Laskys in the 70's

Yup, i remember it well as a customer

Best place to order Bombay Duck.

I always enjoyed visiting the Laskys store in Kingston upon Thames in the 70's.

It seemed to always be busy.I remember loads of Jap kit and rows of loudspeakers as a 10 year old.Always liked the lights and dials on equipment....still do !

I bought my first system from 42: Wharfedale Denton, Garrard SP25, Teleton amp (that dropped a channel occasionally but never when it went back to the store).

I ended up working for them but at the big Oxford Street branch in the mid 70s, starting off on the ground floor selling calculators, radios and music centres, before graduating upstairs to become Floor Manager of the Hi-Fi department. 

Goodness me I had some muppets under me,  but we had good fun in between "I'm famous, serve me NOW" customers*. We especially enjoyed goggling at the fiches used for stock and pricing where it was stated that we sold a turntable that cost SEVERAL HUNDRED POUNDS - I mean what was the point of paying that much for a turntable when they all sounded pretty much the same? We never actually had one in store so we could understand that, as who on earth would buy an LP12?

Probably just as well as no one would have had a clue how to fettle it properly...

*favourite celebrity: Lorna Luft (one of Judy Garland's daughters) who was just lovely. Grumpiest celebrity: Jon Pertwee (a hero of mine) who called me an idiot because the Casio biorhythm calculator predicted it was a bad day for him. 

Laskys... not many retail stores conjour up such emotive memories, but Laskys was the absolute final destination for getting lost in an Aladins cave of amazing audio equipment, most of which was way beyond my means.  For me, a trip to Laskys was better than front row seats at a cup final,  better than a birthday, better than Christmas day... I can still envisage the store today.  It was a sad day for hifi when they closed their doors  (which was when, by the way?)

When I arrived in London as a student in 1980, I lived close to Tottenham Court Road. Buying a hifi system was a priority, and I'm pretty sure I went past that Laskys on my way to buy it from Billy Vee 

Remember Laskys very well plus various hifi shops along that road,also not forgetting the various at Edgware Road.To Gary,I remember buying a MoFi LP (Pink Floyd-Dark Side of The Moon) from the Oxford Street store.You could have been the one serving me!

Oxford Street was a nightmare in summer. We had to keep the front doors open so we got the heat and traffic fumes (remember 76?) and always had to wear a suit.

Stock could be embarrassing. We frequently received stuff that had "seen life" and it was an art-form to steer a customer towards a bit of kit that you knew you was clean and unopened. "Yes sir, the Sony is good but the Aiwa is much better in every way. Let me run them through the comparator for you".

The exception to this was the lucky lad who ruled the mezzanine B&O floor. It didn't matter what the condition was, it flew out the door and waiting times for any kit of theirs was weeks/months. 

Their TVs (made from Philips parts) were appallingly unreliable, but were rock solid compared to the Amstrad gear we sold. It was all indescribably shoddy (if enticingly cheap and cheerful) but particularly embarrassing was the car radio cassette which would see poor customers returning unit after unit (after having had the wretched things fitted) until they got one that didn't die in a few hours. You'd do anything short of begging to discourage selling the horrid stuff, but it was a losing battle.

I do for sure - one student friend of mine blew most of his subsistence grant on a colossus of a Japanese tuner-amp in that branch in 1980 and lived on beans for weeks.

For sure - went there for a replacement stylus and cassettes.  

Yep, remember it well. Bought Celestion 66s there... cost me the enormous sum of £220 and they were massive. Somehow I got them home in an MG Midget.

Remember Amstrad kit too. How Sugar had the gall to sell the junk is beyond me, but I guess if you don't have a conscience that's how you become a millionaire. A friend in the 70s had to change his amplifier five times.

I remember they had a branch in my home city of Sheffield, I used to pop in with my best mate Steve and then we would walk down to the Wicker and go into another Hi-Fi shop "Quadrophenia " where I bought my NAD system from.

Mike Kent posted:

Yep, remember it well. Bought Celestion 66s there... cost me the enormous sum of £220 and they were massive. Somehow I got them home in an MG Midget.

Remember Amstrad kit too. How Sugar had the gall to sell the junk is beyond me, but I guess if you don't have a conscience that's how you become a millionaire. A friend in the 70s had to change his amplifier five times.

Alan, could not post, " Your,e fired"

It was crap, but there you go.....

i guess it did please some?

A No 73 bus ride from Imperial College and many trips to Lasky's. Eventually managed to save enough to buy an amp -- an elderly salesman advised that i didn't really need anything more expensive than the then Audiotronic LA32 (i think?) integrated amp. Since i didn't have the other components to test this amp, i kept it in my wardrobe in Beit Hall till a few years (!) later when i had saved enough (on a diet of bread and water!!) to buy a Garrard AP96 (i think) TT and a pair of Wharfedale Dovedale speakers...

Good old times!

the rest as they say, is 'history'....

enjoy

ken

I owe Laskys indirectly for buying Naim. We were sent on an evening seminar by guys from Teac (lots of hints about we could sell decks with 10" reels because it would help guys pull), and during it one of them quipped to the other "there are no tone controls on John's Naim". Which we all heard as "name" and of course made no sort of sense, so we asked afterwards and they went on about this mad manufacturer who didn't use tone controls (and how crazy was that in 1977?). 

