I’ve had the same stereo speakers since I was 13. They came as part of a FIsher component system I got at Sanger Harris with my Bar Mitzvah money. I had made about a dozen trips to the store with my parents until they finally let me spend my money on it. The speakers and the turntable are all that’s left from that system. Which is pretty good when you consider that the speakers are big, boomy, and have moved with me at least seven times to three states. Once I replaced a woofer all by myself (I had kinda implied to Howard Jones that it was his music that blew it out, but that’s another story). I had to replace the original amplifier/receiver with its built-in five-band graphic equalizer about a dozen years ago when something popped and my room started to smell like burnt metal.
I went down to Circuit City or Leachmere and picked out a decent JVC as it’s replacement. I had to get a matching dual cassette deck with it since the cassette deck on the Fisher didn’t have a normal power plug and wouldn’t work without the amp. The new amplifier came with a pair of white bookshelf surround speakers to exploit the system’s Dolby Pro Logic which was a big selling point. I’d read about surround sound and thought I’d try it out. I fired up the system and couldn’t believe what I heard. The only thing coming out of the surround speakers was the A-B differential (all the sound that wasn’t common to the main right and left speakers) — something you usually try to avoid with expensive room treatments or better speaker placement. I thought I had broken the amplifier or something so I called the dealer. He said, “Yeah, that’s the way it’s supposed to sound.” Don’t think I ever bothered turning the surround speakers on after that.