Play it again, hi-fi

This is to announce that I’m not at all ready for the 1980s, which promises to bring such glad tidings as the “videodisk.”

I’m not prepared for anything called a “videodisk,” since I only recently accepted color TV as a reality and continue to eye my audiodisk unit — i.e., stereo — with huge suspicion. Frankly, I don’t like my stereo; never have. I don’t even like the word “stereo,” and still refer to it as a “record player,” although it cost $750.

That’s too much for a mere phonograph to cost, and it immediately makes my record collection seem shabby. Maybe that’s why I call it a “record player” — to keep it in its place. Both the stereo and I know that it is far too fancy a rig for somebody of my humble tastes. The big stereo just sits there, smugly, sneering at me.

The truth is, I’m scared of my stereo and it senses it. The machine realizes it’s smarter than I am; since it knows exactly how it works, and I don’t, it has me in its power. The needle needs changing, but the arm defied me to touch it with my big clumsy hands. Changing a diamond needle demands somebody more like Dr. DeBakey.

As often as I listen to it, I don’t feel quite at home with my stereo. Even after five years, it’s a shaky relationship. The set realizes I never wanted it in the house in the first place, don’t approve of it, and that I was content to keep playing my old Magnavox hi-fi, with the cloth covered speaker in front, that went “fwap” when a record struck the turntable — a good solid sound, “fwap.”

Now the records go “swoosh,” all hushed and secretive, and I’m never sure if they’ve made direct contact with the turntable. When the record goes “fwap!” you know it’s made a nice safe landing.

Also, I distrust the plastic dust cover that somehow lets in as much dust as an old Vitaphone. There’s dust all over my records, even though I wipe them as feverishly as Lady Macbeth (“Out! Out! Damned speck!”), with a special blue cloth that’s been “scientifically treated” — apparently with dust particles. No matter how cautious I am, dust creeps under the lid anyway, and even finds its way inside all the album covers. The dust in my house is no dummy.

Then, too, the record arm makes me nervous whenever I come too close. So sensitive is it that, if I should ever be thinking negative thoughts, the arm begins bouncing about crazily. You must walk on tippy toe around the stereo, as though a cake were in the oven.

I am slightly put off by the mysterious markings on the component (it’s terms like “component” that started things off badly), such as “anti-skating,” which continues to baffle me. Maybe Dick Button could explain it. And how about such hieroglyphics as “AUX,” “TREBLE” and “FM MUTING OFF”? Whatever became of old ON and OFF?

What I really have against this stereo, however, is that it won’t shut itself off like the old Magnavox. You can’t drift off to sleep, listening to Sinatra, secure that the set will click off quietly. Oh, no — not this baby! This is a big shot phonograph that demands personal service. It’s too good to shut itself off.

I felt I’d won the stereo war when I moved in and had to reassemble the entire unit myself. I took copious notes, making sure which clamp screwed into what bolt and where all the green and red wires went. When it actually worked, I felt like Marconi. All was forgiven.

For some time afterwards, the stereo behaved itself and left me alone. I’d obviously shown it who was boss. It played stacks of records without a squawk. Lately, though, I see it’s trying to reassert itself and now and then won’t change records to test me. The arm lays in the last wide groove, going ’round and ’round, until I have to get up and go over and give it a little poke. It emits a low snicker.

So I’m going to pass on the new “videodisk” revolution, thank you, and try to make it as far into the 1980s as I can with only my audiodisk machine. I’ll be happy if the color will just return to my Sony and I finally learn the rudiments of anti-skating.

Then, too, the record arm makes me nervous whenever I come too close. So sensitive is it that, if I should ever be thinking negative thoughts, the arm begins bouncing about crazily.