, and bought a Craig from a second-hand store for about $10.00. (Cheap!) So were the speakers with my brother's Fischer compact. He eventually got a book on speaker building, gutted & lined the cases with fiberglass, and fitted them with a horn-style tweeter and high-power rated full-range w/2-way crossover... all from Radio Shack. The only speakers I've ever seen that're worse than those were the ones included with my parent's Capehart: Cabinet like a large shoebox meant for boots, with a lone 4" full-range speaker... non-vented! Made me glad to have my Craig floor speakers: Bought for $5.00@local garage sale, and fitted with elements from a junked cabinet stereo by me. They were large enough to be a pair of end tables... which was fitting, since I placed them on either side of my bed! Still remember the experience of the first time I tried them out, playing the first track of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture OST. (At a reasonreasonable level, mind you....) It was then I realized the importance of building a good system, through-and-through.
iv never had any shit like that in my life lol smash it up haha ok i have had amstrad products in my life but they were better than this....wasn't this £99 new, i remember a mate had one
+1 to @Radio Raheem: I am not sure if such piece of technology is even worth to being donated to charity... On the other hand, it is still better than MP3 crap and YouTube downloads our folks are listening to these days... With Hi-End stores getting out of business or getting too snobbish, it is difficult nowadays to get to learn what Hi-End sound is But, from my own personal experience, I would urge anyone reading these ramblings to find such a store and to sit and listen to a McIntosh, or Krell, Naim, whatever... amplification onto a decent set of speakers... If your local dealer has a decent “front-end”, you are in luck!!! A Tip: nothing (Nothing!!!) beats a half-decent turntable!!!!... our obsession with cassettes is just a next-best-thing
@Jorge Not wanting to sound like a snob but I would not put McIntosh in the same category as Krell or Naim, at the same time Krell & Naim are not what they used to be, I personally would not buy any of them I would look elsewhere. With those companies you are mainly paying for the once great name and very little else.
Soo True, unfortunately... Once audio-company goes mainstream, get bought and sold by those who know how to squeeze an extra penny but not much else, things get weird. Like Naim and Focal now being under one ownership and advertised as a "package", although Focal is definitely not the best choice for Naim electronics. Myself being an incurable Naim-Head, of the now vintage "olive series" Naims, I kept McIntosh SACD player for almost a year. It was the only time when our house guests noticed my stack: McIntosh glass front panel does look dramatic! It sounded pretty dull, so I switched to Krell, then Ayre, then Wadia SACD players. Wadia on CASDs sounded almost as good as Naim CDS3 on CDs
...this is a proper dustbin, you just need to fill it up when i studied my tv/radio-mechanic profession in the very early 80'es those weren't even the worst units. there were some, when you opened them they fell apart, in a way that you couldn't reconstruct them, even if you wanted (...i never wanted)... i remember there were even tv's from Amstrad, when you opened the backpanel the tv fell over to the front because of the weight of the vacuum-tube.
I decided to keep the front panel (with electronics attached) in case it has some useful parts and binned the rest. Thinking about your comment, on the units plus side I think the only glue used in its construction was in the case, which was held to the other parts with various bolts and screws. In fact I ended up with a small pot full of them. I suspect iFixit would have given at least a 9 out of ten for servicability. The only thing that wasn't obvious was how to remove the turntable platter (unclip the 45RPM adaptor and there was a circlip underneath) or how they got the belt on (maybe hook it onto the motor with the platter slightly raised). Surprisingly the turntable motor was Matushita (Panasonic) Maybe they were the cheapest supplier. Contrast the Amstrad's construction with some of todays electronics. My next repair project is replacing an iPad digitizer. Hair dryer and glue scrapers at the ready. As readers probably know such products regularly get 1/10 for repairability from iFixit. Techmoan recently reviewed an automated chess board that was all glued together despite containing motors and belts and being made in a wooden box. Why ???
For the same reason speakers are glued together; because it's cheaper and because it discourages people from going inside and replacing the drivers
To be frank I'm not that keen on Amstrad (or Amscrap) products, the only Amstrad I've ever had was a 7090 double cassette radio which I had for two years bought in May or June 1982, one of the tape doors broke off (and no, I didn't pull it!). I don't have a great opinion of Philips cassette decks either as they are driven by plastic gears that break and tapes get chewed up because the full hub on the left turns while the empty one on the right doesn't so loose tape is fed into the machine. I got rid of several Philips cassette decks for this reason and now have two Philips CD/Radio/USB ghetto blasters, an AZ2538 and an AZ2555, both are brilliant. I've got other machinery by Sharp, Hitachi, Panasonic, Kenwood and Sony (Walkman and Discman). My entire stack system is Kenwood separates except for a Pure DRS 701ES DAB tuner, all black so you'd hardly tell the difference, the DAB tuner runs through Video 2 and the computer through Video 1 on the receiver, I have no TV, I watch iPlayer, ITVPlayer, etc.
