4th of July Finds

I've always read about people running across scores in the dumpsters and such but I never thought I'd have any stories to tell. Today that changed.

My family and I drove down to visit the relatives in Wisconsin and I was proud of myself for not giving into temptation as we drove past at least a dozen antique and collectibles shops in the town of Ripon, WI. We're spending the weekend with my in-laws at their lakehome. My father-in-law needed to pick up some water softener salt this morning but needed my assistance as his wrist has been giving him problems and he hasn't been able to lift anything heavy. So I tagged along to give him a hand.

We pulled up to the local plumbing center in a town 8 miles from the lake and out in the back of the building I spotted a mountain of televisions - literally a mountain, folks! On the top of this pile of CRTs was a lone 3 way speaker so I figured that maybe, by chance, there might be some worthy vintage audio gear waiting to be discovered.

Well, I walked into the warehouse and spoke to a worker and asked if it would be okay if I scrounged around to see if there was anything interesting. He said, "Sure, go ahead take whatever you want. We just had our local electronics recycling day."

I went out to the junk pile extremely excited. I spotted a lone Sansui SP-1500 speaker and then really got stoked! There's gotta be some good stuff in here somewhere. So I climbed up on an 80's RCA console TV to get a birdseye view of the entire pile. Yep, there's a couple TT's sitting there. They were all scuffed up and the dustcovers were clearly busted into pieces, but I took a closer look anyway. A Technics and a Sansui....I think the 'Sui was a SR-535 or something relatively close to that model. I grabbed the headshell which looked pristine. It had a Pickering XV-15 / 625E cartridge in great shape but the stylus was shot. The Technics had the same exact cartridge al beit bent up a bit, so I grabbed that one too.

There were some other speakers sitting there but weren't anything identifiable and looked cheap. Then I stumbled across some big silver receivers hidden in the shadow of a Philips SPC TV. Two of 'em! There sat a Pioneer SX-850 and a Scott 350R receiver. The Pioneer is missing the AM antenna, but other than that, it looks complete so I grabbed them both while my F-I-L just shook his head and laughed.

I brought the receivers down to the basement, dropped them on my father-in-law's bench and opened up the Pioneer to make sure there wasn't any moisture sitting anywhere. It was dry and relatively dust free so I plugged it in and turned it on. Everything seems fine. I don't have any speakers or headphones to test, but the relay engaged and the tuning needle moves when dialing. There's a few indicator lamps out but it looks like it's operational.

More of an update once I get it home.

Here they are....





The Scott is super clean but I don't have a power cord for it. I'll have to wait til we get back home to test that one out too.

I'm tempted to go scrounging some more later on this weekend. :thmbsp:

somebody tossed that pioneer? WOW!

Okay, I've got some good news...so my father-in-law actually has a Awia mini system up in the loft with detachable speakers. I hooked up the Pioneer SX-850 and it works!

The tuner pulled in several FM channels much easier in the loft than in the basement and the FM stereo indicator lamp functions and the signal strength meter now bounces - AM works too. :thmbsp: I'll have to test the rest of the inputs when I get it home. :yes:

The Speaker A indicator lamp appears to be burnt out but the other lamps all illuminate so only one bulb change will be required.



As for the cosmetics, there's just a few notable flea bites on the faceplate - hardly anything worth raising an eyebrow over, to be honest. The leading edge of the left-hand side walnut endcap has a graze on it and there's a scuff on the balance knob and the volume knob but that's it. The veneer is dry but with a sprig of lemon oil it ought to luster up beautifully. :yes:



The volume pot has a touch of static, but after a thorough cleaning and some deoxit shots, everything should be A-OK.

Just need to find an AM antenna. Amazing that someone tossed it out - but I don't really mind since I'm the one who found it.

MAXZ28 said:

As for the cosmetics, there's just one flea bite on the faceplate. The leading edge of the left-hand side walnut endcap has a graze on it. . .

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Take off the faceplate. The endcap is attached with three screws. Take if off, turn it 180 degrees top to bottom, reattach, and the worn edge will be towards the back of the unit and partially hidden.

I need to spend more time in junk piles. I'm envious. Nice save!

Thanks Doctor B, I've done that in the past so I'll make sure to flip it around. :thmbsp:

I'm picturing an AKer standing on a mountain of TVs looking for the elusive vintage receiver....too funny..
Congrats!

Great save! :thmbsp: Those are some nice looking receivers. I'm glad to hear that someone saved them. Excellent score! Enjoy!

Damn dude!! Nice score.I would have done the exact same thing to get those.You lucked out, especially with the Pioneer.Who on earth would have thrown those out?:scratch2:

Sweet! Man that's the kind of find that gets the heart racing in anticipation. Good job. :thmbsp:

Nice Score!! Did you get "that feeling" that made you look down the alley? I get that sometimes when driving by the GW, but rarely have time to stop these days.

Tom

TomSc said:

Nice Score!! Did you get "that feeling" that made you look down the alley? I get that sometimes when driving by the GW, but rarely have time to stop these days.

Tom

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All I could see at first when we pulled into the parking lot was a pile of televisions near the end of the building but there was a lone speaker sitting on top of the heap that kept calling out to me. "Come look, come look!" :yes:

I'm convinced that there's more in the pile, but I never got back there today. Next weekend maybe.

"That Feeling" and Intermittent Reinforcement

TomSc said:

Did you get "that feeling" . . .

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I've been thinking about "that feeling" for some time and I realized that it comes from something called "intermittent reinforcement."

