Was talking to the local Radio Shack dude,heard something interesting.

[Scioneer]

I was talking to the dude in my local Radio Shack and he brought up something interesting( since i tease him about when are they going to get the next shipment of Minimus 7s). According to him their DM said that Radio Shack is thinking of bringing back the Realistic line. If they do, hopefully its not just in name. They had better take a look at their past line and at least bring back the better products like the Mini 7, the Mach Ones, etc.

[zacster]

maybe they'll bring back all of the full-range speakers they used to have. And also maybe they'll carry a full line of parts.

[cabinover]

Sure would be a welcomed sight from the cellphone, battery, and ipod store that they have now.

It's a shame that the company has gone the way it has but that's the way the ball bounces sometimes.

[Hanginon]

Yup, "The Technology Store". It's a real shame the direction their corporate took.

[poynton]

Tandy, Radio Shack in the UK, went the whole hog and sold out to a mobile phone warehouse chain.

Maplin, which was a great component store some years ago, is sadly going the same way - phones, batteries, disco lights etc. and greatly reducing the range of "DIY items",

Andy

[AdamThorne]

the internet killed radio shack, I think. perhaps if they put together a DIY internet presence then they could stock their best sellers in the store. They could have the best of both worlds that way.

[anatech]

In truth, they marketed on popular items. Since we all need more than the most popular resistor values, they deserved to lose market share.

If you want to carry resistors, carry them all. I once worked at a 'Shack for a short while. Just as the trash 80 was in. CB radios were a big craze. I can tell you they only wanted the easy money and didn't develop their clientèle. They went where the marketing guys took them. Down, down, down.

A return to the component business may be ill timed. It all depends on whether they make a commitment or not. But they lost that trade and now people like Digikey and Mouser have locked that up. Perhaps they should just go home? Or they can continue to sell batteries, CD and DVD blanks and other consumables. That and novelty items like "The Source" does in Canada.

They were dead before the internet became popular.

-Chris

[Conrad Hoffman]

When the local RS had its close-out sale on drivers, I found a couple that were surprisingly good. Few people build anything anymore, and RS would be completely crazy to increase their stock of board level parts. IMO, the stuff was mostly junk anyway. As for the Realistic components, I was always surprised at how well they were made for the price. Still, nothing a diy'er would be apt to want in their system.

[anatech]

Hi Conrad,
Selling the audio components was hard. We had to show people they were made by other companies like Akai and Technics to sell them.

Some were not too bad, just like other comparable units. The Mach1's were terrible noise makers though. The first towers sounded amazing by comparison. Those I did sell easily.

-Chris

Edit: Completely agree on the components!

[ThSpeakerDude88]

I had a pair of the 8" poly cone woofers from the shack that I got when they sold out. One I sold to a friend, one I kept for myself.

We used to use some Marantz sp-1200's as mains during band practices , ran off an old 80's fisher receiver. The woofers in the Sp-1200s needed refoaming so we took them out to preserve them untill such time as we could fix them. I remember making up baffles to cover the holes and mount the Rat Shack 8" in one and an optimus 10" sub in the other.

We were all amazed at how well the little 8" held up to the horrendous abuse we put it through! My friend is now designing a proper cabinet for that speaker using WinISD to make a small subwoofer.

Word had it a while back that they were going to stop carrying ALL component parts, but so far that has been about 9 months and they are still selling them. I hope they don't stop selling them, because I occasionally use them for parts when I am building a project.