It sounds to me like he never threw anything away.
My garage is the same way but with outboards not amps.
All over a cassette deck (Warning, long post)
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My garage is the same way but with outboards not amps.
More of it works than doesn't but my focus here first is on the items that don't work, or the items that I'll likely be weeding out first.
Also the fact that most everything is over 25 years old, the likelihood that there are issues with many items is fairly high I suppose. A few items really surprised me though when I plugged them in and they worked fine.
As I mentioned before, a good many of the items he had tagged 'junk' or 'Parts Only' were easy fixes, whether or not they were worth the 10 minutes or so a few took to fix or figure out, remains to be seen but having a cheap or low end working unit on the shelf is better than having one that's dead and marked 'junk'.
A good many that were marked 'Parts Only' were perfectly fine. So many in fact that I'm starting to wonder if that wasn't his way of marking the one's he didn't want to get rid of. Mark it junk and no one will touch it line of thinking?
After that last lot of stuff I'm truly out of room, its now to the tripping over things point. The big problem now is that I don't want to scrap out a lesser unit that may later donate parts to a better version of the same brand. Things like knobs, feet, and switches are often common across various models.
A few of the 'cheap' tape decks really surprised me at how well they sound and work, but maybe I just never took the time before to really clean one up. The few I've had in the past were either new when I bought them or they didn't work when I found them so they got tossed in the attic back in the day. But never in the numbers this guy had somehow managed to accumulate.
I think my own pile from years past is only two or three decks that need belts or capstan rollers, I suppose those will eventually get dug out and added to this pile too.
Starting with the tape decks was my original plan, but that was the plan when I thought there were only a half dozen or so decks worth doing, but at this point, I've worked my way through all the Sony decks, and am 1/4 of the way through the newer Pioneer decks. The two Akai decks are up and running, as is one Technics dual deck. I'm debating on whether the Aiwa or Nad decks will be next once I'm through all the Pioneer models. Its just easier to do all the similar decks in a row and now that they're sorted out by brand and model its going a bit faster. I had a guy stop by today who hadn't been here a while, he brought me a fleamarket find boom box to see if I could get it working, he about fell over when he started looking around. When I sent him up stairs to look at what was up there, he was in shock. I didn't show him the stacks on the tables in the basement or the room full of keepers in the house.
I did spend some time today further beefing up the shelves in the house, after figuring how much weight was on those shelves, which hold most of the big receivers and amps I really felt the need to further better protect the floor. I doubled the plywood under the shelves, using two layers of 3/4" birch plywood with 1/4" steel plates under the legs cut in pieces large enough not to bow over time. It will ensure that the angle iron legs of the P shelving won't cut into the hardwood floors or bow or warp any one plank. Although the total weight is likely no more than a room full of fat people, its concentrated on 10 small areas where the shelf vertical supports meet the floor Since its over the main center beam of the house the load should be fine.
(My compete system in the living room, with the 8 speakers, and two racks of equipment likely is just as bad but its also along a load bearing wall on metal plates where it sits. The one rack is about 800lbs the other slightly more with twin 65 lb amps. My two big speaker towers are likely well over 150lbs each, and next to them are two double stacked NLAs and two double stacked Polk M10's with double stacked Rectilinear III Lowboys, each topped with a single Sonics AS-447 from this lot.
In my one back room I've got another rack of gear, mostly driven by a pair of Carver PM-600 pro amps, are two pair of double stacked JBL 4412's, with a pair of XPL-200A's soon to be joined by a second pair from this lot with two additional same model amps. That's my 'LOUD' music room which has both outer walls and the ceiling insulated to keep the sound in. There's also an alternate stack of amps in there. My in the house work shop, what used to be a small bedroom has four RCA SPK500 speakers, along side of a pair of double stacked Advent 5002's and a couple of pair of Polk Monitor 5's and a pair of Dynaco 250's on a huge speaker switch that I got from a Pioneer dealer that closed up in the 80's. The room. I can switch beteen about 10 amps, 5 preamps, four turntables, four tape decks, or other components and up to 24 pair of speakers. The main amp in there right now is a pair of HK775 mono blocks with a NAD 1155 preamp and an Adcom GTP500 preamp for when I want a tuner in the mix. I've also got a system in the bedroom, as well as a 60" TV. There's a smaller 44" TV in the living room but its barely ever used but I'm working on setting up system just for the TV too.
