I've always been a huge fan of vintage stereo equipment. I love the sound of an old component system. Manufacturers like Yamaha, Fischer, McIntosh, Sony and others just produced some really nice sounding audio equipment back in the day.
I had a really nice Yamaha stereo receiver I purchased at a garage sale 15 years ago for $5. The thing was awesome but it didn't have a remote. The lazy in me was getting tired of getting up and down every time I wanted to turn up the volume, or change a setting. I decided I'd look for something with a remote as I garage sale shopped for resell items this summer.
I came across a Sony component system for $40. The thing had everything; Infinity speakers, a turntable, REMOTE CONTROL, am/fm receiver, cd player, blue ray player and more. The woman that sold it to me assured me everything worked great. I took her word for it, she had an honest face 🤣 What a mistake! When I got it home the only thing that worked was the turntable and the remote. Everything else had serious issues. The speakers blown, the cd and blue ray player unusable. The receiver only worked with the remote. It was a real mess. The turntable was worth $40, but the rest was junk.
I'm convinced that stereo was a jinx because it also ended up blowing my Sony speakers that I've had FOREVER. It was time for some new sound
I decided to start the new year with some decent sound. My Christmas present to me was a new stereo receiver and speakers. I also decided to check out some new tech instead of going vintage. Considering my last vintage purchase was such an epic failure!
I shopped around and decided on the Rockville Blu150 Receiver and the matching Rockville 64B 400watt Bookshelf speakers. As much as I love vintage, I also love Bluetooth streaming, and many other features newer equipment offers.
I purchased the speakers from eBay and the receiver from Amazon. eBay had the same price with free shipping but I had a $10 off coupon for eBay, so I used it for the speakers.
So lets get reviewing. The setup was pretty easy. Same as setting up a vintage component system. I went with wired speakers, figuring the Amp would stream any Bluetooth services I needed.
The amp is much smaller than my old Yamaha receiver. I liked that a lot.
The old receiver was about the same size as the VHS/DVD combo beneath it. The new receiver is about a third of the size and probably uses a lot less energy too. I still have the DVD/VHS player because I can play my CDs on it and also occasionally test DVDs and VHS tapes for reselling on eBay.
The remote doesn't have an on/off switch. You must turn it on and off manually. Besides that, most other features can be handled from the remote. No more getting up ten time an hour to adjust settings like volume, bass, and treble.
It has several inputs. There is an auxilary input. A phono input which was important because I still listen to vinyl and didn't want to purchase an additional pre-amp for the turntable. There is also an optical input and a coaxial input. So it came with plenty of inputs. More than I really need.
There is also a USB slot and an SD card slot for MP3 playing. Time to load up some old SD cards with music I like. These were the only features I didn't test yet.
The stereo pushes 75 watts of power per channel. More than sufficient for my tiny one bedroom apartment.
Even though I ordered from 2 separate sources, Amazon and eBay, I was surprised to find both packages sitting on the front porch this afternoon.
I was a little concerned about the speakers. As I said earlier, I ordered them off eBay because I had a coupon. A day later I read the guys feedback profile and it was hideous. All the negatives were for the speakers and the way they were shipped. Not sure if I got lucky, but they showed up in decent shape with no serious issues. I almost canceled the order too.
The speakers are able to handle up to 400 watts or so they say. I'm a little skeptical of this, but they do sound great. Even at full blast, they're able to handle everything the tiny amp can throw at them.
The covers are magnetic which I thought was really cool. Something I've never seen before. Again, they seem to have more than enough power for my tiny apartment. I'm actually glad I didn't order the larger towers, I was considering that.
Although, I'm still a huge fan of vintage stereo equipment I have to say, the new stuff is pretty cool. I'm really happy with this setup. On top of that, I do a lot of streaming, and now I can do that directly through the amplifier on my home stereo.
With that said, I'm glad I made the purchase.
On a side note, this also arrived. This was a gift from my family, They all got me Amazon gift cards so I could get it. This wasn't supposed to arrive until after the 1st of the year. I was surprised to find it sitting on the porch with my stereo equipment. I'll be posting a review of this StewMac cigar box guitar kit in the next week or so in the guitar community. I can't wait to make some time for this project.
Looks like it's going to be a musical new year!