Hi-Fi News, December 1964
This copy of Hi-Fi News came our way recently and it was the cover that caught my eye. No pictures of fancy up-to-the-minute hi-fi equipment here, as you might expect. Instead, a puzzling picture of two female computer operators attending to the tape drives in a computer room. It turns out that there was ongoing debate in the pages of Hi-Fi News about the merits of using ¼-inch tape for recording music (the magazine didn’t approve), so they were showing how this computer system has just moved from 3-inch tape (that’s the enormous reel in the picture, weighing 26lbs) to mere ¾-inch tape (weighing 5lbs) in its brand new Honeywell installation.
Flicking through the magazine reveals much about what was available, and how much for, in the hi-fi world over sixty years ago. The magazine itself started as a monthly in 1956. It was two shillings at the time of our issue, and still survives today as a monthly paper magazine. Our magazine is entirely in black and white (apart from the yellow monochrome on the cover). We didn’t have any copies until now, so this makes our first one on our shelves.
It was still possible in 1964 to specify a mono amplifier. Using the Armstrong range as typical, you could get a stereo amplifier of 10W per channel for £27 10s (let’s say two weeks wages for most workers at the time); and an AM-FM tuner for £28 15s. I was surprised to see ‘separates’ (i.e., separate amplifier, turntable etc) were fairly normal by 1964. The reel-to-reel tape recorder (usually four-track) predominated as the means of recording music. (The Compact Cassette had just been introduced but had yet to catch on.) I’ve included a few examples of adverts here, although it’s really the price that startled me – the cheapest Philips was 42 guineas, going up to 92 guineas.
Actually, I was particularly taken with the Celestion ad: an artist’s illustration of a comfortably-off group of people listening to music at home. They have a tape deck and turntable built in to a cabinet (and amplifier somewhere), but the speakers are the attraction. They are available as just speakers, with the enclosure extra – so the fancy 20W version would be £33 for each complete speaker. The impressive art on the wall tells us much about 1960s’ high-end taste. But it seemed everything was expensive - start saving…
The editorial is fairly light in tone and there are plenty of articles describing the physics behind hi-fi equipment. Radio broadcasting was at an exciting time. The ‘FM Diary’ described which continental broadcasters could be received in the UK, and how signal strength varied with wind conditions, while an article ‘Commercial radio’ described the activities of Radio Luxembourg and the pirate stations (Caroline etc) and mulled over whether they were A Bad Thing. Hi-Fi News thought not, because they offered a service which the BBC didn’t – playing constant music suitable for background while listeners got on with their jobs. Radios 1, 2, 3, 4 weren’t that many years off, and the BBC was clearly taking note. The piece also described why the pirate stations tended to broadcast in the evenings only – after sunset the reception improved. I had no idea.
