And what did we buy today?

Radio hmmmm... Quality is dropping around 10Khz every month over here :(
Same all over the world I guess with compression and mp3's.

There are just a few stations left who try to transmit decent material but soon
enought DAB will take over and radio is a thing from the past for me.

A few times when they transmitted muzak I have on cd I did a quick compare and
it can only make me cry. Same with the cable companies. Over here in Amsterdam
we have cable to the home in every house and they receive and retransmit with
no regards for quality. They even manage to receive bbc tv broadcasts and instead
of using a receiver tuned to the right audio frequency they used a detuned dutch one.
This results in a bad mp3 like hiss and distortion on both bbc channels.

And dont get me started on digital cable tv! :bawling:
 
It was actually yesterday, but I picked up a Pioneer GM-A200 car power amp for $15, and 9 CDs for $10.

The amp came with all cables and the owner's manual, and only minor scuffs and nicks on the finish, considering it's about 25 years old. 70 watts RMS/channel into 4 ohms at 0.3 % THD, and weighs a substantial 5.3 kg.

CDs included Max Webster, Jackson Browne, Jerry Doucette, and the "Cat People" soundtrack.

A couple of days earlier, I succumbed to curiosity at Wal-Mart and bought an iLo DSP-26A powered speaker system with a 1.5 watt/channel Digital Amplifier for $10. The amp chip is a BoomTech BT4809 and there's a switching regulator (BT2576) so it may be OK to run from 12V. (Normal power source is 4 AA cells, but the bundled AC adapter is 9V 750 mA)

Sound from the built-in 1" speakers isn't awful. I'll see what it does with real speakers, and maybe with a JBL compression horn over a 1" driver.
 
I got some Mission 760is for free - they were my dad's old speakers, which he replaced with KEFs, so I went into the loft and voila, a pair of Mission 760is.

The problem was the tweeter was worn out and the whole thing sounded tired.

So, messed around with parallel resistors for a while. The tweeter XO goes resistor (3.9ohm), capacitor (not sure) and a choke (according to dad). So, 2 more 5 ohm resistors in parallel with the 3.9 and it sounds like new, according to dad, but he had these before I was born, so he may have forgotten what they sound like...

The neat thing with these speakers is that you can put them far apart (over 2m in my case) and it still sounds like the vocals are in the middle, but everything else is really spread out. Never heard that before.
 
Also got an amplifier, same place.

Seems quite old, strange quad/stereo set-up. Crudely wired.

Roughly 5W per channel.
 

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I got in local market for about 25 USD this old soviet integrated solid state amplifier produced in 1979. The output with two metal trannies on each channel (like to-3 but little bigger).
Just changed electrolytic caps and varnished case - looks and sounds like new :D
 

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I didn't have to buy the NAD 705 that was sitting in the scrap metal bin at the recycling depot. I just had to suavely extricate it and slip it into the carton I'd just dumped a bunch of old bicycle and car parts out of. There's a couple of pilot lights with wire leads (?) taped to the top of it. A few scrapes and scratches, and one speaker clip is damaged. I haven't powered it up yet.

There was also a 3 piece Toshiba component system, preamp, amp and tuner at the "store" there. I could have had those for $9, but left them for someone else to discover.

The pawn shop that tries not to look like a pawn shop (formerly a Cash Converters) had DVDs at 10 for $30, including a stack of HD-DVDs (woo hoo). So now I can enjoy "Army Of Darkness" in high definition.

On the weekend, I found a Black & Decker electric die grinder for $5 at an antique auto swap meet. The rubber cord is perished, and the chuck may be rusted tight, but it'll be very useful if I can fix it. Same as a DeWalt DW887, but less yellow. The $15 LCD monitor I got at the swap turned out to be less of a deal: the backlighting goes off after about 10 seconds. Hopefully just bad caps.
 
A 3 piece sony cassette,amp,equalizer with a separate tuner and cd player
for E 9 and a couple of matching 2 way sony speaker for 5. As daughter dear
is now into Mega Mindy and she has to sing along
this cheap combo has a mic input so she's happy :) Two singstar karaoke microphones for next to nothing and let the fun begin

And yet another CD471 and a really good looking CD150 which will undergo a nos mod.
 
A rack-mount Tektronix 502A (haven't fired it up yet) and a small box of tubes, two of which appear to be NOS Telefunken 12AX7s still in the boxes and matching date codes, as well as two more Tele AX7s (one labelled Tele, the other Fisher) that appear to be used.

Damn, that Tek is heavy!