Pardon me for being pedantic. If you remember your B.F. Skinner in Psyc 101, continuous reinforcement is getting a reward every time you perform an action. If we were able to pick up silver every time we went out looking, our living quarters and storage spaces would fill up and our bank accounts would empty, and we'd be in big trouble. Eventually we would only go searching when we really needed something.

Extinction occurs when no matter how many times you perform the action, there is no reward. When we go for weeks on end without seeing anything decent at a yard sale or in a thrift and when the inventory on ebay and CL is low and overpriced, what's the point? We may as well go back to watching television.

Intermittent reinforcement occurs when the action produces a reward only some of the time (fixed interval, fixed number of actions, variable interval, variable ratio of actions, or randomly). The most habit forming is variable ratio or random reinforcement. In the lab, an experimenter sets up a schedule and/or ratio of reinforcement to see what will work best to get the rat in the cage to form a habit. In the world of vintage stereo equipment, there's no experimenter and no schedule, there's only chance and learning from experience where is the best place and what is the best time to go to find silver.

I realized recently that when I get "that feeling," I think I'm feeling like a rat hunting for some cheese. By the way, did you see any rats in that pile of equipment?

Oh, and if you should start to feel paranoid about there being a "big experimenter" somewhere, that's when you might ask yourself whether your cheese has slipped off your cracker. :screwy:

There's an electronics recycler not far from here. I think I'll stop by on my way to work tomorrow! :nutz:

No, no rats were seen, but I can imagine some field mice were definitely in there somewhere....I guess the biggest fear I had was that the owners weren't going to allow me to scrounge through the pile - liability concerns and the likes - and this morning I felt the need to go back and investigate further [ my first trip lasted a whole 3 minutes ] without the pressure of my father-in-law's patience growing thin. I resisted the urge of a repeat visit for fear of being there when the appliance center was closed and moreso without explicit permission. My father-in-law said that people go in and out of there dropping off and picking up from the junk pile all the time but something just told me to skip it today.

Heck, I really, really doubt the likelihood of anything greater than my current two finds is still sitting there left unclaimed but I really hate not knowing for sure. If I get a chance to go again after my trip to Washington this week, I'll definitely stop in and look a little longer than for a few minutes. :thmbsp:

Well, I finally got home after the holiday weekend and a weeklong business trip out in Washington state. I didn't get back out to the mountain-O-tv's, as I was exhausted from all the WA driving but when I got home I did manage to find a power cord and test out the Scott 350R.

Aside from some scratchy control pots, everything appears to be working fine.

I lemon oiled the case on the SX-850 and as expected, the veneer lustered up brilliantly. I also found an original AM antenna for it online so that should be coming soon. I haven't torn either of them down for a thorough detailing and adjustment yet but I anticipate getting to them this coming weekend. I'll post some pics once I'm finished with them.

Well, I got to one unit before the weekend as I managed to steal away a few hours this evening. I finished cleaning and detailing the Pioneer SX-850. I deoxit'd the pots 'n switches, cleaned and detailed the interior, and I flipped the endcaps over to hide the one edge that was heavily grazed so now it faces the bottom and rear instead of the top and front. I also picked up some Feed-N-Wax after hearing about how great of a product it is and I gotta tell you folks, this stuff is awesome! A good slathering of the F-N-W made the veneer look like new - it turned out beautifully....check it out!

That 850 is a gift from a higher source. I love that model - my roomie had one back in college matched up with a Marantz tt and it sounded great. Beautiful job cleaning it up it looks heavenly sitting there! Those turnover switches make for some cool tones in vintage music. I fear I will have to buy mine!

Finished up the Scott 350R cleaning tonight. Dang, this is a nice tidy lil receiver - pulls in stations like all getout with just a cruddy wire! :yes: There's a few laminate corners lifting that needs to be glued down, but all in all it looks practically new after a thorough detailing.

My AM antenna for the Pioneer arrived today in the mail, so I got that installed on the SX-850 which is pretty much done outside of the normal SM adjustments. I've got it pushing my DLK 1.5's and it sounds fabulous.

I know this isn't a Pioneer and I'm posting in Pioneer Audio, but I figured it wouldn't be a biggie to post the pics here as I found the two receivers together. Moderators, my apologies in advance if you think otherwise.

Man, that Scott is crazy-nice!! Thank goodness you saved it. How about an inside shot? I'd love to see how Scotts stack up against Pioneers from that era. (I realize the 850 is likely more powerful and possibly better built, but this seems interesting...does anyone know if these Scotts are sourced from Japan or were they made by the original company?)

zenith2134 said:

Man, that Scott is crazy-nice!! Thank goodness you saved it. How about an inside shot? I'd love to see how Scotts stack up against Pioneers from that era. (I realize the 850 is likely more powerful and possibly better built, but this seems interesting...does anyone know if these Scotts are sourced from Japan or were they made by the original company?)

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I'll try to take some pics of the inside sometime this week.....it was spotless on the inside - I think it's a 40wpc receiver and the layout is somewhat similar to a Pioneer SX-3600.

Not sure if all models were, but this 350R was built in Japan.

zenith2134 said:

Man, that Scott is crazy-nice!! Thank goodness you saved it. How about an inside shot? I'd love to see how Scotts stack up against Pioneers from that era. (I realize the 850 is likely more powerful and possibly better built, but this seems interesting...does anyone know if these Scotts are sourced from Japan or were they made by the original company?)

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Its hard to believe what some people throw out isn't it?

Cool design.