Wednesday, May 04, 2016

A new hobby (one of several)


I've recently found myself with more time than I had planned for or really know what to do with. A luxury for a lot of people, but it's left me feeling useless and in fact a little depressed. My mind starts drifting and I begin obsessing over dumb, meaningless things. For example, nostalgia for 1970's audio equipment, which I've never felt before in the slightest. I've realized over the years that this is just my way of coping with boredom; maybe my mind's way of staying sharp and focused, on something. This is just one of several things I've got going on right now, none of which amount to anything to anyone but me.

I've set up a little workshop in the basement and decided to try my hand at repairing some of the vintage audio equipment I've been picking up here and there. That old silver-faced hifi stuff sounds great and looks amazing, but you know what? It's all broken. All of it. Unless somebody else fixed it first, you can pretty much guarantee that at least some part of every component out there is not going to work properly. And most of this stuff got replaced, not fixed, when it broke the last time. So it's all still broken, regardless of what some Ebay seller says.

So far I'm having mixed success, but I'm keeping at it at least until I get discouraged enough to give up. This cassette deck above, a Sony TC-K96R, came to me with a blaring left channel that I've sort of fixed but only with a kludge. (As mentioned, it was described as "working fine".) It's listenable now after two new transistors and a level adjustment, at least, but one channel's maxed out and the other's almost at minimum, so something's still not right. It also needs a new belt, like basically all cassette decks do.

In the background, my Sony TA-1010 amplifier awaits new transistors and capacitors.

Should keep me busy for a while.

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About This Blog

This is increasingly not a blog about Alphabet City, New York. I used to live in the East Village and work on Avenue B, but I no longer do. Why don't I change the name if I'm writing about Japan and video games and guitars? Because New Yorkers are well-rounded people with varied interests, and mine have gone increasingly off the rails over the years. And I don't feel like changing the name. I do still write about New York City sometimes.

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