So, yeah, my house is now a stereo showroom from the 70's, just with more junk laying around.
Yeah, I'm single, retired, and I told the girlfriend if she don't like the stuff in the house she can sleep in the camper. but right now it too has about ten stacks of gear from the auction that I need to still carry down stairs to deal with over the winter.
I'm really glad that I had recently cut down on my floor radio collection over last winter, finding new homes for all but one or two of them. If I hadn't, the one spare bedroom would not have had the room for the shelves I put up in there. I basically set up the shelves as described earlier but took the bed apart and slid it and the mattress into the walk in closet that had nothing but a few vacuum cleaners and some empty speaker boxes in it. The tube radios were my dad's thing, and they became mine when he passed 12 years ago. I had just let them sit there but finally started to find them homes after getting tired of looking at them and dusting them off.
So when I think about how a guy in his 80's had so much stuff, its not hard to figure out how he got it. It just sort of finds you sometimes.
Also the fact that most everything is over 25 years old, the likelihood that there are issues with many items is fairly high I suppose. A few items really surprised me though when I plugged them in and they worked fine.
As I mentioned before, a good many of the items he had tagged 'junk' or 'Parts Only' were easy fixes, whether or not they were worth the 10 minutes or so a few took to fix or figure out, remains to be seen but having a cheap or low end working unit on the shelf is better than having one that's dead and marked 'junk'.
A good many that were marked 'Parts Only' were perfectly fine. So many in fact that I'm starting to wonder if that wasn't his way of marking the one's he didn't want to get rid of. Mark it junk and no one will touch it line of thinking?
After that last lot of stuff I'm truly out of room, its now to the tripping over things point. The big problem now is that I don't want to scrap out a lesser unit that may later donate parts to a better version of the same brand. Things like knobs, feet, and switches are often common across various models.
A few of the 'cheap' tape decks really surprised me at how well they sound and work, but maybe I just never took the time before to really clean one up. The few I've had in the past were either new when I bought them or they didn't work when I found them so they got tossed in the attic back in the day. But never in the numbers this guy had somehow managed to accumulate.
I think my own pile from years past is only two or three decks that need belts or capstan rollers, I suppose those will eventually get dug out and added to this pile too.
Starting with the tape decks was my original plan, but that was the plan when I thought there were only a half dozen or so decks worth doing, but at this point, I've worked my way through all the Sony decks, and am 1/4 of the way through the newer Pioneer decks. The two Akai decks are up and running, as is one Technics dual deck. I'm debating on whether the Aiwa or Nad decks will be next once I'm through all the Pioneer models. Its just easier to do all the similar decks in a row and now that they're sorted out by brand and model its going a bit faster. I had a guy stop by today who hadn't been here a while, he brought me a fleamarket find boom box to see if I could get it working, he about fell over when he started looking around. When I sent him up stairs to look at what was up there, he was in shock. I didn't show him the stacks on the tables in the basement or the room full of keepers in the house.
I did spend some time today further beefing up the shelves in the house, after figuring how much weight was on those shelves, which hold most of the big receivers and amps I really felt the need to further better protect the floor. I doubled the plywood under the shelves, using two layers of 3/4" birch plywood with 1/4" steel plates under the legs cut in pieces large enough not to bow over time. It will ensure that the angle iron legs of the P shelving won't cut into the hardwood floors or bow or warp any one plank. Although the total weight is likely no more than a room full of fat people, its concentrated on 10 small areas where the shelf vertical supports meet the floor Since its over the main center beam of the house the load should be fine.
(My compete system in the living room, with the 8 speakers, and two racks of equipment likely is just as bad but its also along a load bearing wall on metal plates where it sits. The one rack is about 800lbs the other slightly more with twin 65 lb amps. My two big speaker towers are likely well over 150lbs each, and next to them are two double stacked NLAs and two double stacked Polk M10's with double stacked Rectilinear III Lowboys, each topped with a single Sonics AS-447 from this lot.
