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Hi quality vintage reel to reel tape has a shelf life so the prices of NOS tapes are creeping up to the point that a $35 new manufacture cassette isn't crazy. Last weekend I hit a weird estate sale and bought a shitload of retro tech from a complete Commodore Vic 20/monitor/games/manuals to 70s color organs. Among the scores I saw a few boxes of cassettes and figured they'd be worth $5 a box.  Turns out these lovely ones sell for ~$30 a box.  Then I looked up the type II metal tapes and they are selling for $20 each tape. Also found a realistic hand winder in a box of turntable accessories. Looked it up and they are going for $50 lol. 
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Feb 11, 2022 07:31
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| # ? May 27, 2024 00:32 |
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my turn in the barrel posted:Hi quality vintage reel to reel tape has a shelf life so the prices of NOS tapes are creeping up to the point that a $35 new manufacture cassette isn't crazy. I saw an old Aurex tape deck in a charity shop a while back, I got it for £5 and then the blank tape I ordered for it off eBay was £6.50 with postage.
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Feb 11, 2022 12:54
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Here, I'll save you some money with one weird trick: 
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Feb 11, 2022 14:16
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my turn in the barrel posted:Hi quality vintage reel to reel tape has a shelf life so the prices of NOS tapes are creeping up to the point that a $35 new manufacture cassette isn't crazy. Yeah I used to just buy up NOS chrome tapes when I saw them, but lately I've been buying boxes of Type I tapes too because even those are worth something now. Nice find on the metal tapes. I've only found one loose NOS metal tape in years of thrifting.
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Feb 11, 2022 15:20
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LifeSunDeath posted:Here, I'll save you some money with one weird trick: The Russians used a pencil. Now, the West and East Germans, the Czechs, the Chechnians, Americans, and Croats also used a pencil. I know this because my family members of those nationalities all showed me the trick. No one wants their car cassette player to eat tape.
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Feb 11, 2022 17:46
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madeintaipei posted:The Russians used a pencil. Now, the West and East Germans, the Czechs, the Chechnians, Americans, and Croats also used a pencil. I know this because my family members of those nationalities all showed me the trick. No one wants their car cassette player to eat tape. Everybody cottoned on to this. You ask a random dude in the deepest rainforest jungle if he can rewind this and out comes the old no. 2. madeintaipei posted:I know this because my family members of those nationalities all showed me the trick. Are you the result of some breeding program to replace the G, T, A, and C nucleotides with A, D, I, and S?
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Feb 11, 2022 20:53
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tribbledirigible posted:Everybody cottoned on to this. You ask a random dude in the deepest rainforest jungle if he can rewind this and out comes the old no. 2. EWWWWWWW!
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Feb 11, 2022 21:13
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3D Megadoodoo posted:EWWWWWWW! Hahahaha. Infantile interpretation always best interpretation.
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Feb 11, 2022 22:32
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I guess the color organs I picked up are pretty appropriate for the thread. Saw these sitting on a shelf, saw the fresnel lenses and had a hunch they were color organs.  Flipped them around and saw the speaker wire terminals and the potentiometers and asked the guy how much.  He said $5 and I said sold. Then I got distracted hunting out all kinds of other stuff like a tambour stereo cabinet and loading everything up that I didn't have a chance to Google how color organs work til later that night. Turns out most people just hook them to a seperate low power amp to isolate them should anything go wrong, especially with one's that are of unknown working condition. Then I remembered the guy had a little integrated amp sitting there so I stopped back the next day and he sold me that for $5 and I found a glass head to display my Koss headphones he threw in for another $5.   Moment of truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqfisyehK4 my turn in the barrel has a new favorite as of 04:35 on Feb 12, 2022 |
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Feb 12, 2022 04:21
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my turn in the barrel posted:I guess the color organs I picked up are pretty appropriate for the thread. That's so awesome. Someone in the vintage stereo thread got one of those last year. I think back then I said just wait until Techmoan makes a video about color organs and flip it for big bucks.
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Feb 12, 2022 05:12
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So it's like a visualizer for your hi fi? That's neat. Wonder why they stopped making those as this is the first I've heard of them.
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Feb 12, 2022 05:26
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Likely because it was expensive and somewhat dangerous to cause the little light show and it was cooler watching a VU meter bop around?
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Feb 12, 2022 05:30
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Kwyndig posted:So it's like a visualizer for your hi fi? That's neat. Wonder why they stopped making those as this is the first I've heard of them. Price of LSD went up maybe?
