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So just what WAS the frequency playback range of 1960's car speakers?


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Your typical car radio of the 1960's...   or your handheld transistor radio...     Just what were the frequency ranges of those speakers?

 

I'm listening to this great old 1968 single tonight,    abnd it's pretty clear that the mixers/masterers of this recording were specifically tailoring a frequency arc that would sound good in that now-primitive hardware playback....   surely many records of the era were mastered with that in mind.     Thoughts?

 

 

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They just didn't bother trying to include anything that wouldn't play back over a car radio or typical 'teen hi fi.' The record player below is several cuts above -- it has a changer and tone controls!

Teen Hi Fi - luxury edition with changer and tone controls

 

Something like that above would start someplace over 200 and go up  to maybe 6K Hz, highly uneven. You'd be able to follow the bass to some extent because of its overtones. A shirtpocket transistor radio would have even less bass, maybe starting above 300 Hz. 

The car radio, on the other hand, as well as some other nice classic super-het table radios, were often the class act of consumer entertainment -- reflecting radio's one-time home entertainment dominance. The speakers in them might be all over the map, but the amps of some of the classic designs put out 5 to 10 watts and had frequency response more like 80 Hz to maybe 8 kHz, even though AM broadcast in the US typically was limited to frequency response below 7.5 kHz and the receiver section of the radio might not perform up to the level of the amp.

 

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I know that my own musical evolution was heavily influenced by the bandwidth limitations of the 60s.  I knew there were sounds I just wasn't hearing on any of our playback systems when I was a kid.  It was a classic scarcity situation - just to hear a deep bass note on ANY playback system was a super high and a rare, rare thing.   I positively lusted for the high fidelity experience. 

 

I didn't hear McCartney's bass follow on the Day Tripper riff for a number of years after it came out - not until I heard it on a friend's dad's super-hi-fi setup.

 

And basic clarity was missing, too - not just the lo and hi tails of the recorded bandwidth.  I speculate that this had an unexpected effect on kids like me with musical interests, namely that it made very close listeners out of us.  It was all through the glass, darkly.  I'd put the stereo speakers on the floor and lie down, one speaker directly on each ear, just to see what I could hear that I hadn't heard before.  I never put on a pair of headphones until I was in high school.  We'd go to any store that sold stereos and get them to play the show-off album - like the 1812 Overture with the cannons at the end - to suck up those low frequencies into our heads like junkies milking blood.  

 

Not that you have to experience the scarcity to fully appreciate great, full bandwidth playback...but having that unattainable carrot dangling in front of us, getting a little closer each year, made it easy to be a fanatic about sound.

 

nat whilk ii

 

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