You'll MISS Me When I'm Gone....

Luckily here in Podunk MS we have a locally owned electronics store that is pretty well stocked with anything you might ever need. If they don't have it in stock, they can get it in a couple of days with no upcharge. When RS closed the store here, no one noticed since it became a cell phone store with amazingly uninformed clerks. I do remember RS as a youngin, I would go there and marvel at all of the stuff they had. The Christmas Catalog was the stuff little boy's dreams were made of.
 
Radio Shack is dead? We have one in my little town in the wilderness and they are still opened. News often gets here delayed, or perhaps they are just going to stay in biz anyway keep calling themselves radio shack.
 
Bunch of y'all know I'm into old military shortwave sets. Those little "Cube" speakers were just about PERFECT to use on my Boatanchors., & I'd often grab a bunch of their little adaptors that could convert600 ohms to something modern speakers could use.. My radios also use adaptors for the antenna. Lotsa times you'd have to "Cypher" out in yr head how you could make the modern Ratshak stuff work w/an ancient radio.. Once you had it figgered out, THAT was the cue for the hopeless dweeb who worked there to come up & pester you, wanting to know if you needed help.. They always meant well, but I often had to stifle rather loud warning to "Eff Off !" Last Ratshak I visited I told High-Pockets I really needed a 7JP4 CRT, which of course, Mr Dweeb had NO idea what I wanted..
 
I miss them. Now if I'm trying to get a repair finished and I need a fuse, I have to order it. There are no electronic part stores in Cleveland anymore. It sucks. My first good speakers were Realistic Optimus 1's.
 
I used to really like Radio Shack back in the 80's but the last few times I went it they were just what's been described here. Even when they were still mostly open I still missed the real Radio Shack.
 
Maybe w/ Radio Shack gong down for the count ... Parts Express will expand.

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Especially now that MCM has been folded into Newark - kinda leaves Parts Express as the only similar alternative.

Yeah they got cheap and treated their employees like crap from what I've read in recent memory. So the turnover was high. That company completely lost sight and didn't adapt.

I worked for them in 1967-68, believe it or not. Same treatment back then. Nothing new.

Cheers,
Larry B.
 
It was nice to be able to walk in, find what you needed or make something work and be done.

Fending off the staff idiots was usually entertaining.

Often showing them where stuff was had it's small satisfaction.

Seems like I'd be looking for the stuff they had no idea was even in stock.

Yeah, I miss them.
 
With the arrival of the "maker" movement, I'd think that metro areas of, say, 75 to 100,000 or more could support a Parts Express "mini store". Time will tell.

I've wondered why RS did not move more aggressively into this market too? At one point I read Alibaba was considering buying them which makes complete sense .
A brick & mortar footprint with locations of RS would be a great fit for them. Alibaba would inventory a tightly curated mix of products & parts that fit the market(s).
 
I've wondered why RS did not move more aggressively into this market too? At one point I read Alibaba was considering buying them which makes complete sense .
A brick & mortar footprint with locations of RS would be a great fit for them. Alibaba would inventory a tightly curated mix of products & parts that fit the market(s).

Probably hard up for cash and completely adverse to taking risks like that. Would have made more sense to go that direction than try to sell cell phones.
 
They had ONE product that worked way better than it should have, wouldn't break yr wallet, & was just good all the way around- A-Medium wave Loop that didn't need power. it was not as good as the famous KIWA MW loop, but it also wasn't $500. Was a dern sight better than about anything you could scare up yrself...
 
Never was really into any of the Radio Shack stuff back in the day so I can't say I will miss them.

Matter of fact, for whatever reason, their audio stuff was considered sub-par back then (early-mid '70s).

Would rather be sporting something that said Marantz on it instead of Realistic.

Even for little things like solder we would rather buy from local independent electronics stores. It's just the way it was. Radio Shack sold the cheap stuff as far as we were concerned.

:dunno:

I built my first speaker from their shelves. All these years later, I found out I made a pair of TLS back in 73! They were ugly, but sounded great! A friend bought them from me when I upgraded to Legacy 100s! I was happy because I got back what I put into them!

I think we said the same thing about Japanese gear then too, and look at the gear they were building! I think we all just fell for the marketing machine back then.
 
Like MOST of the rest of us here, I was kinda Dismaide over the long,painful DEATH of Radio Shack. I'm old enuf to remember when they sold stuff that maybe NO "Audiophool" would want, yet most all of us,I feel,prolly had quite a bunch of their stuff... Speaker wire, fuses, bulk cassette/R2R tape"DooHickeys" of every kind & sort.. Guys like Moi chaseddown the correctamperages so our projects weren't quite so "homemade" looking..
I suggest you take a look at this
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1964/hindex_050_001-050.html

At one time you could go into a Ratshack and buy a TD124,Wharfdale speakers,and your choice of Fisher,McIntosh,or HH Scott tube amp.In the 50s and 60s RS catered to the serious "hi fi bug",but as Radio Shack expanded into every strip mall in America,in the 70s and 80s.they began to gradually go more and more downmarket,where the money was.
 
I used them a lot and still miss them. Bought so much solder at a closing sale I don't think I'll never need more.
 
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