Phat Sound

The stereo finds a home

My wife called me to tell me the stereo was delivered. "The guys complained endlessly. They said there was no way it weighed 200 pounds."

I sort of smiled - maybe slightly embarrassed.  I guessed on the weight. Okay, maybe I was on the light side. But I did recommend they use a hand truck since it was definitely not light.  

The other problem: Our living room is on the second floor of a four floor townhouse.  I hate the stairs.  But, carrying heavy things up stairs is nothing new.  For delivery guys to complain seemed silly to me.  It's all in a day's work as far as I was concerned.  I've had pianos carried up and down stairs over the decades. 

And since I used to work in the pick up and delivery sector, having had to haul refrigerators, washers, dryers and huge window A/C units, I wasn't very sympathetic.

But...this stereo was special.  Very special, indeed.

It was the Zenith Model Y966D.  Mediterranean style cabinetry and solid state sound system.  320 watts of unadulterated power.

I had it sent to a company in Houston who did a lot of old stereo restorations.  This one was a piece of cake for them.  Within a week of approving the work, they were done.

I almost didn't buy it.  And I had such a hard time getting it delivered from Chicago to Beaumont due to horrible ice and snow in Illinois. After I paid for the stereo on Ebay, the owner informed me it had some problems.  I rolled my eyes.  OK.  Buyer Beware. Stupid me.  

But as it all turned out, the issues were minor. 

This was the exact same model my Korean mom bought for our home back in the late 60s.  She plopped me down in front of the Zenith and said "Listen."

Stereo was quite new at the time.  High Fidelity or HiFi as it was called had reached its peak.  It did offer much better frequency reproduction.  But it lacked DEPTH.  

That was what stereo offered. 

My overbearing mother continued. "Do you hear the instruments?  You can tell which direction they are playing from."

Yes, she was right. The horns were on the left in the back.  The strings were in the front with the various sections spanning left to right.  It was absolutely fantastic.

Of course, I wasn't going to tell my mom that.  I was 13 years old.  I wouldn't agree to anything she said. 

PHAT SOUND

It is hard to describe the sound on the Y966.  The only term I could come up with is the term Phat Sound.  

Now, the term "Phat" is an urban slang word for "good" or "excellent".  But for music, the term takes on more qualities than just good or excellent.  It's necessary to describe what makes a sound Phat.  

From what I can tell, a Phat sound, or rather the Phat sound of a song, is one that encompasses a large range of voices, tones and frequencies, thus making it very satisfying to here.  Usually a mix of low bass beats and percussion with voices (human and instrument) that are in a broad spectrum range of frequencies.  

Here was my meager attempt at composing, trying to use my limited sound recording system to capture  that Phat Sound. In this song, I tried to use some grunge beats and constant repetition of background sequences plus a wide range of frequencies..  The song does lack a little cohesion, but if you have a good sound system, you can catch the grand range of frequencies.  There are a million things I'd like to tweak on this song, but at some point, you've got to stop and call the project complete.  

Here is the link to Project Vanguard.    [this is the .wav file now)

Unfortunately, it's an MP3 and so, the compression takes away some of the spectrum.  I have the Wav file on another hard drive.  I'll try to upload that later.

I found a really great youtube video that encapsulates the Phat Sound.  They use a mix of female voices for the high pitch with a heavy beat background and high strings.  Great breaking dancing scenes, too.  There is a lot of finesse in this song. I am still astonished at the world wide adoption of American Music style.  

Everything is PHAT SOUND

But the purpose of this was to describe what a Phat Sound is and how it relates to the Zenith Y966.

Every album you listen to on this device, takes on the Phat Sound.  It is amazing how 1960s technology can do such a remarkable job of producing this Phat Sound.

This is what I have found since it has (re)joined our household.  You put a record on the Y966 not to listen to the song.  You put a record on the Y966 to listen to the song ON the Y966.