Retro Entertainment System Meets Modern Technology (Crosley CR83)

Member Name: i_heart_elo

Product:	Crosley CR83
Date:	08/02/09 (192 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Plays Records, CD's, Tapes, and the Radio like a dream....what more do you want?

Disadvantages: Radio channels are a little hard to find

Is Vintage in right now? I'm not sure. It seems like every other year it's all the sudden "cool" to get some bygone era of vintage "look".

Sidenote: Except, I don't know what the deal is with this 1980's dress and hair thing going on again. For all us over the age of 25 it's because we grew up in the 80's and know how crap the clothes and hair were....granted the 90's were probably even worse.

Regardless, in my own personal view, I love a lot of modern convienences with a classic vintage touch. This Crosley Entertainment System is a top notch reproduction that will look gorgeous though in pretty much any decor you have (unless your all Andy Warholish and only do modern modern modern).

To give you a little background into why I really wanted one of these I have to tell you about my parents bizarro album collection. Before I moved to the UK I was going through my parents huge barn for stuff I would steal, ahem I mean take with me overseas. While going through about 100 issues of Life magazine from the 1950's, I saw several huge wooden crates. Since my curiousity always gets the best of me, I did what anyone would have done and investigated what the heck was in these crates. I mean, think about it, what if they were some Yahoo stocks my father bought from 1995 or a huge amount of gold jewerly my mother forgot about and decided to just, I dunno, through in a crate....yes all those are ridiculous statements but you dont' know my parents. They're your quintessential packrats. I'm rambling now, sorry. Where were we? Oh yeah the crates.....

So I got to open the first one, and it was chock full of records. Every single record from 1970 to 1989. I was psuedo disapointed. Couldn't they have collected some cool 60's Dylan albums? Or some great jazz or swing music ones from the 40's and 50's? Noooo there was Neil Diamond, Bread, America, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Janet Jackson, Of course Micheal Jackson, Def Lepoard, and some really pansy sounding guy named Dan Folgerburg (for all you Dan Folgerburg fans out there, I apologize if your a fan of his)......Suffice it to say, I was not going to steal THESE records. I almost decided to not even try the other two that were left, but again, it's me. You can just put wooden crates in front of me and not have me open them.

I open the second one and....yay! It was full of these classical music records and Viennese (that's a hard one to spell) Waltzs, and in overall amazingly pristine shape. Most were from the 20's and 30's. After finding that little treasure trove, I went to the third crate and hit the jackpot! Every single Beatles record ever made was there, including any great 60's band/singer you can imagine, Van Morrison, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Mama's and the Papa's, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel, and one of my faves...good ole Bobby Dylan.

The crux I had, was after stealing, umm "borrowing", these albums, how in the world was I going to play them? I didn't have a record player. In my mind , I thought the only people that still owned record players were either wannabe DJ's or someones grandparents. I didn't care, I wanted one. So I began looking into the world of record players.

I have to say, there is an amazing amount of really crap overpriced record players out there. When I went to a few local stores like a place in the states called Best Buy, Sears, and then another place similar to Argos, I was about to just go to some second hand store, and buy a cheesy 1970's one.

Then, one day on a whim, I went ahead and looked at a few sites online and found this gorgeous looking retro thing for a super deal. Only, it wasn't JUST a record player! It played TAPES (although who still has tapes?), a radio AND a cd player! It also lets you store 12 records on it , and can switch up 6 at a time. Just put in the 6 records you want to hear and you'll never have to do that annoying old skool "change" the record deal.

Again, I'm no electronic minded genius. I have no idea what the watts or speaker power or other "guy" type specs this has. I simply know that it sounds fantastic, and looks as good as it sounds. I believe this is more of a 1940's design , which come on, how cool is that?

I'm not sure what "deals" you can get this for in the UK, but I did find one very similar to this one on the UK Ebay for around a hundred pounds, and i'm sure if you just google it, you'll find it in other places as well.

The amount of compliments i've gotten on this is almost disgusting. I'm to the point now where I have to tell people to shutup about it and say " yeah yeah, I KNOW, it's awesome, move on"......hehe......so if you DO get this, make sure you don't have friends that steal things. Cause you might wake up one morning and find that it has disapeared. =)

Summary: An All-in-One system that will make your IPOD jealous

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Features:
Sound quality: