I drove to Harlan yesterday and spent some time with my parents. I hadn’t seen them in person for a few months. It’s been so infrequent this last year, for obvious reasons. Which is super sad, but it’ll get better soon. They receive their second vaccine dose next week.
While I was there, I also picked up the Realistic LAB-400 I wrote about previously. Along with three old trophies from my parents’ youth and a pair of Realistic Mach One 4024a speakers.
The record player itself is in fantastic condition. It works well with my current setup with Google Home Max speakers, though I did need to buy a preamp in order to make the phono signal work with the powered Google speakers. I’ve been listening to a lot or records over the last 18 hours and it’s been a lot of fun. It sounds great.
I definitely remember the record player being a big deal growing up. At some point along the way, it was boxed up and put into storage, along with the Mach One speakers. The record player lived on a shelf in an upstairs storage closet and it’s currently in great shape. There are some signs of wear, which to me just makes it more valuable.
The Mach Ones are a different story. The wood finish is in decent shape, but there are definitely some scratches and there’s a little bit of water damage. This is just fine with me. Some light sanding and retreating of the veneer should make a pretty big difference.
The functional components of the speakers look to be workable. The 15″ subwoofers (15″ subwoofers!) are still supple to the touch. The controls move freely as you would expect. The housing of the controls is weather cracked.
The Mach Ones were stored in an unregulated storage unit. They were protected from weather elements like precipitation and wind, but probably froze and thawed hundreds of times over the last 20 years. I believe the speakers were stored in a closet at the house for a while, but eventually were moved to a storage unit to make space. I’m optimistic the speakers will work out. I plan to get them cleaned up and find a receiver to power them so I can see if they work, and if they do, how they sound. It looks like there are still parts available for these speakers, so I can go big if I’d like to.
I think they’re great speakers and folks on the web seem to think the same thing. I also think they’re great looking. I’m hoping to pair them up with the Realistic LAB-400 again in the future, but for the meantime they’re going to continue to live in storage.
Here’s an original advertisement for the speakers from the late 1970s/early 1980s. The speakers were sold through Radio Shack and manufactured in Japan.
Then there’s the Mach One logo below. It’s incredible. I love the vintage styling. The lettering is replicated from the Radio Shack logo of the time.
