Sansui G-3000
I was looking through a bunch of old photos the other day and noticed that this old tuner/amplifier kept popping up in them - always there at the edges of our lives. I think this is the bit of electronics kit I've owned and used the longest.
I seem to remember buying it from Richer Sounds at London Bridge at some point in the 80s. I wanted some impressive bit of separates kit, big and black and Sony, but only had about £90 and they sold me this. I think it was secondhand even then.
I've never been much of an audiophile, I like the feel of these things more than the sound. I remember going to do a professional audio mixing session with something I'd made and being told I'd done it all in mono. I'm just not that good at that stuff. But I've grown to love the rub and the smooth of this thing and the way the tuner glows.
It came with us when we moved to Portland, paired with a succession of turntables from the second-hand hifi stores of SE Hawthorne. The shelves behind the counter at Crossroads Music were always my favourite. This is cropped from a picture of our first apartment on Hawthorne. I'd forgotten about that bike, and that mixer.
Later in Portland, in a place further up Hawthorne, it moved into the basement. You can just see it in the bottom corner of this picture. This was when I was being Portland's first and only Big Beat DJ.
Later, down the block, on SE Clay, I built myself a railway that started in the basement and ran through a cat-flap into the garden. The railway ran right past the Sansui, I'd spend ages down there listening to the KLF and tinkering with trains.
Currently it's sitting under a Technics SL-1200 that's almost as old. It's the standard box for listening to the Modern Jazz Quartet on a Sunday morning.
