Dawn of stereo

[stbasil]

Been perusing old Life magazines online lately. Content is fascinating, as are many of the ads. Webcor was selling "Stereofonic Sound" to the masses, but apparently not via the "fonograph." The tape deck was binaural, but the record player was not. I wonder if they created an upgrade path for the stereo records that were soon to come.

From October 10, 1958:

[Motorola minion]

Attached is one of the earliest stereo phonograph models, RCA Victor's SHP-9 seen in magazine ad.

SHP9- aka twins.jpg

RCA Victor introduced a similar setup as the flagship model for 1958.
The SHF-1 has twin amplifiers, twin speakers, stereo preamp/tuner yet only the R2R tape machine is stereo.

That models standard RP-205 "High-Fidelity" mono record changer uses a magnetic MONO cartridge made by GE?, transistor preamp stage to match low-level, low-impedance output of the moving magnet cartridge. This made a stereo upgrade a mixed improvement. In the case of the SHF-1, the original cartridge and transistor stage were missing. Two cables exited the preamp, that were likely connected to an external player.

The ceramic P228 cartridge fit the standard tone arm, so I imagine the Webcor player was easily adapted to stereo, maybe was available. I cant imagine buying a mono player a year before stereo records were introduced, had to be a "stereo tonearm kit" available considering what these cost new.

[walyfd]

The cartridge was an ElectroVoice (ortophon) moving coil cartridge, hence the high-output transistor preamp. It had removable headshells for 33/45 and 78 cartridges.

I had a 6HF1 for way too long and dumped way too much trying to get the phono to sound right. I found one working cartridge and it did sound great until the cartridge gave out. Nobody, even ortophon, would rebuild it.

[William]

Hey, Dave, did you forget to attach something. You said attached but I do not see an attachment. In RCA's models numbers the "H" stood for highfi/mono and the "S" stood for stereo, right?

Bill

[electra225]

Magnavox used the stereo 2-track tape deck idea in their 1957 model 300-H Concert Grand. The record player and tuner were mono. There was a four tube amplifier, 6X4, 12AX7 and P-P 6AQ5's that was used in the second stereo channel. The 1958 model 250-H was full stereo, still had the tape deck. The 1969 800F was full stereo with stereo-compatible FM, but no tape deck.