Groovy Baby or Brother, What a Stereo!

On my way home from work Friday while driving on Mueller Road in South County, I barely caught sight of a garage sale sign on a side road.  I almost dismissed it as an old sign until I saw the word "Today" on it.  Occasionally, people will have a Friday evening pre-sale, so I knew it was a possibility.  In the time it took to process all of that, I had already passed the street so I had to turn around and head back.

I found the address and saw the garage door was up, but saw no signs of life.  I walked up the driveway and into the garage, but still couldn't find anybody.  It was clearly being staged for a garage sale with items laid out on tables, but I began to wonder if I was a day early.  I saw a large white object and could see the label "Brother" on it.  Knowing Brother from the old days of dot matrix printers and word processors, I assumed that's what it was until I got a closer look.  Once I realized it was this, I wasn't leaving until I found someone.

The door from the garage into the house was open and I heard someone moving about, so I bided my time looking at the other items waiting for someone to come out.  An elderly man finally did come out and I verified he was open for business.  I asked him about the stereo and he said it was his son's.  He said it worked, but that his son was looking at the needle and thought it was broken because the cartridge was hanging out.  I asked him how much it was hoping it was $20 as I'd already made up my mind I wouldn't spend more than that.  He wanted $30.  So after looking through the rest of the sale and picking up $2 worth of items, I left him my business card and told him to call me if it didn't sell and I would offer $20.

Driving away, I immediately began to regret it.  I texted a friend that I'd just passed on a way out '60's stereo and he asked "Why?".  I was asking myself why as well.  By this time, I was about a 1/2 mile away, but I swung a U-turn and headed back.  Ten minutes later and $30 poorer, I was headed home with it.

Who knew Brother made stereos, much less stereos this cool.  It's meant to emulate the Eero Saarinen Tulip design and probably dates from the late '60's to early '70's.

It works great and after looking at the tone arm, it was a simple matter to snap the cartridge head back in place. It was missing a needle, but I found those are easily and cheaply replaced. It uses a Tetrad TC8HO cartridge and a separate needle snaps into it. I found a needle on eBay for $6 with free shipping and bought it.  The turntable is made by BSR (Birmingham Sound Reproducers) out of England who produced turntables for 87% of the stereo market at one point in the 1960's and '70's.

I found absolutely no information about this stereo on the Internet.  I did come across two posts of other people who had come into possession of similar Brother stereos (coincidentally another here in St. Louis), but they didn't know anymore than I did.  There's no model number or name on it.  The other stereo from St. Louis was posted on Mr. Modtomic's blog.  That model had a lid that covered the entire top of the stereo and featured an equalizer.

I'm going to hang onto this one for a while and have some fun with it.

***Update***

I have since learned the name of this stereo is the Brother Charger I. 

I also came across this archive of the Bangor Daily News from May 22nd, 1975 with an ad for Zayre's Department store:

This is actually the Brother Domino II (note the full dustcover and equalizer) which I believe is the descendant of my Charger I.