In my one back room I've got another rack of gear, mostly driven by a pair of Carver PM-600 pro amps, are two pair of double stacked JBL 4412's, with a pair of XPL-200A's soon to be joined by a second pair from this lot with two additional same model amps. That's my 'LOUD' music room which has both outer walls and the ceiling insulated to keep the sound in. There's also an alternate stack of amps in there. My in the house work shop, what used to be a small bedroom has four RCA SPK500 speakers, along side of a pair of double stacked Advent 5002's and a couple of pair of Polk Monitor 5's and a pair of Dynaco 250's on a huge speaker switch that I got from a Pioneer dealer that closed up in the 80's. The room. I can switch beteen about 10 amps, 5 preamps, four turntables, four tape decks, or other components and up to 24 pair of speakers. The main amp in there right now is a pair of HK775 mono blocks with a NAD 1155 preamp and an Adcom GTP500 preamp for when I want a tuner in the mix. I've also got a system in the bedroom, as well as a 60" TV. There's a smaller 44" TV in the living room but its barely ever used but I'm working on setting up system just for the TV too.
So, yeah, my house is now a stereo showroom from the 70's, just with more junk laying around.
Yeah, I'm single, retired, and I told the girlfriend if she don't like the stuff in the house she can sleep in the camper. but right now it too has about ten stacks of gear from the auction that I need to still carry down stairs to deal with over the winter.
I'm really glad that I had recently cut down on my floor radio collection over last winter, finding new homes for all but one or two of them. If I hadn't, the one spare bedroom would not have had the room for the shelves I put up in there. I basically set up the shelves as described earlier but took the bed apart and slid it and the mattress into the walk in closet that had nothing but a few vacuum cleaners and some empty speaker boxes in it. The tube radios were my dad's thing, and they became mine when he passed 12 years ago. I had just let them sit there but finally started to find them homes after getting tired of looking at them and dusting them off.
So when I think about how a guy in his 80's had so much stuff, its not hard to figure out how he got it. It just sort of finds you sometimes.
BilboBaggins
Addicted Member
It multiplies over night. I speak from experience.
A few more finds digging through the boxes and a few of the glass front racks.
LXI 15wpc?
Another HK 560
50wpc LXi (Sears/Sanyo)
Works great, had it playing on a pair of Boston A100 speakers all morning.
Found two of these, they look like almost new.
More Yamaha, both work, these were in a stack marked 'dead'
Both work fine, no issues at all
65wpc early surround receiver.
Super crisp sound from these on a pair of Polk Monitor 5 speakers.
I even managed to find the remotes for these.
These surprised me, a few were sealed boxes, others are mixed with a few other brands or series tapes mixed in. About 400 blank cassettes in all, so far.
There very well could be more, these were in the bottom of a black glass front rack cabinet from the 70's.
Most of the boxes are single tapes, stacked double or triple deep, so far I've opened 5 boxes with blank tapes, plus a few smaller boxes and retail packages.
The boxes are plain brown with only the date the box was made, most are from 1992- 1994. The boxes and tapes are very clean, but the receivers in the cabinets were uncovered and super dusty.
The little Yamaha sounds pretty good. I did have to run a cleaner through the CD player to get it to read without skipping, so its likely dusty inside as well, or else it just has trouble with CD-Rs. I think this is the second one of this same model receiver, I lost track on the Yamaha count off the top of my head.
There's a pair of Yamaha dual cassette decks too, but I somehow didn't take a pic of those before putting them upstairs with the rest of the cassette decks to be checked.
Plus two more Pioneer CT-W404R tape decks, from the mid to late 90's.
LXI 15wpc?
Another HK 560
50wpc LXi (Sears/Sanyo)
Works great, had it playing on a pair of Boston A100 speakers all morning.
Found two of these, they look like almost new.
More Yamaha, both work, these were in a stack marked 'dead'
Both work fine, no issues at all
65wpc early surround receiver.
Super crisp sound from these on a pair of Polk Monitor 5 speakers.
I even managed to find the remotes for these.
These surprised me, a few were sealed boxes, others are mixed with a few other brands or series tapes mixed in. About 400 blank cassettes in all, so far.
