Time travel...

[threeseven]

If you could go back in time for 24 hours to any day and year of your choice and bring back any equipment you like, when would that be and what would you bring back?

For me it would be a day in the early 60's, in London, to a top Hi-Fi dealer to stock up on as much Radford, Leak, Tannoy, Garrard etc as possible, then Avo for everything on their list, then a valve dealer for a large quantity of every valve I could think of. Also picking up every catalogue and brochure that caught my eye. Actually, the more I think about this, the more I think of!
TV's, where to start

[newlite4]

Similarly for me. Maybe around 1955 to visit lisle street and buy up 1155 and WS19 plus loads of parts and spending the rest of the day in Proops in Tottenham Court road negotiating buying half their stock .
Neil

[G6Tanuki]

I'd go back to the early-1950s and return with as many AR88s and HROs as I could transport.

[Would I be allowed to bring back a Spitfire too?]

[threeseven]

I suppose a Spit could conceivably be considered equipment and it has a radio, so yes, you can have one!

[60 oldjohn]

Nothing really, very content with my lot. But a month ago I missed out on a very reasonably priced Philco Peoples set (always wanted one) at York car boot sale, I was spent up and thought that would be the last I saw of the set. Two weeks later and fate brought us together again at the Lincoln antique fair. Very same set and I got it for what he asked the previous week. That was as good for me as going back in time.

John.

[mole42uk]

I'd go back 50 years and get myself a Mellotron.
And a Mk.1 DeHavilland Comet.

[Radio Wrangler]

One of the problems I can foresee is that people seem to be thinking of things they might not be able to pay for. Mellotrons were rather expensive back in their day, but fifty years ago a Comet would have been cheap after their famous fatal crashes. I'd recommend a DC3 to bring your mellotron home. No way can I imagine a Spit carrying several AR88s getting off the ground.

New unused AR88s were on sale in the sixties for 80-odd quid (£89-19/6 I suppose) so affordable to us today right up to the point where the guy looks at your modern banknote...

Personally I don't mind the era I'm in. I can pick and choose the best of modern and old things.

David

[Peter.N.]

I think I would like to hear '50s hifi again, Leak, Quad and the like and Lowther speakers, never heard anything like it since.

Peter

[mole42uk]

And it would be the mid-60's before you could have paid for it with a plastic card.....
A poorly Mellotron was the first paid-for repair I ever did, that would have been in 1970 or thereabouts, I certainly couldn't afford one then and even now they are pretty expensive.....
A DC-3 would certainly be a wise choice for a load carrier, but I have had the great good fortune to have flown one of them, whereas the early Comets had all been scrapped before I became interested enough to take notice!

[Radio Wrangler]

There's been plenty said on the internet about Mellotrons and Chamberlins, but nothing about the machinery to record tape banks for them. "First, take one orchestra..."

David

[arjoll]

Nothing too fancy, I'd just go back about 15-20 years and pick up a few vintage computers from my wish list while they were still in the "worthless" stage.

[Nickthedentist]

Originally Posted by arjoll

...while they were still in the "worthless" stage.

I think that's the key. It's all well and good saying you'd buy vast amounts of collectible stuff, but you'd have to have been a millionaire to do it when it was brand new.

Never forget how lucky we are now. Still plenty of lovely vintage radios available for a few pounds everywhere.

Nick.

[HamishBoxer]

That I admit does sum it up Nick.

[Bazz4CQJ]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

[Would I be allowed to bring back a Spitfire too?]

Why a Spitfire; they are numerous compared with Lancasters...but you would need a bigger garage I suppose ?
B

[G6Tanuki]

In the same way I'd prefer a sports-car to a lorry. The running-costs of a single Merlin is less than that for four: and if I had a Spit I'd want to be racking up the flight-hours.
[If bringing back a Lanc from times-past I'd want the bomb-bay to be filled with Merlin-compatible platinum-tipped spark-plugs]

[kalee20]

If I could go back in time, I'd do it just for the experience of being in the era. So I'd take careful note of how AM radio sounded, for starters.

Bringing things to 2014? Well, as there is quite a lot of stuff still around, I'd probably leave that. But I would DEFINITELY bring several crates of wander plugs (all colours), and also CRATES of magic eyes - EM34, A39A, etc.I wouldn't be worried about leaving the era short, because the manufacturers would just launch a few batches to replenish stocks.

[Radio Wrangler]

Buying lots of magic eyes?

Maybe you already-will-to-have-been-done so (there aren't any proper tenses for verbs involving time travel). So maybe that's why there are few around now? You might have visited at just too late a time.

David

[G6Tanuki]

There's always the risk that if you went back in time you might lose the knowledge-you-have-now about what will become valuable.

Imagine finding yourself in the early-1950s and thinking "Office Automation is clearly the up-and-coming thing - I must take a huge load of these wonderful new IBM Selectric typewriters with me when I return to 2014 - they'll really be worth something then!".

[RF Burn]

The paradox of bringing loads of now 'rare and high priced' bits back from the past would mean that they would immediately cease to be rare.......

It's that age old conundrum - if we had not thrown away what we thought was rubbish it would be plentiful now (but still rubbish because it would not be rare...).

[stevehertz]

For me it would be two 'heydays'. The first when - probably in the early 60s, people were chucking out pre-war TV sets. A long standing vintage wireless pal who worked in the Radio and TV trade told me how they would deliver a new TV set to someone upstairs in a London street, and as the existing pre-war TV set was often so big, they would literally chuck it out of an upstairs window to smash on the street below! Well, I would have liked to have gotten a flyer out to all those shops to tell them to save those sets for me! And similarly throughout the 60s and 70s when thousands of house clearances yielded 30s classic wireless sets, again to have got my hands on those. But we dream..