University Sound Studio Pro 120 (1967)
A speaker company's first receiver, priced at $379.50 and shipped with a testing lab's certification - and by most accounts it earned the paperwork.
Overview
University Sound spent decades building transducers and, according to its own advertising, a good deal of sophisticated electronics for the military. The Studio Pro 120 was the company's first electronic unit designed for the home entertainment market, a solid-state FM stereo receiver introduced in 1967 at $379.50. University had no receiver line to protect, so it apparently built the most over-specified $379 box it could and had two independent labs certify the numbers. Collectors now remember it less as a product than as a provocation aimed at the established receiver makers.
The power figures show the specsmanship of the era. Total IHF music power is rated at 120 watts at 4 ohms at 0.8% THD - the big, generous number the marketing department wanted. Continuous RMS output is a far more modest 30 watts per channel into 8 ohms at 0.3% THD. The gap is enormous, and the RMS figure is the honest one. This is a 30-watt-per-channel receiver wearing a 120-watt hat. The rest of the amplifier section is good, though. Frequency response runs 10 Hz to 100 kHz at +0, −3 dB, power bandwidth is 10 Hz to 40 kHz, and intermodulation distortion stays under 0.5% up to rated output. Damping factor is quoted at 50:1, and the load impedance range spans 4 to 16 ohms.
The tuner section is where the Studio Pro 120 gets serious. IHF sensitivity is 2.3 microvolts, image rejection is greater than 90 dB, alternate-channel selectivity is 55 dB, and stereo separation is 40 dB at 1 kHz. FM frequency response holds to ±0.5 dB from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, and distortion stays under 0.5% at 75 kHz deviation. The front end uses a MOSFET, feeding two RCA CA-3012 integrated circuits in the IF strip. Each one does the work of ten transistors plus associated diodes and resistors. The whole receiver carries 31 silicon transistors, 21 diodes, and two ICs. Multiplex switching is fully automatic via a logic circuit, and the amplifier is protected by three 1-ampere circuit breakers.
The package is compact: 16⅜ inches wide, 4½ inches tall, 12 inches deep, and 17 pounds. The knobs are gold-anodized solid aluminum. The dual bass and dual treble controls are clutch-operated, so left and right channels can be set individually. There are also balance, gain, and a tuning knob with flywheel action. Eight rocker switches handle speaker-remote, MPX filter, high and low filters, tape monitor, loudness, stereo/mono, and FM mute. The front panel is brushed and gold-anodized, a matching dust cover came included, and walnut side panels were optional for open-shelf installation. A stereo headphone jack sits on the front.
The reception was strong enough that University reprinted it. HiFi-Stereo (December 1967, p.151) ran instrument and listening tests and found the receiver beat its published specs more often than not. 20 dB quieting arrived at a 1.0-microvolt input against the 1.6 microvolts claimed, alternate-channel selectivity measured 58 dB against the manufacturer's 55, and cross-modulation rejection came in better than 95 dB. The reviewer's listening notes described percussion with unusual clarity and called the amplifier the peer of many separate components. The same report noted the unit pulled in 38 listenable FM stations in the New York City area on a dipole tossed behind the receiver, and that limiting kicked in at an input of only 0.55 microvolts. High Fidelity (December 1967, p.105) also ran the full performance specifications. University's advertising leaned hard on the certification angle. The company had the specs verified by two independent testing firms, used the resulting seal as a centerpiece of the campaign, and billed the receiver as equal or superior to models costing up to $600.
That advertising needs a skeptical eyebrow, and the review coverage supplies the caveats. The HiFi-Stereo test found FM stereo separation missed the 40 dB spec by 2 dB. The reviewer called that trivial, noting that at least 25 dB of separation held across the whole 20 Hz to 10 kHz band. The same review flagged the absence of some professional-grade conveniences: no step-type tone controls, no per-input output level adjustments. University also chose to reject SCA broadcasts only minimally. That is fine for most stations, but stations running subscription background music could cause interference until the MPX filter was switched in.
Collectors approaching one today should know what they're getting: a short-lived first effort from a speaker manufacturer, built with real ambition and reviewed well, but without a deep parts or service ecosystem behind it. The 17-pound chassis and compact footprint make it easy to shelf, and the gold-anodized face has aged into something collectors find attractive. The circuit breakers help it survive, since there is no fuse-hunting. Documentation and community support for a one-model receiver from a transducer company are thin, so check condition carefully rather than assume parts are easy to source.
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