There very well could be more, these were in the bottom of a black glass front rack cabinet from the 70's.
Most of the boxes are single tapes, stacked double or triple deep, so far I've opened 5 boxes with blank tapes, plus a few smaller boxes and retail packages.
The boxes are plain brown with only the date the box was made, most are from 1992- 1994. The boxes and tapes are very clean, but the receivers in the cabinets were uncovered and super dusty.
The little Yamaha sounds pretty good. I did have to run a cleaner through the CD player to get it to read without skipping, so its likely dusty inside as well, or else it just has trouble with CD-Rs. I think this is the second one of this same model receiver, I lost track on the Yamaha count off the top of my head.
There's a pair of Yamaha dual cassette decks too, but I somehow didn't take a pic of those before putting them upstairs with the rest of the cassette decks to be checked.
Plus two more Pioneer CT-W404R tape decks, from the mid to late 90's.
I've been thinking the same thing but a lot has to do with someone who keeps showing up with more stuff.
I think she's just holding out so she can come over and help dig through this stuff.
Nothing wrong with free help though, especially when their easy on the eyes.
Here's one of the other CT-W404R Pioneer decks, these things do seem to be multiplying. There's got to be a half dozen of just this one model, not counting those missing parts in the parts piles already.
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To the OP, you should read through dr*audio's excellent thread about fixing CD players.
I want to say he commented about how rare laser failure actually was. Perhaps that thread can help you move some of them along? I know of the hundreds of cd players I've scored and flipped, only a couple actually had dead lasers.
Just my experience. Good luck.
I want to say he commented about how rare laser failure actually was. Perhaps that thread can help you move some of them along? I know of the hundreds of cd players I've scored and flipped, only a couple actually had dead lasers.
Just my experience. Good luck.
Onkyo
TX-8500 Lights up, looks like new but only plays through turntable
I'd know more about this, and pics would be great. Always wanted one of these.
TX-8500 Lights up, looks like new but only plays through turntable
I'd know more about this, and pics would be great. Always wanted one of these.
442_Tom
Well-Known Member
Agreed on CD laser failure, it’s rare. Check out this troubleshooting flow chart.
Two and a half SA 1000s is more like it, one is cannibalized pretty bad, missing its outputs, most of the tuning mechanism, and several knobs.
In Technics, there's mosly only lower watt models and the few top models, there's only two mid level models in all, One SA-5550 and one SA-301
So far there's only a couple older, low power early 70's Sansui receivers and two 80's Preamps. There was only one pair of speakers which after a quick listen, I promptly gave away.
The one preamp, what I believe is from a rack system in the mid 80's got paired for testing amps on the bench and its surprised me sound wise. Its not high end but not bad at all.
In my opinion the best receivers in the lot are the Realistic STA-2100 and 2100D and the Harman Kardon HK 560, the one larger LXi Sears/Sanyo 50wpc, and a few of the mid 80's Yamaha receivers.
The most powerful receiver so far, that tested good, has been the Realistic STA2100 models, one Pioneer surround receiver, a VSX-D1S, and a Panasonic SA-EX600 that's brutal power wise but sounds a bit bass heavy to me, at least on the small speakers I had tested it on.
The real power houses are the stand alone amps in the lot, the Carver PM600 amps and the Yamaha M65 and M50 have the best sound, but again, a lot is in finding the right combo.
These got sort of buried for the time being, figuring they were going to be a bit of a project to figure out, I put them upstairs on a shelf in the back.
I figured maybe in the mean time I'd read or think of a way that it would only play through the phono inputs and none of the rest.
Its silent in all other positions, not scratchy or weak, its not acting like a dirty function switch. I did notice that the tuning needle moved as I passed over stations but there was no sound to the speakers. Even in phono it was weak, no where near its full power but loud enough to be heard and listened to but certainly not loud enough to be considered normal.
Both are super clean cosmetically, as if they just sat somewhere for a long time, neither of them had any obvious signs of damage or burnt components inside. The one that played only on Phono was super dusty, as in a carper of dust, but it well could have been there since it sat as well. The other, makes no sound, and doesn't even light up, but the tuning meter moves as you turn the dial, no other signs of life in it though. Neither one lit the dim bulb tester, which has been my first step in putting power to most of these. I hist both with some deoxit but it made no difference at all.
