Stereo Systems Mississauga
Stereo Systems Mississauga
When you go to a fleamarket in the Toronto area (GTA) they usually have stores that carry the popular items people are looking for. They range from antique furniture, collectable items, clothing, leather clothes and goods, used books and music& DVD stores and recently used camera and computers. Occasionally you will find stores that specialize in vintage audio electronics and stereo systems in Toronto and Mississauga. Most of these stores have bricks and mortars equivalent just about on every main street in Toronto. The Fantastic Flea Market is blessed with one vendor that has been around for the last 15 years and has a great reputation for quality and service.
This store owned by a gentleman named Quong (Quong Electronics)has been a long time tenant of the Fantastic Flea Market. He is surprised that customers do not know of his store, because he is well known in Mississauga for buying and selling high quality audio electronics dating as far back as 1980.
If you ever go to his store you will see three or four groups of stereo systems equipment. They are tape decks;Turntables; amplifier and receivers and lastly speakers The first product that you will see is reel to reel tape and cassette decks. They were built by major manufacturers such as JVC, Sony, Technics, Pioneer, NAD. During that time the price of these units range from $200-500. There were even tape deck units from Nakamichi that could cost you at least $1000.000 brand new. Depending on the condition in the present day, you could easily purchase one for $50-100.
Second are Turntables that played SP and LP records. Just about everyone knows about the technology before it was superseded by the CD Players around 1983. Anyone who ever purchased an audio electronics component system was always up sold turntables from brand names such as Technics from Panasonic, JVC, Pioneer etc. Many of these units would easily start at a price of $70 to 200. The only thing you had to do to maintain them over time is to buy a stylus and a new belt (assuming you used it constantly over 5 years). At present these repair parts have to be special ordered from China as the initial manufacturers do not make these parts anymore.
The development of the CD by Philips of Germany in 1980 had the effect of an earthquake on the audio electronics industry. Almost overnight people got rid of their turntables for CD players. The CD disk could hold 12-14 songs with a memory of 700mb while most LP could barely hold even 10 songs. The most die hard audiophiles (with extensive record collections) kept their turntables as music groups and record lables converted to the new CD format. Sales of CD players continued to rise until the mid 2000 as internet downloading and the development of flash drive technology could allow a person to hold 10,000 songs on a 32GB unit not much larger than a thumb. In addition during this time portable data storage devices and players such as the Apple Ipod were designed to hold 32-128GB of music or between 10-30,000 songs divided by artist and categories. You can buy a DVD/CD player at the Fantastic Flea Market for considerably less than $100.
Next are the Stereo amplifiers, integrated amplifiers and amplifiers with preamps containing graphic equalizers? One of the few audio electronics devices that has changed the least over time are the stereo amplifiers. Most come with tuners or AM/FM and sometimes SW radio receivers. The only real changes due to innovation are the non switching Class A amplifier design which reduce or prevent distortion when transmitting sound to the speakers. They can be the most expensive part of the stereo system as they can easily cost from $150 to $1000.00 and even in this day you will have to pay a minimum of at least $100 for a used one in good-excellent condition. There are many companies that have produced top quality receivers such as Pioneer, JVC, Technics, NAD, Onkyo, Maranz, Harmon Karden and even Carver.
Integrated amplifiers are units that do not have the AM/FM/SW radio receivers. If you need such a unit one has to by a pure Tuner which is a separate AM/FM/SW radio receiver. They are inexpensive at the present time and generally cost around $50-100.00. Integrated Amps in general consist of the amp and the pre-amp. The pre-amp has the volume, bass and treble controls and sometimes a graphic equalizer. The graphic equalizer has been around for the last 40 years and consists controls for sound frequencies for the left and right channels. They can improve or decrease the effect of the base and treble to compensate for the acoustics of a room. Lastly you can purchase a pure amplifier that requires a separate pre-amp with sound controls. One of the most well regarded companies in the audio electronics industry is Carver. Their most famous innovation was the magnetic field power amp which could push out 250-500w per channel for a combination of almost 1000 watts and is extremely lightweight.
One of the most important part of stereo systems in Mississauga (Home Stereo) are the speakers. Without it there is no sound. They have come a long way from being big square boxes with one speaker. From 1980 onward audio engineering companies tested various designs from using tweeters for the higher frequencies to sub-woofers to capture the bass. Today they are well engineered devices that come in several variances of the square box design. They are designed so well they can take 1 watt from an amp and broadcast a clear sound. There are many manufacturers to choose from such as JBL, Audio Vox, Cerwin Vega, KEF, Bose and Infinity Research. You can obtain a good pair for about $100 with a good audio system.
On a small not the Quong also carries small consumer electronics items such as point and shoot cameras, video cameras, cell phones and tablet pc. From time to time, customers are always looking for such used items if one in their long time possession is, lost, damaged or destroyed. You can check out Quang’s landing page at
We just made a Youtube Video of Quang Electronics booth. Its a tour of all the current and vintage electronics in the Booth in the Red Room of the Fantastic Fleamarket.