Rochester AWA Radio show report

Kamakiri

The New Dynamic
Well, arrived there about 3am, as usual, and started the rounds with a flashlight. Had about $475 cash on me at the start, came home with about $125 in my pocket after leaving at 8am!

Interesting meet. There were a lot of great scores to be had, and I'd say a rough guess there were at least 40 tube amps there for sale, everything from a homebrew amp with two 45s and Thordarson transformers that sold for $80, to twin RCA commercial monoblock amps with ~80wpc output and push-pull 6??? tubes that went for $300. The meet is going on for the next two days as well! :D

The biggest scores that I had heard of were a Tannoy speaker that somebody bought for $10 (from what I've heard it was worth at least $1500)....there was a guy apparently chasing him across the parking lot asking "hey, how much you want, HOW MUCH YOU WANT??!!". The gut wrenching one for me was an RCA CT-100 color TV that was in such good shape it made mine look like the dog's breakfast. It sold for $850! Oh, if I only had $850! :(

So what did I buy? I came up with some goodies.....the best of which were a pair of Fisher receivers, a 500-C and an 800-C. The 500 has the wooden cabinet, and NOS output tubes. Couldn't beat the deal for $100 each! There were a couple more 500c's there without tubes ranging from $75-$150. The names of HH Scott, Fisher, Eico, and Bogen were EVERYWHERE! You could have brought a full size truck and not been able to take away all of the tube gear present! Also of interest were a bunch of JBL speakers, two television station B&W image orthicon cameras, tables and tables of catalin radios, and just about everything in between that you could imagine. No good TTs to speak of save one Dual that I couldn't find the seller to inquire about the price, and a TEAC quad RR that was "locked up" for $45. Another interesting thing was a Nakamichi 1000 deck with a "head problem" for $95. I'd say that most of this stuff will still be there tomorrow, when prices will drop considerably.

One fellow I met there was an engineer for McIntosh about 20 years ago. He had a Mc tuner that he built as a one-off in the shop using components, and was in fact an AM-FM battery radio! Incredible construction quality. That, of course, was not for sale.

Another interesting thing I saw there was a mono tube amp with an Acrasound transformer. Prices at $250, I gasped! Reason? I FOUND ONE IN THE GARBAGE TWO WEEKS AGO! Since there was no power supply, I didn't know what it was! I figured it was somehting out of an old tube console or organ or something! Woohoo!

So all in all a great meet! I'll post the pics when I can!
 
Sounds Great!

Any luck with the Cunningham 45s? I'm curious about the % of tube dealers vs component dealers? Were any of the "name tube boutique dealers" at the show? I know Brenden at Tube World isn't so far away that he couldn't make it. As I've not heard of this show before I'll have to ask if any of the other forums had representation. I'd be interested in some pixs for sure! Keep me posted.

MikE
 
I searched high and low for those tubes, and couldn't find any :confused:

This year I was surprised at the lack of tube vendors there this year. Tomorrow there will be another crop of people there and I may just blow off work and go again :D
 
Sounds like my idea of a good time and what a deal on those Fishers. They still have the Mullard and Telefunken 12AX7s in them?
Wish I could have been there, I love those things!!
 
Actually they still have Fisher tubes in them, along with a couple Telefunkens and an RCA or two. Got the 500 working, had one shorted tube. WOOHOO! Play time! :yippy:
 
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