the garage years. stereorob stereostory, part 4
ya yes, where was i?. the garage years,
well by the time i was 13, i was armed with quite a stash of gear!, a neigborhood tv repair shop that had been around since the 1950s went out of business in the summer of 1997, (deharts television service), they threw away a s**t load of old stuff, test equipment, unclaimed gear, parts, etc.
i remember digging threw the dumpster on a steamy hot summer day, and pulling all kinds of crap out.
i had a bicycle (3 actully), with a basket on the back, from 12 noon to about 9pm that night, i rode home with 2 or 3 peices at a time, after spending the intire day hauling stuff home, i hit the pool for a bit, and went to check my score, 4 o-scopes, 3 soldering iorns, tools, 4 trashbags full of tubes, a signal tracer, and some other equipment that to this day i still dont know what its used for.
. i set up my bench, and went to town,
i tosted many receivers and amps in those years, one experiment that id like to forget, was bi-amping. i tryed hooking 10 receivers all into eachother, using spliced rca cables out from speaker inputs into aux in on all the receivers., i shorted the whole stack. not long after, i learned how to do it safely, (tape out-aux in), i also tryed plugging speakers into the wall.
another time i tryed wiring transistors into a tube amp. -not a good idea.
but after all the carnage, i learned how to change dial lamps, replace power cords, change needles, and what happens when you take a 5 amp bsr changer and hook it up to a shelf system only rated for 2.5 amps.
this is when i also got my first real zap, witch probubly could have killed me.
i was poking around a tube organ amp with a screw driver, -the handle was broken on the screw driver, i was trying to figure out the wire that worked as the power switch so i could mod it to work as a stand alone unit, (i had attempted this before with moderate sucsess), i had it plugged in, and i touched the underside of a big drum cap and it arced, and discharged into my arm. i was blown about 3 feet from the bench and was unconsious for about 10 mins when my mom found me. it burned my hand pretty bad and i have permenent damage to my left hand to this day, my mom rushed me to the hospital and my parents figured it was time to get me some real training.
they encoraged me to "stop messing with that old junk" and get into computer repair. i never liked it. 3 months later, i was at it again!, so my dad got me hooked up with a retired audio tech so i could really learn this stuff.
-this is when i really started going crazy.
more to come!! keep checking back
