Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

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AWvsCBsteeeerike3
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Re: Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

@Pioneer98 That is mighty impressive!

Your comments on 'sweet spot' of being able to work on these reminded me of the 'Right to Repair' movement going on right now. Not sure if you have paid any attention to it, but there is somewhat of a battle going on namely in the electronics world (eg apple) and farm equipment world (eg john deere) and the car industry (eg, all of them) regarding who can fix the devices and obviously the companies like apple and john deere are making it such that only the companies can do so which is irritating a lot of people. It's one thing to tell people they need to pay $700 for a new phone that is replaced every other year already instead of fixing it for $100. It's another thing to try to pull that same stunt with a quarter million dollar tractor.

Regardless, one way they're going about doing it is to make the parts unavailable. So, a company like apple will order parts, let's say a chip, from a company, let's say chip maker. A person buys the phone, uses it, the chip breaks, and they take it to a phone fixer. Phone fixer needs a new chip. But, apple, as the largest purchaser of chips from chip maker, has precluded chip maker from selling said chips to phone fixer. So the phone owner takes phone to apple who says, ah, [expletive] it, just buy a new phone.

Quite the racket.

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Famous Mortimer
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Re: Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

Post by Famous Mortimer »

One of the reasons I hoped the modular phone companies like Fairphone would make more of an impact. But I think I'll buy one of them next time anyway. Although I'm very bad at repairing things, I think Right To Repair is important stuff.

EDIT: Fairphone isn't available in the US, but the Teracube 2e is. $200 and the reviews are very good.

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pioneer98
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Re: Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

Post by pioneer98 »

Onto the next one. I got this Zenith console stereo at a thrift shop a couple weeks ago. The other two I've refurbished so far I got for <$20 at Goodwill. I paid a lot more for this one, but it could also be worth a lot more if I can get it working. Plus, it just looks cool as hell. I could not pass it up.

There is one just like it on Ebay for $2K and one a few years older than it on Etsy fully refurbished for $5K. I doubt it's worth that much, but I would not be surprised if it was worth >$1K. Someone on a message board said one like this was on the set of the 1960s TV show "Bewitched", but that feels like a rumor you'd spread to jack up the price. Regardless, this model is evidently sought after by the vintage audiophile crowd. But if I get it working well, I'll probably keep it for myself and sell the other ones.

This one will be tough. It does turn on and put out sound but it sounds awful. The turntable makes an awful grinding noise. It is at least "Solid State", so it uses modern components like transistors and capacitors (and not tubes). But there are zero circuit boards in this thing. Just a big mess of components soldered together at many different points. Some of the components I have to replace no longer have direct replacements, so I will have to choose their replacements carefully, and make some modifications to make them fit where the old ones are.
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G. Keenan
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Re: Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

Post by G. Keenan »

Very cool, Pioneer, thanks for sharing these projects with us. I love vintage audio equipment and wish I had the know-how to fix it. I see old console stereos like these all the time at vintage shops. Are you selling these once you fix them up? Sounds like a fun and potentially profitable side hustle.

My turntable is an Onkyo CP-1036A from the early 80s which I have hooked up to a Harmon/Kardon HK3400 receive from 1991. Bought them at a used audio equipment shop about 12 - 13 years ago and both have been working well ever since. I have only ever had one issue with them, which is that the left speaker channel will cut out at low volume. It's like it will be intermittent, fluttering in and out when the receiver volume is on the low end. Turning up the volume makes the issue disappear. Sometimes it seems like the system needs to warm up or something. I've never tried to fix it since turning up the volume solves the problem, and I wouldn't know how to fix it anyway.

I take your point about there being a sweet spot for electronics made in the 60s/70s/80s. Their simplicity and visual aesthetic relative to modern, digital gadgets makes them remain interesting even decades later. You can't say that about say, televisions or computers or cell phones. Is there anything sadder than an old tv, or an old computer monitor, laptop, or cell phone? They really are just junk that nobody wants anymore, and why would they? The object itself has no inherent beauty from a design standpoint, and it's internal guts are too complicated to fix yourself, and too obsolete to be worth fixing even if you could.

Kind of like how now we know that recycling is a scam and the earth is filling up with plastic, there's going to be a reckoning over the huge environmental impact of all these smartphones, tablets, etc. we have now. How many billions of these things are produced every year, and designed to work for 1 - 3 years before slowing down and becoming a dinosaur? These gadgets require all these weird rare earth metals that have to mined in China or the Congo, lithium for the batteries, etc., and what becomes of these toxic metals in the hundreds of millions of iPhones that people throw out every year?

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pioneer98
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Re: Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

Post by pioneer98 »

G. Keenan wrote:
April 24 21, 1:44 pm
Very cool, Pioneer, thanks for sharing these projects with us. I love vintage audio equipment and wish I had the know-how to fix it. I see old console stereos like these all the time at vintage shops. Are you selling these once you fix them up? Sounds like a fun and potentially profitable side hustle.