They were both at the bottom of a pile beneath a bunch of low end turntables and junk vcrs, most all in those piles were basically trash so far. The one TX-8500 had a bunch of channel locations taped to the dial, all were for the Cincinnati area but these came from NJ. I've found other signs among this stuff that it came from other areas, one VCR has a section of a newspaper television station list dated 1980, from Boston, another had receipt taped to the bottom from a store in Toledo.
The Panasonic SA-EX600 had its owners manual in a sleeve stuck to the bottom, the entire manual is in Russian or Ukrainian but its a multi voltage model with a US power cord but with a Euro cord in with the manual. There's a Panasonic DVD changer here set up the same way with two cords and the manual glued to the bottom in a sleeve.
If I get the TX-8500's working, they likely will be keepers, at least for a while.
The TX-4500 is a mess, someone has quite a few parts removed from the amp section and power supply inside and the tuner wheel and wire are apart and in a ziplock bag. Unless I find another its just parts for the shelf. Its a common model in this area so sooner or later I'll find one to combine it with. Its too clean to just part out but I'm not likely going to go hunting down parts to see if what's been removed will survive and make it work or not. I'm better off finding one that at least can show me signs of life so I have a starting point rather than a bag of parts and a bunch of loose boards inside.
I do tend to agree with that, but I've had some odd experiences with a few machines I had in the past .
I had a DBX DX5 a while back, it quit working one day and wouldn't read a disc. it would just sit there and spin, eventually showing me either zero tracks or 'no disk'
I fiddled around with cleaning it and checking the solder joints, I even recapped the power supply and part of the main board but no change. I finally found someone selling new old laser assemblies and it was good to go after changing the laser.
Fast forward four or five years, the laser I took out of that DX5 is still laying on the shelf above my bench. I had a dead off brand CD player that looked fairly decent but I got no signs of life out of the laser, it would move inward, up and down but never a flash of light and the cd would spin up super fast then slow down and eventually just open the tray and sit there.
Having cleaned, lubed, and poked around a bit, and knowing what the 'bad' laser out of that DX5 acted like, and it appears to be a match for the one in front of me I swapped it out just to see if doing so changed how the thing was acting. To my surprise it worked fine with the laser form the DX5.
The unit had other issues, so I ended up scrapping it anyhow, so the laser from the DX5 when back on the self to coolect dust, this time in a bag. I came across a dead DX5 a few months later at a fleamarket, it worked but would skip and sound like it was playing two tracks at once sometimes. I swapped in the laser that originally came from my first DX5, that had worked in that other player, and what I got was the very same thing I had with the first one, the laser acted dead, wouldn't read at all and didn't play anything.
I disected the one I took out of the seond DX5 and didn't see anything obvious, so i ordered a new laser, (About $75 at the time), and that fixed it and it still works fine 10 years or so later.
Most of these that won't play will spin up the disc, then level off at a fixed speed, the laser moves to the middle of the disk but I see no light, and it never sees the disk giving me either an 'insert disk ' or if I wait, sometimes a few will say 'loading' then sit there spinning for a minute or two, then finally show me the track count, showing zero tracks.
One came back to life using an old brush type CD cleaner disk, after running the cleaner it would play but skipped around a lot when it got warm. I have to run that cleaner every time I turn it on or it won't read the disk.
I cleaned the thing with a Qtip and a can of air but it continues to do the same. . That one is a mid 80's Yamaha. CD1, another identical model works perfectly but will not read CD-R.
442_Tom
Well-Known Member
I’m still stuck on the SA 1000s. In ‘82 I walked in to J&R music in lower Manhattan, and as a sophomore in college with a few hundred bucks, and my more audio savvy dorm mates prodding me on to spend as much (all) as possible. So I walked out with an SA-505, and an RS M45 Tape Deck. Great stuff for me on my budget, but I certainly lusted for the kings of the receiver wars back then, and the SA 1000 was at the top (arguably) of the heap. Since then my collection of SL-10s, and SL-7‘s is almost complete with five or six of each, but I am still pining for a 1000. My DM’s are ready if you’re looking to get rid of one!
