The amount of Hifi components stocked in Seoul shops!!!!

[Nevillekapadia]

I was in Seoul for work, when I had the afternoon off, a few months back.

LG had just announced in the press their new 4K OLED TV's. And I was really keen on seeing it.

So I went to their 'electronic section' of town, searching to view this new technology. All I came upon were small shops with heaps of computer parts and accessories.

Then in the distance (300-400 metres away) I saw a building with a large LG billboard advertisement. So I thought that may be the place where the telly could be seen.

Was I surprised when I stumbled on to a plethora of high end shops, and the stock weight that they had was amazing. Though I just wonder how they manage to do a proper audition for components.

I have placed them on Flickr as they are easier to upload. Also have a look at the Singapore hifi show, that I stumbled across in the other hifi shows section of the forum.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/8439124@N04/sets/72157647393117084/

Here's a sample


Needless to say the telly was a press release and they were going to come out early December into stores. It wasn't of any interest anyway, after I saw the audio gear.

Neville

 

[ack]

Thanks; sounds like you have been having fun touring Singapore, South Korea and other places - keep it coming... but as mep might have said, I am not sure what is more ridiculous: seeing all that equipment piled up on top of each other, or playing it all in unison Nonetheless, it's nice to see so much in one place.

 

[JackD201]

Talk about vintage heaven. Had a blast seeing those WE horns and *gasp* lathes! on a retail floor! Nice one Neville!

 

[astrotoy]

A few years ago we went to Singapore for a few days, near Christmas. Because of the constantly hot and humid weather (S'pore is right on the equator) all the shopping is in many huge multistory malls. There is even a smaller four story (IIRC) mall for hifi - mostly hi end equipment. Many foreign brands, including US and European. Quite impressive. Not as chock a block full of equipment as the Korean stores pictured above.

A couple of years later, when we were in Hong Kong, my wife's sister and her husband took us to Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong for a couple of days of shopping. Shenzhen, 35 years ago was a sleepy little fishing village. Today, because of its growth as a major manufacturing center (think Walmart, Apple and many, many others) it has a population of 15 million! Across from the train station from Hong Kong is a giant 8 story mall devoted to pirated goods, where you can buy a fake version of almost anything. At the hotel we stayed (where my brother-in-law is a director) I made the innocent request whether there was a place to find used vinyl. The next morning, the staff had researched my request and had a car ready to take us to a small mall, far from the tourist area, which was devoted to hi fi stores, three of which had several bins of used records (unfortunately nothing interesting to me). When I first walked into the mall, on the ground floor, the first thing that struck my eyes was a pair of Mbl Radialstrahler 101's in the main window of one shop. Then walking around, there were several shops with vintage MacIntosh and Marantz tube equipment as well as other hi end, mostly used, equipment - none pirated, AFAIK. In smaller hallways, there were many shops with Chinese made equipment, mostly with tubes, and several shops which only sold Chinese tubes. Everything was in Chinese and few people spoke much English (unlike the Pirate Mall). I concluded, from the location and the lack of English, that these shops were for internal consumption by the Chinese.

Larry