VCR....its maddness

myredracer wrote:
No VCRs for me, thank you. I really don't miss having to run down to the local VCR rental store to get a movie to keep the kids entertained on a weekend or having to return it before getting stuck with a late charge, having to make sure it was rewound or having to rent a machine. I don't miss those stupid 8-tracks either.

Acampingwewillgo wrote:
I still have two turntables....one, an Audio Technic's Direct drive with a Shure V15 type III cartridge and the other a Pioneer with what I believe is still my Quadraphonic cartridge on that.

Hey! I have the same Shure cartridge in my Thorens turntable. It plays through a tube Dynakit pre-amp and amp. I built 3-way speakers 2'x2'x 4'tall like the ones I built back in high school. Amazing sound!! Except now I can't hear high freq. sounds and have to wear hearing aids. Not the same anymore. :( I miss hearing the tinkling glass sound Santana's Singing Winds.

Here's me back in the good ol' days in high school with a tube amp I built and "lissajous" patterns on a color TV I modified. Got on the front cover of the Teacher's Assoc. magazine. Used to listen to my collection of Procul Harem, Moody Blues, ELP, King Crimson and others for hours on end with that amp. Wish I still had it (threw it away at some point). A neighbor a few houses down the street came over one day when my parents were out and told me to turn the gawd dam flippin' thing off!! Ah, memories... :)

1971 was about when those new-fangled high tech discreet transistors came out. I remember looking at one and wondering how the heck it worked and wasn't sure what to do with one. Tubes I got...

If ya'll find a nice black and white TV somewhere, let me know. Especially if it's an old honkin' big console type. I miss watching Bonanza, Gomer Pyle, Walter Cronkite, etc. in full glorious b&w and having to fiddle with the rabbit ears.

Hmmm ... remember that renting of VHS movies is not necessary nowadays because you can own them for 50 cents to 100 cents each by grazing at secondhand stores in between the changing of camping spots. :B

Yep ... weren't the good old days wonderful way back when we were in our good young days! When I was building my own tube amp in my early teens, I got shocked on the end of my nose with ~450 DC volts from a stray strand of wire sticking-up from the power supply section of the amp's chassis. That amp worked well - with it's negative feedback for elimination of distortion and positive feedback to raise the signal level back up from the attenuation introduced by the negative feedback. I believe it was called a negative-positive feedback Class A audio tupe amp. Also, the big drawback with transistors and integrated circuits versus tubes is ... with tubes you can visually see if they're working by looking for a small wire glowing orange color. ;)

On into my late twenties, I built the DW's and my first color TV. I believe that TV's screen was at the high-end bleeding edge size of 25 diagonal inches. Amazingly, it worked the first time I switched it on and went on to serve us well for years ... if and only if I kept the three beams converged on a regular basis ... what a hassle that was!

These days young folks can't even do things like that if Amazon doesn't carry the parts ... or if they don't reside anywhere near one of the few remaining Radio Shack stores. :(