Soundesign 5171

Soundesign was a budget brand sold at places like Kmart and JCPenney. They were one of the pioneers of the rack system concept, which allowed consumers to get a receiver, tape deck, speakers, and component rack for one low price. These systems succeeded because it was easy to fool people with flashy styling, while hiding the inferior components inside. Take this model 5171CS9 rack system, for example. The receiver (model TX-5171) looks "legit" with its metal face, big knobs, and both analog and LED meters. The tuner has both traditional flywheel action as well as a florescent display that can indicate tuner frequency or current time. For sound tailoring you have bass, treble, loudness, and high and low filters. But if you were to open it up and look inside, you'd find a lot of empty space. And that's no surprise, because it's rated at only 12 watts per channel (from 40 to 20,000 Hz into 8 ohms at no more than 1% total harmonic distortion). So you're not going to be waking the neighbors with it. And get this, it was the strongest system offered by Soundesign that year. The others only had 5-10 watts per channel.

The model TX-0487 tape deck has big flashy meters, but no Metal compatibility (just Normal and "Special"). There's some kind of generic unbranded noise reduction system instead of Dolby. The model 0666K speakers are styled to look like 3-ways, but they're really only 2-ways (8" woofers and 3" tweeters). But hey, at least you GOT tweeters. Some of Soundesign's other systems didn't even have them.