"No way was the PL12D anything like £50 in 1974 , not here in the UK , more like £25"
I find it hard to believe they were $100 USD (plus sales tax...) in the USA but £25 in the UK.....
The same for the Connoisseur BD2 that you were selling for £15 was $140 in the US.
very strange.
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archi...iFI-Stereo/SPECIALS/Stereo-Directory-1975.pdf
I'm astounded at some of the prices in that magazine , no doubt shipping ( for european products ) plus several middle men each taking their cut , then import duties and the exchange rates must have made prices so inflated over there .
The Connoisseur decks really were the cheapest of the cheap , sold almost as DIY kits . The other entry level turntables were all around the £20-£30 mark , and we sold shed loads of them . You could get a Linn Sondek for £86 , and our most expensive turntable was the Transcriptor Hydraulic Reference at £120 ( that came with a pickup arm at that price , but the Sondek didn't ; we sold a lot of SME Series 2 arms , both fixed headshell and detachable , from memory for about £70 or £80 at the time ) . Later , when I bought my Hydraulic Ref turntable , initially with the fluid arm , I replaced it with the SME Series III when it came out - I remember that was about £130 at launch .
Looking at other products - tape recorders for example - the Sony TC-377 is listed at $400 ; sold for about £120 ; I paid around £100 for mine ; then later on I replaced it with a Revox A77 MkIII ( which I still have ) and I clearly remember we sold them for £249.95 , but with my staff discount I paid around £200 ; later on , when I decided to get a B77 , before they stopped making them , I got a B77 MkII half track , high speed and got 5p change out of £2000 , but that was in the late 80s , and by then I no longer worked in the trade - so no discount !
In cassette decks , we sold a fair few of the ones listed ; I can recall Technics with an entry level top loader well under £100 , the RS 610 listed in your magazine sold for around £100 and the RS-676 was a little over £200 , as was the top loading RS 276 with direct drive captain motor ; it was the two head version of the RS-279 , which we never sold but I subsequently obtained one of and still have both . Oddly , I remember the nakamichi 700 being around £700 , which oddly is also the dollar price in your magazine ; I bought a used one many years later . Also of note there are the heath AD-1530 , with Wollensak transport , which sold as the NEAL 102 here , and there is also an Advent deck with the same transport listed - I don't recall what the NEAL sold for , but the police bought a lot of them for use in interview rooms .
Looking at amplifiers , there aren't so many listed that I can compare directly - my first stereo amplifier was a Sony TA-1010 which had something less than 15 wpc rms , but sold for a little over £20 ; then there was the now very collectable TA-88 and ST-88 tuner ( the one with the circular dial ) which was just a little bit more ; there was also a cheaper TA-70 and ST-70 which was just junk . Your magazine does list the TA-1150 at $269.50 ; we sold those for around £100 , also there was the SQD-2020 Quadraphonic decoder and a second power amplifier for the rear channels - the decoder cost around the same as the amplifier and the power amp was a bit less - all this is from memory going back 50 years ! Sadly , your magazine does not list Quad or Sugden , of which we sold a lot . It runs in my mind the Quad 33/303 sold for somewhere north of £200 , and the original A48 was a little cheaper . I remember when the Quad 405 came out , I bought the first one and remember paying £120 for it , but that was my discounted price , can't remember what I paid for the preamp .
In tuner/amplifiers , we sold a lot of Pioneer from the SX-434 ( which was very popular ) right up to the SX-1010 ( I remember selling a 1010 to one customer along with a pair of tannoy Ardens , and when we delivered them he was in a small terraced house with a tiny living room they barely fitted into - I did suggest something smaller would suit better but he was happy . Also sold a lot of Sony , Yamaha , Technics and the odd Marantz tuner amps , the marantz was because they made one with Quadraphonic decoder built in .
In loudspeakers , there was lots of choice and of course we had all the British makes : KEF , Celef , B&W , Castle , IMF , Quad , Tannoy , plus a few imports . There was a plentiful choice under £100 , and that included my KEFKIT 3s which I had for a good many years . The most expensive speakers we had back then were the IMF TLS80s , which were about £700 ; the Quad Electrostatics ( ESL57s) at the same time were about half that price . We once got in a pair of JBL L200s which a customer specially ordered , they were very expensive , and we sold a few pairs of the L100s which were also pricey , but you had to have a taste for the sound they produced .
Certainly , from what I can see in that magazine , Hi-Fi was a LOT more expensive in the USA back then than it was here ; I'm often astounded at prices asked for things on eBay nowadays , compared to what they originally cost - another example there is my Sennheisser HD424 headphones , which were just over £20 back then ( the cheaper HD 414 was something like £14 ) , yet look on eBay now and people ask hundreds for them - there is a pair in Japan right now with an asking price of over £400 !
