Vintage Music is Like Vintage Wine at Recycled Stereo Plus (With Video)

More than 30 years ago Ron Bencangey traded his job for his hobby, giving up his training as a psychologist to start what is likely the longest-running recycled stereo store in the country.

Santa Cruz's Recycled Stereo Plus has outlasted scores of audio equipment stores and is part of a growing trend as music fans move away from the mass marketed plastic and circuit board products sold in big box stores toward the purer, better sound of vintage equipment.

"We're really missing out with all these iPods and stuff," says musician Chip Yamada, 35, who was in the store shopping for a reel-to-reel tape deck and prefers tape and vinyl to digital music. "I don't know if it's throwback or vintage or what, but you can't copy that kind of sound."

Last month The New York Times reported that Yamada's generation is weary of the harsher sounds of digital reproduction and going back to the warmer, richer technology of the 1970s and they are buying vinyl records and turntables in surprisingly large numbers. 

Bencangey has known this since he opened his Front Street store on Aug. 7, 1977, following his passion for creating and listening to music. He started writing music, including the "Fly the Friendly Skies" theme song, which he wrote and sang for United Airlines commercials and "Now is the Time" for the artist, Lulu.

From writing and playing, he got into the equipment for listening to music, the thing he liked to do most at the end of the day. He loved being surrounded by great stereo equipment, trying the latest things, looking for the best sounds. This store, which he believes is the first used audio store in the country, was a way he could do it for a living.

"It will last as long as I want it to," he says. "It's a good niche. If I didn't enjoy it so much, I wouldn't do it."

The store is an audiophile's dream come true. Great stereo equipment sells at 25 percent of its original cost. A Marantz amplifier from 1973, wooden and with individual transistors and a large power pack sells for $380, or roughly $900 in 1970s dollars. Vintage speakers by Polk, KLH or Advent sell for under $200. Turntables run from $89.

Going in there as an audiophile -- and I am one -- is like living in a world where everyone drives a Prius but you can buy a Ferrari for $500. It's an "analog church," in the words of Yamada.

The trends in big stores are for smaller and lighter equipment, in part because people don't have the space for larger speakers or don't find them aesthetically pleasing. 

But, says Bencangey, small can never sound as good as big. A speaker pushes air through a woofer to create bass sounds. The less air, the less pure the sound.

Many manufacturers, such as Bose, have spent fortunes on marketing to convince people that the smaller products are as good as the big ones, but says Bancangey, that's like putting more money in marketing than in developing quality products.

Yes, smaller speakers are better than they were, he adds. But still not as good as vintage equipment.

Newer stereos have smaller power amplifiers, circuit boards rather than individual transistors and tend to last for only a few years. The vintage ones from the 1970s were made to last decades and sound as good today as they did then. He says a large part of that is the amount of power pumped into discrete - or individual - transistors, rather than compact, less power hungry circuit boards.

"Vintage equipment is like fine wine," he says. "It's a big fat round sound."

He's had a few celebrities come by. Carole King once stopped in to buy headphones for her son. Bencangey gave them to her for free. "I told her I wore out two copies of Tapestry and she had given me so much pleasure," he said. When he was working on a movie in town, Clint Eastwood also needed headphones. Bencangey lent them to him.

He also met Bob Marley when he sponsored the reggae star's 1978 concert at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium.

Three years ago, after battling pneumonia, Bencangey took on a partner, Jim Erdogan, who had been an avid store customer and had been buying turntables and loving vintage sound since he was 12. They have considered opening a second store in Monterey.

They get much of their equipment from people who are upgrading their own stereos, or switching from music only to home theater systems. Customers can buy the new gear at the store and trade in the old stuff for around $100, depending on the quality.

"That's more than they will get at the flea market," says Bencangey. "And a lot of that old gear is still good after all these years. Old doesn't mean bad."
He says you can't buy anything comparable in a big box store for $300 to what you can get for the same price at Recycled.

There is a certain amount of informal used car lot atmosphere to the place, wheeling and dealing that has triggered some negative reviews. Prices are marked on the products, contrary to what one Yelper claimed. But there is haggling to be done, both selling and buying.

The bottom line, for this consumer, is that the bottom line is so much better than you will find on new gear that you can't go too far wrong.

What you get in this homegrown local business is the owners' experience. They will tell you which model speakers sound good, which amplifiers last.  Their decades of study and experience is a value you can't find on the Internet. They also weed out the bad equipment.

"I could buy new Japanese stereos for $10 and sell them for $100 all day," says Bencangey. "But that's not what we are about. That stuff doesn't last and no one would leave here happy."

The store is seeing a surge in new buyers who are adding stereos to their computers. The digital/analog converter technology is available now to make computer music sound warmer, and plugged into a vintage amp and speakers, $500 of used equipment can sound like something that once cost $10,000 new.