Буржуи жгут!

... Do you know they used to sell Russian 50-watt-per-channel tube amps for a $100 new with a bag (!) of tubes? That they were beautifully built (welded steel chassis, silk covered wiring, transformers the size of Price Club cereal boxes), and sounded fantastic too. We think they had it rough in pre-democracy Russia, but they all lived with monster tube equipment, three-way speakers in which the tweeters were mounted on 1/4" thick machined aluminum face plates, the woofers were set in monstrous cast baskets, and they had dome midranges, and record players which were made of stainless steel (platter and bodies) and plate-glass covers? That these 'tabels were programmable with little lasers seeking the next track for their linear-tracking tonearms? Man, no cheap Japanese Sony shit there!