The market today is very different to when I started this obsession as a destitute, married undergraduate in the early 1970's. The larger retailers sold almost nothing like hifi, some factory warehouse outlets had started but basically sold cheap rubbish. Then the UK got stores like Superfi. Many lunch times spent there as a student. Staff were quite well informed and genuinely interested, hi fi mags were rather bookish and for enthusiasts. As the marketing and literature got more market orientated the consumers got more knowledgable. The great hifi store scene on "Not The Nine O'clock News" was actually not untypical. As engineering students, oddly with a design professor who had been an audio designer and a hifi freak, we had design assignments for linear tone arms, direct drive turntables, transmission line cabinets and all manner of hifi things. Of course we now knew rather more than most hifi salesmen. The hifi enthusiast opening his (always his I'm afraid) own store was now a rarity, a member of staff who sold radios and tv's last week was now trying to sell hifi. It still happens.I remember meeting a barman of my acquaintance working in a hifi store, I was looking for a turnable. He pointed to a Garrard 401 with SME arm and said, "best in the world, direct drive". I said isn't it an idler drive", "yes the little rubber wheel drives directly onto the turntable" he replied. Only recently in a multi chain national supposed specialist store I enquired about an amplifiers power output and he went onto the internet and I was told with disdain, "40 watts", I asked into 4 or 8 ohms, "what's the difference", was his reply even more disdainfully.
