I have to say they really don't make low priced gear like they used to.

I have been using/looking at old gear and I see the following.

EG: Brushed aluminum faceplates,Metal Plated knobs,Glowing tuners that you could actually read, Buttons that actually were big enough to press and lettering that wasnt gray on a black background and selectors that "click" and have illuminated Illustrations of what the source you selected was.

Pre-fabricarted Rack stereos Speakers so loud that any turn above volume 3 would send plaster falling from the ceiling and windows rattling. and my all time favorite the Pain threshold.

Most Modern receivers take a lot of cranking just to wake up the same exact speakers! :eek:

This is due To the fact that New amplifiers tend to reach peak volume before an old amp will start to peak.

Where even All-in ones/Generic off brand stereo's Outdid/outlasted and outstyled most modern stereos of the same price $70-$189.00 Price range.

Where even low end gear had a Great tuner.

A lot of modern all in ones are so ugly.

Unusual rant, but I like it because it's true.

Some low priced modern gear sounds very good IMO such as JVC and Panasonic chip amp receivers and Sonic Impact amplifiers.

Note that the nice looking receivers from the 70s with the champagne faceplates and such were hardly cheap, especially when inflation is figured in. And many sounded pretty raucus IMO.

This is due To the fact that New amplifiers tend to reach peak volume before an old amp will start to peak.
.

More likely due to the use of differently tapered potentiometers as volume controls.

I think the new gear performs as well as the old gear and is certainly more feature laden. The one thing I do miss from the very old days is the inclusion of a competent AM tuner in receivers (or tuners for that matter.)

We have a cheap Emerson radio in the kitchen that does AM as well as a car radio. There is not excuse for ignoring it in a modern tuner.

One thing to remember is that cheap gear is much cheaper today than it was in the 70s. I bought my first receiver--a 25-watt Technics--in 1978 for a little over $200. Today, you can buy a 50-watt stereo receiver for $150. Considering inflation, that's about a third of what I paid back then.

Also, back then you couldn't buy a source component as good as today's $50 DVD player for all the tea in China.

You've got to love people who want to buy our cast offs :)

It’s funny how we remember things. I've never been more than a mid FI guy, but also never owned a rack set with or with out the giant 12" woofers. But my memory is that most rack units relied on very efficient speakers rather than large amps, and that some were shy about specifying power correctly. There were many 100 Watt systems that omitted the FTC bandwidth spec for both power and distortion. The result was usually a definite boom to the bass and distortion at audible levels. Rock sounded OK while a piano solo was torture.

As to the volume knob I think FMW may have nailed it; audio taper vs. log taper. Remember too that none of that gear was for Dolby surround so there was no idea of setting a reference level and having the knob travel represent dB above/below that level. I know that I was puzzled at first by a volume display range from -infinity db through 0 to +18 dB.

However I do think that well made and reasonably priced pre-amps and power amps with really wide bandwidth and very low distortion have exited the market; victims of DD.