I decided to upgrade the Stereos and GPS in the 3 cars I usually drive back to the Midwest once a year (the Ram 50, El Camino and 57 Plymouth). The GPS is simple, just a new unit to replace the 12 year old one. For the Stereos I’ve decided to install add on Satellite radios. Getting ready to install the first Satellite Radio I got to thinking about all changes we’ve been thru in the last 50 years and it brought a smile to my old face. I thought I’d share some memories I suspect a lot of you can relate to.

AM Radio: When I grew up in the 50/60s if you had tunes in the car it was generally the factory AM radio and a single speaker. That was pretty much OK as (at least where I was) there were very few FM stations and if you did get them they were either elevator music or talk radio.

Track Players: Then along came the 4 track player…..followed almost immediately by the 8 track. I knew a couple of guys…the ones who had to have the latest and greatest who were just a bit upset after going out and buying/installing a 4 track player and tapes only to have it obsolete in 6 months . I remember hanging more than one of those early big old boxes on a bracket under the dash and then doing speakers in the package tray or door panels …..and yeah, I’ll even admit to butchering a couple of dashes to dash mount them (still feel bad about that). How many of you remember repairing tapes that had come apart, would double track when switching tracks, or had gotten unspooled when the player decided eat the tape? My favorite was the song fading in the middle, switching tracks and then coming back on. Then there was the small suitcase sitting on the floorboard that you used to hold all the tapes.

Cassette Players: And then came the cassette players. I remember in the late 60s people starting to migrate to the smaller and longer cassettes. A lot of the first ones were like the 8 track players, a unit that hung on a bracket under the dash. For a while in the 70s I even had a unit that played both 8 track and cassettes ….wow what a big ugly box . I had 2 suitcases of tapes on the back floor board.

Then came the in dash AM/FM Cassette players. Compared to the under the dash units they were fantastic. Admittedly they were pretty basic by later standards but even the cheap ones now had front and rear speaker outputs (as opposed just 2 speakers). Analog tuning …….you know the dial that you tuned all the way thru the frequencies with and the little red pointer going across the radio face. The cheaper ones ( which was what I could usually afford) didn’t have an auto reverse function. When you came to the end of the side the cassette would click off and the radio would come back on….you had to manually flip the tape over to hear the other side. I actually dug one of those old style tape players up and installed it in my 37 Dodge when I built it. Brings a smile to me when I turn it on


FM Convertors: I had one of these once. It was basically just a little box that wired into the car antenna. You’d tune the factory AM radio to a certain frequency, turn the box on and use it as a tuner to listen to FM stations. The one I had worked pretty good and it was a cheap alternative until I could afford a proper AM/FM Cassette player.

CBs: God I think everybody my age has had at least one of those. Early on it was only 23 channels and you had to have a license. At least they usually had a built in speaker (that you could understand sometimes) but you still had to run all that cable to install the antenna on the outside of the car that screamed “I have a CB….come break into my car and steal me” which was why a lot of us used the slide in mounts so the radio could be taken out.

Reverbs: I first heard a reverb unit around 1970 (they had been popular in the early 60s and for a short time around 70-71 they made a short lived come back. I really loved that echo sound. Running the cable and speaker wires to the box (usually mounted in the truck) is not a lot of fun however. I do have one of these in the 57 Plymouth and really enjoy it. Of course it’s hooked to the AM/FM Cassette player (with the suitcase of tapes on the rear floor board ) I suspect I’ll enjoy the add-on satellite radio upgrade a lot in that car, especially on the cross country trip.

CD Changers: About 15 years ago I upgraded to AM/FM/Cassette/CD Players in a couple of cars. I really enjoy throwing a cartridge with 6 CDs into the player and just driving for 6-8 hours without having to change anything (especially going thru the western states). Finding a place to hide the CD changer box where it’s out of sight but still accessible is about as bad as some of the installations though

I’m usually at least 10 years behind whatever the latest technology in car audio is so I’m going to stop there,


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