So of course I had to have one a couple of years later when I had a proper job that involved coding pads, punch cards and paper tape (NAC12 along with a NAP110).

Sorry to say, but in the early to mid 70s Lasky's didn't really seem to do serious hifi. I remember the shop quite well going in there quite a few times, particularly when I worked nearby in summer 1971, browsing at lunchtime - such a big shop on 2 floors, but I never  bought from there. To me it had a feel a bit like like Currys (though not meaning in terms of range of stock). There were several hifi shops around at that time, before computers came along and took over Totenham Ct. Rd. One almost directly opposite I thought was better - auditioned a few speakers there in 1976, one I remember was Tannoy Arden. And not far away, down Googe St. I think, was KJ Leisuresound where I auditioned others, and bought my first IMFs. For whatever reason nothing inspired me to audition in Lasky's, though I don't know if that was the available range or the surroundings.

I purchased my first record deck from Laskys in Bristol, their in house brand Audiotronics, also a  pair of Rotel speakers.

As I recall it was the only outlet that suited my meagre budget. 

Having no car, the boxes were carried with a friend to Bristol bus station for the return journey....happy days..

I purchased a Trio tuner from Laskys in Bristol to match a Trio amplifier I always remember the rows of massive Japanese two and four channel receivers with more knobs and switches than you'll find in the Cockpit of a Airbus 320.

We also had The Tape Recorder And HI FI Centre in Stokes Croft who sold a lot of Sony but also a range of Scandinavian speakers I bought a pair they were £70 at the time this must have been around 1975ish.

Over in Bath we had Duck,Son and Pinker a shop noted mainly for sheet music and musical instruments but also had an excellent record department specialising in Classical recordings, tucked at the  back of the shop they had a stereo department which seemed to have a large number of Radiograms but they also stocked Quad,Leak and Tandberg to name a few the Tandberg Colour TVs were rather special how times have changed.

I used to work in the Watford Laskys in the early '80s

There were then two shops in Tottenham Court Road - numbers 42 and 257 - 42 was the flagship store and had all the best equipment.

Interesting place to work that lit my interest in hi-fi.

Thread had me reminiscing off-line with David Hendon (of this parish) with whom I used to work in London in the late 70s early 80s and one lunchtime when he led me astray one lunchtime into another hi-fi dealer (we forget the name) in TCH to listen to the latest Quad ESL variants. Of course way outside my league but to this day I can remember Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits on that system - breathtaking.

Regards,

Lindsay

I must admit I didn't have too many wow moments in my time there, though four bits of kit stick in the mind:

The Nytech CTA252 receiver*. It sounded brilliant, but I think I only ever sold one. It looked too funky, would never stack nicely with associated Japanese kit, and with one exception utterly failed the wife approval stage.

The Neal 103 cassette deck*. Again, outstanding sonics but looked all wrong for the mid-70s aesthetic. Despite getting just about everyone I demoed it to to agree it was superior to anything but a Nak, I sold not a single one.

Videoton Minimax speakers. These I could sell as many as I could get my paws on. Amazing value (but a bit prone to blown tweeters IIRC).

The Sony Elcaset. We got one in, I demoed it once, I sold it immediately, I never saw another one. For a tape machine, the closest we had to a reel to reel. 

* Both were a daily nightmare to dust. In a big store (and Oxford Street was huge) that was complete ball-ache. 

Gary Shaw posted:

...The Neal 103 cassette deck*. Again, outstanding sonics but looked all wrong for the mid-70s aesthetic. Despite getting just about everyone I demoed it to to agree it was superior to anything but a Nak, I sold not a single one...

Oooh, I have one of these that I bought a few years back for about £30 from a local chap.  It needs a little work because the huge flywheeled mechanism is a putting out a bit more vibration and noise than it should, but it's complete, with its cover, and it does sound remarkably good, considering. 

I used to wander into the TCR Laskys but I don't think I ever bought anything there.  I did buy stuff from the accessories shop nearer the tube station (can't recall its name) including an Ortofon MC200 and an Audio Technica SUT, along with countless blank cassettes.  

Gary Shaw posted:

 

The Nytech CTA252 receiver*. It sounded brilliant, but I think I only ever sold one. It looked too funky, would never stack nicely with associated Japanese kit, and with one exception utterly failed the wife approval stage.

 

My friends dad had one parked next to his LP12 (complete with ARC101s on castor stands with QED 79 strand cable). I thought (and still do) that it looked fantastic. 

Laskys Cardiff, was a great place to waste time if i missed the train home from school but a trip to a tiny shop called Audio Excellence was the start of the 'proper' Hi-Fi journey for me 

Richard Dane posted:

 I did buy stuff from the accessories shop nearer the tube station (can't recall its name) including an Ortofon MC200 and an Audio Technica SUT, along with countless blank cassettes.  

The place actually in the station entrance lobby?  Lovely guy that ran it.