What was it like in the 60's and 70's?

When King Crimson played San Francisco in '74 they had to limp through with only one of the two trons working.  An aside...a friend was at the show and also on the bill was 10 Years After.  While Crimso was on this girl behind him kept asking her boyfriend, "Is that Alvin Lee?" 

Anyway, remember how often your cassette or 8 track tape would get stuck in the rollers and spit out in a creased and folded mess?  Multiply that by 35 more tapes and you have the nightmare that was the Mellotron...'course when it worked it was as if angels had descended to earth 

I have a great book called "The Mellotron Book" that covers the entire history and details of how they work (or don't work as the case may be ) and how to repair them.  I'm pretty sure it's now out of print, but I'd be surprised if the info isn't available on the net somewhere.  Basically, the way to fix a busted tron is tear it apart and rebuild from the ground up.  Here's a fun video on the restoration of a seriously abused early 70's M400 mellotron...warning: this is not for the feint of heart 

   things were too difficult back then , and Albums were highly appreciated upon release , specially if we knew the Band .  what was Unique in that Era was , we've had our Time to Discover the Beauty of those Albums , i mean a song at a time , we never knew that the Floyds , the Crimsons , VDGG , Jethro Tull will still active till now-a-days !!   Anyway , things were properly done , with Peace of Mind , the Competition was only heading to the Best .  I Believe none of our Fathers knew about Progressive to recommend anything for Us , we've done it the Hard Ways !! all the Eldest on this Site knows what i mean !   and , Definitely we have now the Best Source and Reliable Archive in the World concerning Progressive Rock Music from all categories , kinds and Styles , and , i believe it was done because of you Guys , our new Generation , that we depend a lot on your activities for the next decades  !  I Salute you all from Lebanon , and , i believe , one way or another , we did our share in this //

and one of these:

In the 70s We had "walkmans" like this:

But mainly THIS....I still have it in my garage and it's where I've listened to DSOTM for the first time.

Setting the "auto" function to 45rpm, the pick-up was positioned exactly at the beginning of The Great Gig In The Sky.

In my car I was used to bring with me this:

I cried when it reached its end of life. It was designed for self-instruction foreign languages courses but it became my car audio for years.

Finally in the 80s with my first fixed job I purchased the equipments below:

(dubbing tapes...you know...)

I haven't found pictures of my equalizer and speakers which were from a short lived Italian company (JE)

but I still have a mixer very similar (not the same model) to this:

Another reason to have two tape recorders (for overdubbing)

In terms of instruments:

Somebody has stolen my Farfisa from the garage where my actual band was rehearsing.

OK, let's stop here. Just some vintage pictures.... now all my music is there...

with several 32GB MicroSD cards of course....