Once, as a child, I went to the Melodiya store to look at all the musical equipment on sale. Melodiya is a record store of the recording studio of the same name. But usually they sold more than just records. Lots of interesting things (usually music).
And in this store I heard the song In the Army Now. Now you can easily find out on the Internet that it was the band Status Quo. But then I didn’t know this and was simply stunned by the sound quality of a really cool song. Such clear high frequencies. I still remember. The saleswoman asked: “Boy, what do you want?” For some reason I was ashamed that I was listening to music. I babbled that I was cold. Of course, they kicked me out. At that time, saleswomen were not particularly ceremonious with customers, often openly rude. Now it seems a little strange, but back then it was common.
Here, for example, is one of the samples of the mass audio player Accord-201. It was produced in the 70s-80s, at different factories: Riga Radio Plant named after A.S. Popov, Chelyabinsk Radio Plant, Makhachkala Radio Goods Plant.
Specifications:
Nominal output power – 2 W, maximum – 5 W
Frequency range – 100-10000 Hz
Dimensions when folded: 395x320x350 mm
Weight – 13 kg
Accord-201 (Unsplash license)
Here is another example – radiogram. Radio + play records. I don’t know the name of the model, reminds me of Ural-111 or Ural-112. It was quite bulky in size. Sometimes it was produced as a separate piece of furniture with long legs, like a table.
Radiola (Unsplash license)
VEF radio receiver.
Specifications
Maximum sensitivity at an output power of 5 mW in the ranges:
LW – 200 μV/m;
MW – 100 μV/m;
SW – 15 μV.
Real sensitivity:
LW – 1.2 mV/m;
MW – 0.6 mV/m;
SW – 50 μV.
Band of reproduced audio frequencies: 200 … 4000 Hz.
Nominal output power with a nonlinear distortion coefficient of no more than 5% – 150 mW.
Power source: 6 elements of type 373. (The receiver could operate for up to 150 hours on one set of batteries).
Dimensions: 297x230x105 mm.
Weight: 3.3 kg.
Radio receiver VEF 202 (from personal archive)