My turntable is an Onkyo CP-1036A from the early 80s which I have hooked up to a Harmon/Kardon HK3400 receive from 1991. Bought them at a used audio equipment shop about 12 - 13 years ago and both have been working well ever since. I have only ever had one issue with them, which is that the left speaker channel will cut out at low volume. It's like it will be intermittent, fluttering in and out when the receiver volume is on the low end. Turning up the volume makes the issue disappear. Sometimes it seems like the system needs to warm up or something. I've never tried to fix it since turning up the volume solves the problem, and I wouldn't know how to fix it anyway.

I take your point about there being a sweet spot for electronics made in the 60s/70s/80s. Their simplicity and visual aesthetic relative to modern, digital gadgets makes them remain interesting even decades later. You can't say that about say, televisions or computers or cell phones. Is there anything sadder than an old tv, or an old computer monitor, laptop, or cell phone? They really are just junk that nobody wants anymore, and why would they? The object itself has no inherent beauty from a design standpoint, and it's internal guts are too complicated to fix yourself, and too obsolete to be worth fixing even if you could.

Kind of like how now we know that recycling is a scam and the earth is filling up with plastic, there's going to be a reckoning over the huge environmental impact of all these smartphones, tablets, etc. we have now. How many billions of these things are produced every year, and designed to work for 1 - 3 years before slowing down and becoming a dinosaur? These gadgets require all these weird rare earth metals that have to mined in China or the Congo, lithium for the batteries, etc., and what becomes of these toxic metals in the hundreds of millions of iPhones that people throw out every year?
I'm not planning to make this into a money-making operation. I don't want to turn this into another job. That is the road to burnout. I just want it to be a hobby that I work on whenever I feel like it. That being said, my wife is starting to get (understandably) pissed about the space these take up in the house. The plan for now is if I get this Zenith working and it sounds good, I will keep that one and use it as my primary system.I have a few friends who have expressed interest in getting one from me. I may sell these to friends and relatives at cost (what I paid plus the cost of parts I put into it). If I run out of friends and relatives that are interested in one of these, then yeah, I may start to sell them on a marketplace. The main thing I get out of this hobby is the good brain chemicals when one of these starts to sound better as I fix the problems.

Regarding your left speaker issue cutting out...The volume is almost always 2 potentiometers turned by the same knob (one for left channel, one for right channel). It's likely corrosion is causing a bad connection in that one spot. Deoxit Fader Lube is great for this. You spray it in there and dial the volume knob from back and forth through the full range a couple dozen times, and I bet the problem would be fixed. The regular Deoxit is made for on/off switches, mode selector knobs, and anything that is just a contact switch. The fader one is for any variable level knobs like volume, balance, treble, bass, etc.

But yes, all those electronics are out there and are just going to rot. We have a "demanufacturing" center where you can take old electronics. They disassemble them and sell the parts that have any value to other places. They also hired someone who is doing what I'm doing with vintage electronics. This guy fixes them up and they donate them to Habitat for Humanity. Habitat has a store here where they mainly sell housing materials such as cabinets, doors, windows, light fixtures, counters, etc people have donated. But now they have a small vintage electronics section in their store too. They generally don't have console stereos though, and are generally charging full market prices.

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G. Keenan
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Re: Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

Post by G. Keenan »

pioneer98 wrote: Regarding your left speaker issue cutting out...The volume is almost always 2 potentiometers turned by the same knob (one for left channel, one for right channel). It's likely corrosion is causing a bad connection in that one spot. Deoxit Fader Lube is great for this. You spray it in there and dial the volume knob from back and forth through the full range a couple dozen times, and I bet the problem would be fixed. The regular Deoxit is made for on/off switches, mode selector knobs, and anything that is just a contact switch. The fader one is for any variable level knobs like volume, balance, treble, bass, etc.
Thanks for the tip!

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sighyoung
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Re: Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

Post by sighyoung »

InvincibleCakeEater wrote:
December 10 20, 6:18 pm
I met a girl who is probably the love of my life.
That's terrific!

(This tells you how far behind I am on my reading on GRB)
Last edited by sighyoung on April 25 21, 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Joe Shlabotnik
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Re: Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

Post by Joe Shlabotnik »

sighyoung wrote:
April 25 21, 5:50 pm
InvincibleCakeEater wrote:
December 10 20, 6:18 pm
I met a girl who is probably the love of my life.
That's terrific!
Congrats ICE. My oldest is in the same boat. My son's as happy as I've ever seeing him In fact, this weekend they are off celebrating their one-year anniversary of being 'COVID buddies'. I'm hoping she comes back with a ring on her finger.

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sighyoung
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Re: Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

Post by sighyoung »

I envy people with nice stereo systems. Or the ability to craft things.

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sighyoung
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Re: Pandemic - What is keeping you busy?

Post by sighyoung »

I spent much of the pandemic learning how to teach online. I'm still not very good at it, but I'll be teaching my first fully online class next fall on the Black Chicago Renaissance (which covers literature, music, and visual art from the late 20's to the 50's), so that'll be cool, I guess.

I'm still working on my anthology on Black writing about the sea, which I hope to finish drafting in the next month. I've been working on that off and on for four years, but especially during the pandemic.

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