8/31/23
Newsletter #444
The Crack of Dawn
After the true wonders of stereo, there next came the general hoodwinking of the public with the introduction of “Quadrophonic.” Quadrophonic recordings — so they said — had four discreet channels, meaning that you could have just guitar coming from one speaker, vocals on another, bass on another, and drums on yet another, and the system actually existed and worked . . . in the laboratory. But they could never get it to work properly – or more accurately, inexpensively – for the home market. It was possible to get quadrophonic to function if the original source was reel-to-reel tape, where each channel could be separate, discreet, and read by a sound head. However, on a vinyl LP – which was by far the biggest medium – where the sound was picked up by a needle in a two-sided groove, with one side being the right stereo channel and the other the left side, there was no room for two more channels. You couldn’t put two more discreet channels on each side of the groove – the lower channel would simply run up through the higher channel and the two would become one and you were back to stereo.
Instead of admitting that quadrophonic didn’t work on records, they just did their best to sell them anyway. The stereo manufacturers came up with what amounts to a story – a fabrication – that if you put a cheap piece of equipment known as a “Matrix Decoder” between the amplifier and the four speakers, it would separate the two channels – right and left – into two more channels, adding front and back.
This was 1972. Richard Nixon was president and people really liked him. I was 14 years old and had moved down to the basement of my parents’ house to get some privacy. The basement was a lot bigger than my bedroom, so when I set up my Radio Shack stereo it sounded rather paltry. However, Radio Shack sold little Matrix Decoders in walnut cases that would match my amp for $29.99. All I needed were two more speakers. Luckily, I was taking a shop/woodworking class at school. I went and built myself two more speakers. I chose pine, which was an immediate mistake because it’s too soft and kept getting all marked up. Anyway, I did an all-right job, at best. I had to prove that both speakers work, and I did. Mr. Collins the shop teacher, my mortal enemy, begrudgingly gave me an A.
Now that I had four matching speakers. I went to Radio Shack and purchased their Quadrophonic Matrix Decoder, which was a nice-looking little piece of equipment that matched the amp with real walnut sides. This “Stereo Reverb” gadget (pictured below) is the exact same thing, with an extra knob.
I brought it home to my basement bedroom and connected all four speakers. And they all worked. But I was goddammed if I could differentiate front right from back right or left. I put on many records, then dashed between speakers trying to discern a difference. I lived this way far longer than I care to admit. Under a delusion. And worse still, when I would have friends come over, I would brag about my quadrophonic system, play a song, then turn the two dials on the Matrix Decoder. It would change from two stereo speakers to four stereo speakers – left and right, but no sense of front and back. But if you tried really hard you could sort of imagine it. I put a lot a people through this.
After a point, even I, at the age of 15, felt that something was amiss. So, I took a screwdriver, and I disassembled that Radio Shack/Realistic Quadrophonic Matrix Decoder, with its two knobs and its real walnut case. And inside the case was nothing. There was nothing more than the backside of the two knobs, a couple of soldered wires and emptiness. There was no Matrix Decoder, man. Radio Shack had sold me an empty box, with two switches, for $29.99, and I fell for it. It was too good to be true, so it wasn’t true. I felt like a fool.
So, I threw the Quad Matrix Decoder out and simply connected my four speakers as right and left, which worked way better. Here’s the Little Miss Sunshine in me, always waiting to come out. Were it not for that Quadrophonic Matrix Decoder I would have never built those crummy pine speakers that worked perfectly fine.
Anyway, 20 years later, I used my first stereo – the receiver/amp, turntable, and 8-Track recorder – as props in my movie, Lunatics: A Love Story. Near the end of the movie, the lead character, Hank (Ted Raimi) goes completely berserk, trashing his entire apartment. Along the way he takes each piece of stereo equipment and smashes it individually. Therefore, on film, my Radio Shack stereo lives on forever.
Actually, that’s not true. My first stereo was a hand-me-down from older sister, Ricki, that she gave me when she went to college. It all folded up into a very heavy suitcase-like item, similar to the one pictured below, but without the radio.
And thus, a new day begins.