Since I had to re-arrange things a bit up there for a few more receivers, I dug my way back to the shelf with the big receivers on it.
Here's two of the Onkyo TX-8500, both are the earlier versions.
I plugged them in so they'd light up. I may have to pull the bottom one out and do some more checking because I could hear it come out of protection a few seconds after I turned it on. I may have also missed one of these in the mix, my helper swears she counted five Onkyo receivers, three of a kind, so I have to dig around a bit and see if there's two TX-4500's that I missed or if there's another TX-8500 here. (The idea of leaving isles between the shelves upstairs in the garage went out the window with the second batch of stuff she brought over).
Onkyo TX-8500
The SA-1000's were in the same area so I snapped a pic of those too, and decided to move them to another shelf, those plus the two Onkyo's were on the same shelf, I made sure they were spread out on several shelves, but all on the same level down the row.
I put the bigger receivers and amps all at elbow height due to the weight, they're harder to manage on and off the shelf and couln't imagine having to get one down from overhead or from a bottom shelf. Of course their elbow height to me.
Technics SA-1000
These both seem to work, but I didn't go beyond making sure all channels played. The controls will need cleaning and they both need a good clean and polish both in and out. They both sounded a kind of 'boomy' to me but I was only testing them on a pair of cheap Technics rack system speakers. They were light and easy to move around and I didn't much care if they got fried. They played, so they got stuck on the shelf upstairs for now.
I've owned one of these in the past and although it had more wpc than my then SX1980, I preferred the sound of the Pioneer, but I sold both of those around the same time in favor of a Harman Kardon Citation amp/preamp.
They were fun while I had them but they proved not to be the end all solution to anything. Not having had a good TX-8500, I leave that out, but out of the big receivers I've had, the STA-2100/D models sounded the best, but they don't beat out the lower power HK amps I've had here for sound or depth. I've heard Onkyo TX 8500 second version receivers, a buddy has one he bought new, and it sound good but its not the same just walking into someone else's place and taking a quick listen versus sitting down in your own listening space and seeing how it does in your own space on your speakers and your own music and source.
Any descision on any of the receivers is a long way off though.
I'm thinking that one of these, may do some time connected to a pair of my JBL 4412's down stairs come spring when I can open the doors and wake up the neighborhood a bit. Hope the like Hank Sr and ET.
The well organized inventory of all of this stuff is slowly going out the window in the name of making it fit without it taking over my house too. The upstairs in the garage is good storage but I have to watch weight, it was designed to be a guest room and not really to be a warehouse for heavy stereo gear. I just didn't want the better stuff at ground level and that area up there is well insulated and easier to keep under lock and key. I never open the garage doors unless to get a car in or out, and come winter, I don't work out here at all. There's a heater but with the cost of oil, I'll pass, the house is heated and I'll grab a few at a time and deal with them in a nice warm house. The upstairs though stays warm in the winter, especially when the leaves are off the trees a bit and let the sun hit the roof.
I've been up there when the roof was snow covered of the outside stairs so slipper with ice you could barely get up to the door and it was warm enough to not need a jacket up there. In the summer it stays cooler because the trees shade the roof well, and I do have a mini split ac unit up there.
Early this morning I got rid of all but one or two of the lesser turntables, the low end Fisher, Garrard, and BSR tables from the early 70's and the rack system junk from the 80's and 90's. It buys me two shelves of space and gained me some parts assortments from Mouser to work with. The guy has a thing for combo units, the AM/FM/8-Track/Turntable receivers from the 1970's. I also gave him most of the 8 track players, all except two Pioneer player/recorders, but those too may go his way as well. It relieved the garage of all the bottom end junk that was just clutter to me. Ceramic cartridge TT's and 8 tracks don't interest me at all and it got a stuffed van load out of the garage.
It knocks down the count on TT's from nearly 80 to under 20 or so, I kept only the Technics/Panasonic/MCS, Dual, Pioneer, Yamaha, and two Denon TT's. I saved one CEC built Fisher and two direct drive Fisher models. It cut the TT's down to what fits on one shelf.
