Ex Laskys manager hunting memories

As it says. Missing the old days of talking tech with lots of great people, and some weird ones, from the old days of Audiotronic and Eagle, the Lasky's empire

 

Ah, the Good Old Days! I remember the Tottenham Court Road, Edgware Road and Lisle Street, where I spent a lot of my youth both window shopping and buying stuff.
Tottenham Court Road more for finished items, Edgware Road more for components, and Lisle Street for vintage and ex WD parts. Lasky's, Henry's Radio, G.W Smith's ...happy memories.

This wallow in nostalgia prompted me to look through my HiFi Yearbooks and Wireless World magazines and look though the ads again. It's a miserable wet Sunday here, so that will pass the time nicely.

S.

 

Yes Tottenham Ct Rd was HQ, they had more stock than our warehouse at the Hyde, N London! First time there, I saw a thing like a sideboard, turned out to be Altec Lancing Voice of the Theatre. Lasky's was plagued with senior management problems, Gerry Adler(hence the Eagle brand), had trouble staying on top of them all. 'Pipe Smokers' we called them. I was manager of Chatham branch, having been A/manager at Dartford and Romford. Laskys staff were all very knowledgeable in my branches, real egg heads with a fantastic sense of humour, Monty Python mainly, and as 'buffs' themselves were eager to have the best in our demo rooms, a constant fight with stock control at the Hyde trying to locate the odd Nakamichi or TEAC which we were showing on stock but was our centrepiece in the demo room! Thanks for the interest. Have a nostalgic afternoon!

 

As a school-kid and within the space of 15 years, a lift service engineer- I walked around the West end looking at stuff in all the Laskys Branches that i couldnt afford. Funny thing is that I can now but my wife wont 'have it in the house' as its 'old stuff' and too big. In the 60's, we would buy a red-bus rover and go up to Charing Cross and take the tube- why we didnt walk was ignorance, I suppose as TCR was only a short trot.

 

Sad this attitude against 'old stuff'. My wife and I are somewhat going back to 'old stuff' as being more 'real' than all the current stuff. One can look at a piece of vintage equipment, and one can see what it does and reasonably tell how. Modern software-driven screen-based equipment could be anything, and how it works is a mystery to everyone except the people who coded the software. In the past, a reasonably intelligent practical person could operate and fault-find stuff, whereas now, fault-finding is down to software, and repairs impossible. Who can repair a mobile 'phone or DAC at component level, whereas anyone could change a valve,

Rant over!

S.