Sonab Speakers, Para-magnetic Pedestals and Nostalgia

[Stephynbouby]

It's still possible to pick up a Garrard SP25 Mk III deck for a reasonable cost, even though they are 40+ years old. I had one when I was a student. Hell, you can even pick up spares still.

I was so poor as a student that I couldn't afford a pair of decent speakers and so had a pair that made the music I played sound cheap and tinny. Actually, having said that, some of the music that I played was cheap and tinny - but that's beside the point.

Eventually, I saved enough money to buy a set of Sonab speakers which I heard at a Hi-Fi exhibition in Harrogate (Yorkshire) one grey and cold Sunday afternoon. They were the height and width of a paperback book but could blow the door off my student pad with so much ease that it was ridiculous. I'm not sure whether this says much about the speakers or little about the quality of the door. I've just been online to look for a set of Sonab Speakers from the 70s. I can have a working pair provided that I can find $1,450 US dollars. That, folks, is the real cost of nostalgia. I can't believe that I sold those speakers in order to buy a set of Wharfedale speakers which I can now buy for less than £250 Sterling.

Anyways, moving on.

Back in those days, the dog's doodah's of Hi-Fi kit was Bang and Olufsen. Hell, I kid you not, they even had pedestals for their speakers which were para-magnetic and which, it is claimed, reduced the distortion of the sound from the speakers caused by the Earth's magnetic field. Seriously, no shit. That's what the B&O salesman told me. The pedestals themselves cost a small fortune. The B&O salesman tried to convince me, and others, that it would make the sound the very best that it could be. However, by the time one is old enough to have amassed enough funds to purchase a pair of para-magnetic pedestals, one's ears, which would have to be near perfect to register the difference made by B&O's para-magnetic pedestals, would have long since been rendered less-than-perfect by the onslaught of sound-waves generated by the likes of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.

I have searched the internet for a pair of para-magnetic pedestals to satisfy my relapse into 70's nostalgia. Thankfully and thus far, I haven't found a pair. I am thankful for such small mercies.

Smiles.

[Extractionsor]

From many manuscripts of Antiquity