Old Gear

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Old Gear

Postby Arneb » Sun Aug 29, 2021 2:07 pm

Many years ago, I told you stories of me digitizing my records - with a view to saying good-bye to them at some point. Also, I ripped my entire CD collection to .mp3 at some point (still in Aachen, IIRC). With storage becoming ever cheaper and more plentiful, I took to ripping any new CD I got my hands on to .mp3 AND to .WAV and then sort them differently: Strictly by composer and genre for the .mp3s versus keeping the .wav files in one folder as sort of a pseudo-CDs (you know I am a classics buff).

But I never went to a fully computer-based system, although my entire CD, record, and cassette collection, ripped in two different formats with higher resolution than needed, fits on something smaller than a fingernail these days. Yes, I chucked my old compact cassettes, and the cassette deck. Yes, I chucked my minidiscs and sold off the (rather nice) Walkman-type player I had bought around the turn of the millennium. But when the next chance to make a cut rolled around with moving into the newly-built house, I still didn't throw my records away. Nor my CD's. Instead, I let the LPs sit on the mantelpiece, and the CDs got two massive shelves all of their own, together with the - get that! - the DVDs.

And when I was in my two months lull after demission as a Fat Cat, I made a decision: I poured part of my severance pay into a posh new network player - but one with an excellent CD drive-, into a posh amplifier - but one that was praised for its excellent, warm-sounding phono pre-amp, and into a pair of smaller speakers with excellent reviews - passive speakers. I gave my rather beat-up, 30 yo Technics turntable to a repair shop, and it returned with a perspex lid you could actual use, a very low wow-and flutter, and a spanking new needle and cartridge. When I got a new desktop and Son I got the old one for his birthday, he also received the active speakers I had bought with it - while I dragged up the Missus' 25yo Onkyo receiver, still working and looking perfect, from the back of a dark drawer somewhere, stacked it under my printer, connected the CD line-in to the desktop's line-out, fitted it with two glorious (but cheap at age 30) small Canton speakers off eBay, and voila, I now have two old-fashioned stereo systems. Complete with AM an FM radio, as long as those are still broadcast in 'Schland.

The Technics turntable is the only piece surviving from my first stereo kit bought with my nursing student job money in 1990. It consisted of a midi-sized Philips all plastic CD player, an Onkyo receiver much like the one the Missus brought into our marriage, a fitting Onkyo tape deck, a pair of Elac speakers (about 20" high), and the turntable. Oh how I loved that gear! The CD player finally gave out in '17, as did the receiver ( I am sure it could have been saved), and I had mercilessly and stupidly thrown the fully functioning cassette deck into the junk in '12, when all the tapes had been digitized. Likewise the speakers, when they didn't fit our shelf anymore. The turntable got whacked by something heavy after we first moved to Potsdam, and the repair shop was unable to fix the hole. I just taped it over from both sides to prevent the dust from getting in too easily. But it survived. Seems like the missus will have to bear with my small record collection for some more time.

My interest awoke with watching a couple of YouTube channels where people (read: Middle-aged well-off white guys) demonstrate old gear they pluck off eBay, Japanese auction sites or, plainly, a junkyard. It's lovely to see how they love their stuff and get it working again, and while I'll never restore, let alone use, an old Macintosh IIe, a 1999 ThinkPad, a Nakamichi Dragon or even another minidisk player, I now have my well-maintained little corner of "vintage gear". Or maybe just good gear. See photos below. If anyone’s interested, here are the channels:

Techmoan - I love that channel. Just watch the credits section of his more recent videos, and you know you've met someone who loves and knows his stuff. He is so quintessentially, so plucked-off-the-cliché book English (he's even from Liverpool and says things like "flippin' 'eck"), our Scottish members will probably get all pimply watching him.
This Does Not Compute - Heavier on vintage computing than consumer electronics, by a nerdy engineer from St. Louis
VWestlife - by someone who actually seems to own a repair shop. Shows more daring and more in-depth repairs than the other two, because he is a pro.
Context menus will guide you to an unending chain of link-hopping opportunities (beware of Vinyl fundie channels), but I really like watching those three best.

Here's Teh Gear in Teh Arnebhouse:
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Re: Old Gear

Postby Heid the Ba » Sun Aug 29, 2021 3:35 pm

Very nice.
Get it up ye.
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Re: Old Gear

Postby Мастер » Sun Aug 29, 2021 5:09 pm

:)

My entire CD collection, when digitised even at a pretty high quality, easily fits on my phone. Video is a different story, I have to ration that.
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Re: Old Gear

Postby Arneb » Thu Sep 02, 2021 2:23 pm

i noticed that Samsung (my usual phone brand) had stopped making room for a micro SD card with their S21 model, so I hurried to get the S20 in its latest incarnation. A nice bit of kit, and I will have all the internal memory free for the System and Apps, while the music collection, at 320 kbit /s MP3, and the photo and video sit on the .5 TB card. The phone won't live long enough for me to fill it. The present is AMAZING.

My analog music collection, after all the cassettes have been chucked, is small, but well worth keeping: This is all that's left.

20210829_182352.jpg
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Re: Old Gear

Postby Lianachan » Thu Sep 02, 2021 3:13 pm

I used to have an Onkyo TX-8210R (3rd picture). It was very good. Now wondering what happened to it. May have to send a search party to the loft.
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Re: Old Gear

Postby Arneb » Thu Sep 02, 2021 4:23 pm

If you find it, try to make use of it. It is lovely. My small office space is acoustically tricky, as I probably sit too close to the speakers, and not dead centre. Still, the new arrangement is an absolute joy.

Filled two gaping holes in my musical education by buying Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall off Big Fuckin Brasilian River System - as CDs, which will probably make me a pariah in audiophile circles. But I cannot be bothered with new vinyl anymore.
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Re: Old Gear

Postby Lianachan » Thu Sep 02, 2021 7:32 pm

I’ll have a look for it for sure. Also, I humbly recommend the remastered (or super deluxe) edition of this to take your speakers for a spin (and further that education).
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