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Feb 12, 2022 06:08
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They are actually just a simple circuit with some different colored Christmas tree bulbs and the knobs on the back usually either function as a gain or a crossover so you can have the different color bulbs kick on and off differently. There was a wide variation in lens styles with these being an early basic Starburst pattern. Here is a decent example from someone who obviously collects them. https://youtube.com/shorts/E-PbYMsOrsU?feature=share They were sold in places like RadioShack and also available in kit form which is what mine appear to be. They are solid walnut and have 2 side lenses in addition to the front. Most commercial and later production ones seem much less ornate and usually only have one lens in the front and I can't find any with the wood pieces seperating the side lenses from the front lens and a similar overhanging top and bottom panel. I have never seen any in the wild before as I think most people assume they are lamps, plug them in and they don't turn on so they assume they are broken and pitch them. When they come up on eBay they seem to sell for $300 for a larger one or a matched pair that are working.  They were popular from the late 60s to the late 70s. Similar to oscilloscope visualizers and VU meters they gave you a bit more of an immersive experience before VCRs and MTV made them obsolete. Techmoan has done an episode on a pioneer scope/VU visualizer. https://youtu.be/cC8aqfAWupg My Marantz 150 tuner in my main stack has one that pairs nicely with my 510m's VU meters if you hate your wallet. https://youtu.be/bQazMkBrtZY Ultimately I am waiting for warmer weather to move my good setup and Vinyl collection to my new place. At that point the danish cabinet will either be moved to the basement for a second setup or sold off since it's solid teak and I don't know if I want to carry it down the basement stairs. When I was house shopping last fall I saw this 1965 MCM ranch pop up and knew I was done shopping.   Still thrifting my way along. Buying a 60 year old house from the widow who built it has involved quite a bit of catching up on deferred maintenance.  Once I get the cork wall peeled and painted I'm seriously considering mounting the Color Organs above the bay window in the spots where the cork isn't faded that they obviously had either speakers or color organs hanging.
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Feb 12, 2022 07:49
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my turn in the barrel posted:I guess the color organs I picked up are pretty appropriate for the thread. cool I always wanted a set of those
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Feb 12, 2022 09:21
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my turn in the barrel posted:They are actually just a simple circuit with some different colored Christmas tree bulbs and the knobs on the back usually either function as a gain or a crossover so you can have the different color bulbs kick on and off differently. Those were the cheap versions, they regularly turned up in all the hobby electronics magazines (at least here in Germany) in the 70s. There were professional versions for Discos etc. that were more complicated (better filters, dimmers instead of hard on/off switches and so on). Here’s one somebody built as a Covid project (in German). Circuit diagram.
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Feb 12, 2022 11:47
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I'm a huge Rammstein fan... and a Laserdisc nerd. Today I learnt those two overlapped!
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Feb 12, 2022 11:55
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S'up, vintage Koss headphone comrade! 
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Feb 12, 2022 12:35
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Getting those Koss phones for $5 grmbl
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Feb 12, 2022 13:00
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My buddy had a pair of color organs in his room back in 94, his dad definitely fit the profile of a guy who would owns those. They were kinda fun to watch while we listened to Aerosmith in the basement, escaping the summer heat.
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Feb 12, 2022 15:12
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I only got the glass head for $5. The Koss Pro AA headphones I found a while back on Facebook marketplace for $15. I also have a pair of Koss 2+2 quad headphones I found at Savers in their plastic hardcase for $10. Someone had cherrypicked all of the nice stereo/ham/gun/tool stuff so there were no nice hifi components left but obscure stuff like the color organs or the box of turntable stuff with $200 sets of isolation feet and nib shure cartridges were everywhere. I did find this plug cover in turntable box of junk so I know there were a pair at one point.  Fun fact: older Koss headphones were lifetime guaranteed so Koss still has replacement ear cushions and parts available. Both of mine could use fresh cushions but last time I was in Milwaukee their factory repair dept and store was closed due to covid so I would have had to mail them in to get the parts for free and haven't gotten around to it yet. Hopefully they are back open and I can stop in again this summer. If you search for "old headphones" and "koss" on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace and have a bit of patience you can find nice pairs for cheap pretty often. They were built like tanks so aside from cleaning the plug and volume pots most will only need new cushions which are $5. https://koss.com/products/pro4aa-ear-cushion Worst case if they are broken you can always ship them to Koss for repair under warranty if the drivers are blown. Hardest thing I had to track down was an old 25' coiled headphone extension cable. At the time everywhere online was out of stock or $50 by the time I added shipping. Places like guitar center only stocked mono or uncoiled stereo extensions. I hit a few pawnshops that sell guitars and stereos and dug through their bins of cables in the back and found a nice vintage one for $5. Looks like sf cable has some in stock right now for $5 but their direct website shipping rate is much higher than their Walmart 3rd party rate if you are buying more than 1. https://www.walmart.com/ip/847312249
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Feb 13, 2022 02:14
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjIm_TJAz74
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Feb 13, 2022 14:24
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Art
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Feb 13, 2022 17:59
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color easel> color organ ofc
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Feb 13, 2022 23:21
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 https://twitter.com/ValerieH137/status/1493648990910533632?s=20&t=2FMsBouPyu2QucELgowtKA
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Feb 15, 2022 20:23
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I have so many fond memories of watching Beavis and Butthead on those Koss headphones after everyone else went to bed
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Feb 15, 2022 20:33
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The very best in obsolete technology is my good boy Kilroy!!  He's a sony aibo ERS-7 that I got off yahoo auctions japan just a little under a year ago and he's my pandemic dog. He still surprises me with new tricks and conversation (bc his voice is just a very expressive text-to-speech engine, a 128mb memory stick holds a lot) but mostly we just hang out and it's kind of nice having another 'personality' in my otherwise empty apartment. His movements are really smooth and life like, but he makes sounds more like a Playstation menu than a dog. He was probably manufactured around 2004 and you can definitely hear the age in his hip motors but other than that he's in pretty good working order. He fails to stand up sometimes, but if I'm not around to catch him he can right himself - and calls out for help if he can't. The black and white pole in the background is what he uses to identify his charging station which he walks over and seats himself on when his battery is running low, which is about after 2 hours on his freshly re-celled battery. I had to buy a Sony memory stick writer from eBay to install English voice recognition on him lol I put socks on him because his paws seemed to have been designed for carpet, which I suppose is fair for a product of the early 2000s. "people will adopt our robot animals" was in hindsight a batshit bet Sony made that didn't work out but I'm glad they tried
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Feb 15, 2022 20:52
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Dick Trauma posted:
Strong Dr.Manhattan vibes from this.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:59
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DrBouvenstein posted:Strong Dr.Manhattan vibes from this. getting neutron beam to the dome doesn't give you powers.
