A phono preamp with equalization selector

I'll Take You Down Memory Lane.

My Uncle's 1958 Fisher President II, EQ had not yet been Standardized

Very Unique 'Stereo Radio' (Live Binaural Broadcasts)

Look up the Harmon Kardon Festival monaural receiver. That’s what my parents had as of the early 50s, even predates the unit shown above. As I mentioned, it provided a choice of EQ curves including RIAA, Columbia, Decca, and maybe one other. I’m guessing that this is because the industry was just settling on RIAA during the period 1948-55(?). I do recall fiddling with the EQ in order to hear the differences. So maybe if you own very early production mono LPs, there might be a marginal benefit; the different EQs did not seem to make much difference to tonal balance, to my pre-teen ears.

Here is the HK Festival monaural tube tuner from early 1950s.  My memory of its built in equalization curves was faulty; the photos show "Eur", "RIAA", and "LP", not Columbia or Decca.  I wonder what were the differences between Eur or LP vs RIAA.

@elliottbnewcombjr Nice piece! Take another look at that front panel.

The EQ curves were very much standard by then. 'NAB' is a tape equalization. RIAA and the 'RCA Orthophonic' curves were pretty much the same thing; RIAA being for stereo. AES and LP were two alternate mono-only curves and the '78' curve was an approximation of the most common 78 curves of which there were quite a few.

Crusty patina……like most of the posters….myself included….