GM car speakers in the 70's versus other designs

Please reply to this second post, or add alt.autos.gm to any reply to the first post. I think GM folk would appreciate this thread, and could contribute to it. I should have included them in the first (identical) post.

GM car speakers in the 70's and maybe later versus other designs

Chryslers and maybe many other makes have the two left speakers connected to the left channel of the radio. GM radios OTOH used to connect the front left and rear right speakers to the left channel, and the others to the right.

Or course, one can rewire his car either way, in most cases just by interchanging two pairs of wires.

Can you all tell me more about GM's use of the LF-RR/RF-LR method of wiring speakers, what this is called if I want to search the web for it, and more about its use by GM and possibly other places?

Also, in the opinion of the readers here, which method has more advantages?

Which is better for someone who is usually in the car alone?

With GM I guess if you're in the back seat, the violins aren't on the left anymore, but otoh, the volume for both channels should be the same wherever one sit. No one sits in the center of a 4-seate car, on the console or half-way between the front seat and back seat, so the Chrysler system, used by most cars maybe, has a disadvantage that if you have someone in the passenger seat, he hears more of the right channel and you hear more of the left.

GM's design solves most or all of that, although it lowers stereo separation. And it depends on how often the driver will be alone and how often there will be 1, 2, 3 passengers AND he'll be playing the radio.

OT3H, with Chrysler's design, if you are driving and others are sleeping, you can move all the sound to the left front and leave the other speakers very quiet, so they can sleep. Or if you're the passenger and the driver doesn't like the station you want (though in my world the driver gets to pick the station) you can turn everything to the right front.

Reply to
mm
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The only thing I would have to add to this is to ask a question: What kind of reproduction was there in the 12 volt realm in the 70s? Stereo? I think not. I believe most vehicles had AM radios with 8 track decks and everything was MONO.

Reply to
OldSch00lf00l

The past was longer ago than you imagine. By the time they built my '72 or '73 Buick, stereio radios, maybe with cassette, were standard in most makes of car (maybe not Volkswagon for example), although on very cheap cars not made to order maybe only AM-FM monaural. I don't know haw many years they had been

By the time they built my 67 Pontiac AM-FM was standard, although with very cheap cars, only AM was included on the ones not made to order. (OTOH the Cadillac had 5 buttons each of which did AM or FM stations depending on whether one was listening to AM or FM, but I think mine had 5 buttons that gave only one physical setting each.)

The '67 Pontiac had a reverberator too, with a dash mounted switch to turn it off when people on the radio were talking instead of playing music. And I was able to get a after-market stereo reverb amp for the

73 Buick.

My '50 Olds had an AM radio with 5 presets and it gave better sound than did the factory radio in the '65 Pontiac that I got next. I had a spare 1950 radio, which I installed in the 65 (Pushing it in between the dash board and the transmission hump**) so I was able to compare the soundss in the same car. It was a 6 volt tube radio but the 12 volts or the car were easily reduced to 6 with a resistor designed for that purpose. The resistor did get hot, but I tucked it out of the way.

**There were no consoles then because the seats held three people and there was plenty of room on the dashboard for controls.

If the cars didn't have stereo, I couldn't have noticed the switched Left and Right in the rear speakers.

Reply to
mm

I did use Am for most of the 70's partly because for a couple years there was no FM where I lived. There was not much on the FM dial at the beginning of 1970, but it quickly changed. I used 8 track STEREO through most of the 70's. I also recorded 8 track stereo, and most of my music was self recorded from albums and later FM. We had an FM station that played whole albums. From 1972 to 1977, I had 4 channel matrix quad in my Mustang. I did not go high power until 1978. 36 watts per channel, Craig. Also switched to Cassette.

I really hate the volume controls on OEM. They are weird. I also need at least 10 push buttons on the front panel for station selection. Menues suck.

greg

Reply to
GregS

Growing up, FM didn't catch on in my area until the 80s. My first vehicle was a 1981 Chevy Malibu Classic, and it came with AM JAM as we called it back in the day. My next vehicle was a 1984 Crown Victoria LTD and it had AM/FM/8 Track... That was a royal Pain in the ass customizing my DIN CD player to go in the place of the two shaft mount AM/FM/8 Track.

I grew up in the 70s and for the most part, I do not remember ANY stereophonic sound systems stock in any of the vehicles I was a passenger in with the exception of my uncle's 1979 Trans-Am.

Reply to
OldSch00lf00l

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