Next is to get the odd brand stuff gone, all the department store stuff will have to go away. Most of it looks to be low end Panasonic or Foster built, so that means some parts will be worth keeping. Feet, knobs, big transistors, transformers, etc. but the plywood cabinets are headed for the burn pile I suppose. I already have a about half of a five gallon bucket full misc knobs here that came from the same place. I'll bag and tag what I take off and just add to that bucket for now. At this point I don't have the space to waste on the cheap stuff if it doesn't work.
I'll likely be going through tape decks for the rest of the week the way it looks. I got the rest of the belts I ordered so I hopefully have all that I'll need to get these up and running again. Then I'll start weeding out those I don't want.
Here's two of the Onkyo TX-8500, both are the earlier versions.
I plugged them in so they'd light up. I may have to pull the bottom one out and do some more checking because I could hear it come out of protection a few seconds after I turned it on. I may have also missed one of these in the mix, my helper swears she counted five Onkyo receivers, three of a kind, so I have to dig around a bit and see if there's two TX-4500's that I missed or if there's another TX-8500 here. (The idea of leaving isles between the shelves upstairs in the garage went out the window with the second batch of stuff she brought over).
Onkyo TX-8500
The SA-1000's were in the same area so I snapped a pic of those too, and decided to move them to another shelf, those plus the two Onkyo's were on the same shelf, I made sure they were spread out on several shelves, but all on the same level down the row.
I put the bigger receivers and amps all at elbow height due to the weight, they're harder to manage on and off the shelf and couln't imagine having to get one down from overhead or from a bottom shelf. Of course their elbow height to me.
Technics SA-1000
These both seem to work, but I didn't go beyond making sure all channels played. The controls will need cleaning and they both need a good clean and polish both in and out. They both sounded a kind of 'boomy' to me but I was only testing them on a pair of cheap Technics rack system speakers. They were light and easy to move around and I didn't much care if they got fried. They played, so they got stuck on the shelf upstairs for now.
I've owned one of these in the past and although it had more wpc than my then SX1980, I preferred the sound of the Pioneer, but I sold both of those around the same time in favor of a Harman Kardon Citation amp/preamp.
They were fun while I had them but they proved not to be the end all solution to anything. Not having had a good TX-8500, I leave that out, but out of the big receivers I've had, the STA-2100/D models sounded the best, but they don't beat out the lower power HK amps I've had here for sound or depth. I've heard Onkyo TX 8500 second version receivers, a buddy has one he bought new, and it sound good but its not the same just walking into someone else's place and taking a quick listen versus sitting down in your own listening space and seeing how it does in your own space on your speakers and your own music and source.
Any descision on any of the receivers is a long way off though.
I'm thinking that one of these, may do some time connected to a pair of my JBL 4412's down stairs come spring when I can open the doors and wake up the neighborhood a bit. Hope the like Hank Sr and ET.
The well organized inventory of all of this stuff is slowly going out the window in the name of making it fit without it taking over my house too. The upstairs in the garage is good storage but I have to watch weight, it was designed to be a guest room and not really to be a warehouse for heavy stereo gear. I just didn't want the better stuff at ground level and that area up there is well insulated and easier to keep under lock and key. I never open the garage doors unless to get a car in or out, and come winter, I don't work out here at all. There's a heater but with the cost of oil, I'll pass, the house is heated and I'll grab a few at a time and deal with them in a nice warm house. The upstairs though stays warm in the winter, especially when the leaves are off the trees a bit and let the sun hit the roof.
I've been up there when the roof was snow covered of the outside stairs so slipper with ice you could barely get up to the door and it was warm enough to not need a jacket up there. In the summer it stays cooler because the trees shade the roof well, and I do have a mini split ac unit up there.
Early this morning I got rid of all but one or two of the lesser turntables, the low end Fisher, Garrard, and BSR tables from the early 70's and the rack system junk from the 80's and 90's. It buys me two shelves of space and gained me some parts assortments from Mouser to work with. The guy has a thing for combo units, the AM/FM/8-Track/Turntable receivers from the 1970's. I also gave him most of the 8 track players, all except two Pioneer player/recorders, but those too may go his way as well. It relieved the garage of all the bottom end junk that was just clutter to me. Ceramic cartridge TT's and 8 tracks don't interest me at all and it got a stuffed van load out of the garage.
