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02/22/2004: "Cool Vintage Stereo !"
Hey guys...
I know, it has been way too long since I've updated. But here I am and I have tons of stuff to tell, don't know where to start. House stuff- Finally going to finish my bedroom. I primed all the windows, and put up some roman shades. I also primed all the trim in the hallway. Sam and I ripped off all the paneling and then the wallpaper in the hallway too. The walls are that really cool old textured plaster, I'd love to just paint them, But there are too many cracks and holes and the ceiling is horrible. but there is NO WAY I'm gonna rip the walls down to studs and then sheetrock, that's a nightmare in this house. Instead I got some quarter inch sheetrock and am going to just go right over the walls and ceiling. Big timesaver!
Yesterday Sam and I ripped out the old attic stairs (the fold down kind) and put in new ones. It wasn't that bad, but man we had to cut a lot off the new stairs, guess they aren't made for six foot-four ceilings, eh?
OK, so on to the fun part, and the title of this post-
VINTAGE STEREO SYSTEM
I'm building a vintage stereo system. Yup, a late seventies system, real kick ass setup that will shake the whole house! Now you may ask, how am I doing this when I'm so broke I can't even afford to pay attention (or update my blog)?
Well, Grace's parents are selling their house, so she is cleaning out tons of old stuff. She asked me if I wanted their old stereo, she said it's huge and weighs a ton. I said sure, why not, figuring I'll stack it up in the junk room with all the old computers and stuff I'm never gonna use...
Well imagine my surprise when she brings this sixty pound monster up here. We're talking a Fisher Studio Standard RS-2015. Cranks out 150 watts a channel of that warm sounding, full bodied, old, "they don't make 'em like they used to" receiver sound. Look at the heatsinks on the back of this bad boy! Here's photo collage of an identical but lower powered model.
And she also brought this old Pioneer turntable. It's a PL-516 model with a Shure cartridge. So I'll be spinning my old vinyl some time real soon!
Then she bought me this cool old tape deck on Ebay for only thirty bucks. A Technics RS631 model that is supposed to be in flawless condition. The woodgrain is going to look great with the receiver!
So naturally I had to go over to my Mom's garage and dig out my DBX boxes and signal processor, the only pieces I saved from the superb system I had as a teenager. That was a really nice setup I had- Kenwood amp and tuner, Dual turntable, and also a Technics deck, but an MX model with the DBX noise reduction (and it also handled metal tape, which the one I'm getting doesn't). I sold that system for twelve hundred dollars of cash and goods back in 1980, so you can imagine how nice it was. I ran into the guy around ten years ago and he said it still sounds better then a new system he had bought!
Anyway, like always I'm digressing. Here's the DBX boxes I still have from back then. A model 120 Subharmonic Synthesizer, which is awesome! It recreates the whole spectrum of audio one whole octave lower and then mixes it back in, makes the kind of bass you can feel going right through the walls!
And here's the model 200 Program Route Selector I have. Handy if you have multiple inputs.
And an SAE-5000 Impulse Noise Reduction unit. This baby will take clicks and pops out of records for recording purposes.
The speakers I have aren't vintage, but they are supposed to sound OK for the price and they do push a lot of air. They are KLH Rave-12's and will have to do for now. I would love to get an old pair of Klipsch Heresy's or maybe even Cornwalls some day, but they are out of my price range. Even if I could afford them, I'm afraid the 140 year old walls in this house would all start to crack if I turned them up!
Anyway, that's the system, kinda cool, huh? And all for free, can't beat that. When I get all my vinyl out of the attic and out from under the stairs I'll catalog it and put it up for you guys to look at, comment on, etc., K?
Oh yeah, I got a digital camera at last! It takes great pictures. It's kinda like a business purchase for this joint venture Grace and I started, we're selling stuff online. It's almost half way paid for from sales, another couple weeks and we'll be operating at a profit! And I can now take really good quality pics to post here. All the old ones on this site were taken with my cell phone, and are pretty crappy. I decided on the Fuji Finepix S5000, it's a really nice camera for not much money at all. You can find them for under three hundred bucks and they are loaded with features, and it has a really long zoom, which I have wanted.
Just so you know, all those stereo photo's were NOT taken with my camera, I snagged them off the web from various places while doing research on the components of the system. If you want to see a pictre it took, look HERE. That's my Gray cat and I even optimized it for the web in Photoshop, the original image was huge. But you can see what I'm talking about, it takes some nice photo's!
OK, I'm starving, gonna rustle up some chow for Sam and moi and throw a load of laundry in. I'm gonna get in the habit of updating regulary here, I kinda miss it. That and I would love to know the flamer who keeps voting the posts down...
l8r
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