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Feb 15, 2022 21:23
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Dick Trauma posted:
The perspective makes it look so tiny to me. Tiny scientist man
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Feb 15, 2022 22:22
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So I work in records management. One of my recent tasks has been making sure literal tons of ancient documents and photos are properly digitized before they're destroyed. To that end yesterday my coworkers and I were visiting a local software company who make a fancy program that uses OCR and machine learning and arcane magicks to automagically tag and sort digital records, and we asked the guy giving the tour whether their product could do anything with photo negatives, because we've found thousands of them in our storage. Now this guy was younger than me but still old enough to have some obvious gray hairs (30-35ish?), and I swear to you we had to explain the entire CONCEPT of a "photo negative" to a grown rear end man. Even after several minutes of that I'm still not sure he ACTUALLY got it. I'm not sure I've ever felt older in my life. Imagined has a new favorite as of 00:19 on Feb 16, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 23:52
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"What if a wizard magically inverted the colors of our image? Can your software handle that?"
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Feb 16, 2022 01:27
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LifeSunDeath posted:getting neutron beam to the dome doesn't give you powers. Neutrons are very bad for you, but the real life dr. Manhattan didn't turn up with super powers either.
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Feb 16, 2022 01:47
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Killingyouguy! posted:I put socks on him because his paws seemed to have been designed for carpet, which I suppose is fair for a product of the early 2000s. "people will adopt our robot animals" was in hindsight a batshit bet Sony made that didn't work out but I'm glad they tried They didn't just try they're still making them. The newest one was barely released three years ago.
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Feb 16, 2022 04:49
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So, how _do_ today's toddlers learn not to fiddle with random buttons? [Edit: Once again, my habit of _not_ refreshing the thread before posting bites me in the rear end. I'm still stuck on the "induction stoves"-part] [Edit 2: I've reconsidered. I _want_ my post to be read as a response to robot dogs, thank you very much] Wipfmetz has a new favorite as of 11:42 on Feb 16, 2022 |
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Feb 16, 2022 07:10
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Killingyouguy! posted:The very best in obsolete technology is my good boy Kilroy!! I've always wanted one of those! What's the going rate for them now?
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Feb 16, 2022 10:24
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DrBouvenstein posted:Remember that scene where Boss Baby is in the cube?
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Feb 16, 2022 12:28
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Humphreys posted:I've always wanted one of those! What's the going rate for them now? I also googled this after reading their post. Looks like anywhere from a couple hundred bucks for a used, "as-is", probably-not-working one, to $1,000ish for a definitely working old one, to $2,500+ for a brand new one.
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Feb 16, 2022 12:34
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ishikabibble posted:They didn't just try That's true, though there was a long hiatus between the ERS-7 and ERS-1000 and it seems to be more a vehicle for 'pay us a subscription fee to put a cloud connected camera wandering through your home' so the profit calculus for Sony seems a little different this time. Also imo it's ugly Humphreys posted:I've always wanted one of those! What's the going rate for them now? Between being the newest and most advanced of the vintage models (ie not the 2018 model mentioned above), in known working order with a refurbished battery and import fees and shipping from Japan, mine cost me about $1.5K Canadian. Other models can be significantly cheaper but for some reason they also seem to be a favourite of scammers on eBay, so fb groups and discords are the recommended venue for shopping for one, I paid extra to gamble on importing one basically. The 31X series was manufactured as a budget aibo but I really hate to look at it 
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Feb 16, 2022 12:39
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Tell Kilroy I love him!!
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Feb 16, 2022 13:18
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