It knocks down the count on TT's from nearly 80 to under 20 or so, I kept only the Technics/Panasonic/MCS, Dual, Pioneer, Yamaha, and two Denon TT's. I saved one CEC built Fisher and two direct drive Fisher models. It cut the TT's down to what fits on one shelf.
Next is to get the odd brand stuff gone, all the department store stuff will have to go away. Most of it looks to be low end Panasonic or Foster built, so that means some parts will be worth keeping. Feet, knobs, big transistors, transformers, etc. but the plywood cabinets are headed for the burn pile I suppose. I already have a about half of a five gallon bucket full misc knobs here that came from the same place. I'll bag and tag what I take off and just add to that bucket for now. At this point I don't have the space to waste on the cheap stuff if it doesn't work.
I'll likely be going through tape decks for the rest of the week the way it looks. I got the rest of the belts I ordered so I hopefully have all that I'll need to get these up and running again. Then I'll start weeding out those I don't want.
I would ONLY look further at the things that actually interested me. Otherwise, its just a huge pile of STUFF in the way, in your house.
DUMP the remaining majority of the home audio stuff quickly.
Lawn tractors and such are larger, so I'd decide if any interest you as keepers, and what condition the rest may be in. Perhaps you can fix and sell them.
But otherwise, this is starting to sound like a huge itemized list of things you'd like to sell, and since you are not an AK subscriber, thats against site policy.
DUMP the remaining majority of the home audio stuff quickly.
Lawn tractors and such are larger, so I'd decide if any interest you as keepers, and what condition the rest may be in. Perhaps you can fix and sell them.
But otherwise, this is starting to sound like a huge itemized list of things you'd like to sell, and since you are not an AK subscriber, thats against site policy.
The lawn tractor is gone, my cousin got a new mower. Better in his garage than my driveway. Regardless of what it was worth, he needed one and I didn't, and if I kept it around till next season, it wouldn't be good for much anyhow sitting outside. There's no room in the garage since I put up the 17 shelves from the auction, plus 11 more I went and bought at HD. Plus the 5 I already had.
The garage looks like a warehouse now with over half of it being rows of shelves. The shelves go up quick and come down easy, they just pop together. The way I see it none of this stuff is worth my trouble if I just dump it, then realize I dumped something I should have kept, or should have fixed and listened to.
Besides, what's wrong with a house full of vintage amps and receivers?
I also don't remember saying I wanted to sell anything here. Any decision on what to keep or what to dump is a long way off, anything I already dumped as basically trash. Not anything I'd call hifi by any stretch of the word.
All in one 5wpc systems like I got rid of were a nuisance because they took up a ton of space and I certainly had no interest in keeping them
I've already invested five times what I spent on the it all in just belts for tape decks and turntables. And will likely have to order more as I go through it all.
What I really do need to figure out is what items are problematic, not by condition but but nature or design. If a model is a known problem or is known to fail those are the one's I don't have any interest in. The speakers, will all stay unless I have more than one pair of that same model but in the case of Advent, Infinity, and Rectilinear, I never part with those. Now I can safely say I've added Boston Acoustics to the list as well and maybe Polk too. I'm pretty much blown away by how much sound I'm geting out of a pair Monitor 5's from this lot, powered by nothing but a Yamaha 80 wpc amp.
Its kind of hard to know what to keep or dump when I haven't listened to it all. A few pieces are definitely keepers so far.
You don't actually have to say you want to sell things when you post an extensive shopping list of all the items you have - thats just begging folks to PM you asking to buy.
Its happened often enough in the past that we generally delete threads like this. This is not our first rodeo, as they say.
You bought a ton of stuff - the only saving grace it it was nearly free, other than all your labor involved.
This is way too detailed a thread listing all kinds of stuff of unknown quality, and overall its just not really that interesting.
Thread closed.
Its happened often enough in the past that we generally delete threads like this. This is not our first rodeo, as they say.
You bought a ton of stuff - the only saving grace it it was nearly free, other than all your labor involved.
This is way too detailed a thread listing all kinds of stuff of unknown quality, and overall its just not really that interesting.
Thread closed.
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