sad times

[bill]

sad times for the boombox collector up here.
the proliferation of socalled recyling centers have been seeing many many old radios just being dropped of there instead of making there way to the thrift stores.
its a real pity.
recently i dropped of some truly broken stuff at one of them and was shocked to see three kabooms and several cobratops sitting in the pile of stuff.
i asked what they did with the stuff it was unbroken.
i was simply floored to learn they dont even test it to see if it is unbroken.
what a shape i mean i saw this coming quite a while back and now it seems like up here it is full swing.
venturing into the thrift stores up here now shows me there is a shrinking supply of old radios boombox and electronics of any sort.
i still think there is a ton of them out there that have not made there way out of there owners closets but as time goes on these radios are rapidly ending up being torn down and turned into raw materials.
the shelves up here are now seeing a ton of 90s and early 2000s 5.1 gear showing up.
i think some of it is cool but its not anything i am into collecting.
I spent about a month and half completely out of the daily visits to thrift stores as i wound down my band endeavors.

i am sure there is other ways to find boxes up here but the end of the road for the cheap value village grails is in site now.
occasionally they will turn up.
another issue is many thrift stores are now just declining donations of electronics more than five years old.
this is shocking i mean just bizzare.
when i was out today i saw absolutely no boomboxes of any generation at all in my travels.
none it was strange. i mean i think this was the first time in my history of collecting radios where i did not see a single boombox.
i did come across one non exciting 1950s transistor radio they were asking two hundred dollars for.
i could not believe that one. i mean just strange times.

 

[Radio raheem]

:'-( :'-( Words fail me bill......

 

[sony_apm_fan]

Bill, we have the same issues downunder.
Most of our stores that receive donated goods have now been commercialsed, many will not accept any electrical item.
All items in some stores first go their central warehouse where all the good items are skimmed off, over priced or snapped up a select lucky few.
If you check their bins out the back, when they're not looking, you can find stuff donated in amazing condition that they can't / don't / won't test or look it.

The fear of litigation if someone was electrocuted, and the time and skill required to test and tag these items is killing the chance to find quality old gear.

This is only going to get worse. Flea markets around here are also starting to dry up as I buy all the good stuff. Shocking.

 

[Fatdog]

Sad times, indeed. :'-(

 

[bill]

yep its wierd. it seems more like this thing they call recycling has nothing to do with recycling anything.
it seems to me its more about this.

1 erase all evidence of anything of quality.
2 provide a steady supply of cheap raw materials to manufacturers .
3 convince people that giving away things for free is somehow good for the environment.
4 i mean there is a certain degree of precious metals in a lot of these old electronics,i can pretty much assure you they are not going to using much gold in new electronics produced.

once most of all the old stuff is gone people will have no idea how good things like boomboxes radios and things from the past were made.
it is really bizzare.
recently my better half took the dt707 to work for a company party they had in the office.
another person showed up with a funny little ipod dock .
someone in their less than great wisdom decided the new device must be better. so for the first half hour the dt707 sat in the corner.
no one could hear the music playing and my wife finally just told the person with the ipod dock that it was a pos and plugged in the dt707.
it was amazing her telling me how people gravitated towards it in awe of how good it sounded.

most of us here can remember the old folks who would go on about the good old days. i mean i think that maybe some of us are becoming the old folks doing the ranting now.
as sad as it is i happen to feel super fortunate. i mean i am the curator of my own museum as are many of you folks.
when we have guests over it is always pretty funny.
they sit in a room filled with radios. a hour or two passes and then the comment is made.
holy **** you have a tons of stereos.
this tells me that our old boomboxes are quite pleasing to the eye as well as functional.
as i stood bbqing up some steaks yesterday with the little m7770k blaring aways with all its chrome and white pearl finish, the neighbour admired the small radio.
fascinating how quickly people forget how things once where. even more fascinating is how the rate of this forgetfulness seems to be accelerating.
there is a huge groing ammount of people in north america who are rapidly waking up out of some kind of coma and seeing how everything is changing.
they do not want the garbage being offered to them. while the majority could still not give a thought to any of it,a lot of people are realizing we are being scammed.

how far off are we until the time comes where a home is a cubicle a holiday is photo of a beach on a ipod. its all wierd and effed up in my opinion.

so is walking around with a boombox or driving a old car going to start a revolution. i am unsure about that one but it is sure as hell better than going with the cult of consumerism.
i am for doing things environmentaly friendly,but this bs form of recycling really pisses me off.

i have a lot of friends who are looking backwards, the sixties and seventies was really a amazing era for consumer goods i think in some ways the eighties was the peak of it all.
the early nineties has some cool offerings but the last decade it has all been about the computer.
small computers like ipods and cel phones.
i for one refuse to let my recreation be completely converted into ones and zeros.
i am all for getting rid of things that are used up.
last time i went to a thrift store i could not give them a four year old tube televsion.
i mean what are the less fortunate people supposed to do go out and buy a new plasma screen,what if someone is poor and wants to listen to music?
its all really strange to me.
i cant be too miserable about it. i mean as i say i have a truck load of great boxes and another truck load of great home stereo stuff.
very strange times tho.

 

[Lasonic TRC-920]

Hey Bill, Great thread man and I have to say an interesting one...

In the great structure of our modern society led by capitalism, consumerism, free trade agreements, greed and "What Ever The Market Will Bare", we have been cattle prodded into a coral of "Buy The Newest, Greatest, Fastest, Smallest...What Ever". And with that comes the demise of the old!

If the movie / documentary "The Eleventh Hour" taught me anything it is that EVERYTHING we are talked in to buying goes in the trash. EVERYTHING! What we pick and choose to "Save" from the land fill is not only our choice, it is our mission should we choose to save time capsules such at these radios.

As you mentioned, the time line of sound reproducing equipment peaked in the 80's and that is my opinion as well. In the last few months we have been reading threads talking about "Was a boombox's sound designed for each generation?" here: http://www.boomboxery.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5487 and discussions about late sixties and early seventies radios. But we are for the most part here for the 1980's radios. But these are perhaps the biggest contributors to the land fill pile!

There were certainly more radio's built in the 1980's then the years before and when the walkman came out they all but buried the boom box right on the spot. To be honest, I'm totally shocked there are even this many left.

If you feel it your duty to round them up and save them from the recycling centers, land files and giant industrial shredder's then have at it. They say "Time Waits For No Man" and that "Time Marches On".

We can try as we may to save as many as we can, but in the end (even though it sickens me) right now there is a C100F and an M90 on the conveyor belt heading for disaster. After all, members of this forum and others can't be every where at all times.

I do agree that listening to music should be enjoyed as a group as it has been done though out humanities earliest times. I think of the native American Indians gathered. around a fire at the end of a day, beating a drum and chanting songs. Something has been lost with the evil iPod shuffle. And no 1 inch stereo speaker system will ever bring it back!

With all that said, find what you can, enjoy what you have and make love to the day, because in the end, it's all we've got!

 

[MasterBlaster84]

Bill I've been foreseeing and fearing exactly what you describe and it's really sad for numerous reasons. :'-(

We need to put up signs at the entrance to all electronic recycling centers and thrift store drop offs that we will buy their 70's and 80's stereo and boombox gear. Of course there are problems with this too since we could only buy the good stuff which they wouldn't know what that is and secondly since they are already at the drop off site they probably would still prefer to just drop it off and be done with it.
The third and biggest issue is our space and money would severely limit any off this.

The trick here is how do we siphon off the goods before they make it to the donation centers.

 

[ViennaSound]

Same here, as i posted:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2193&p=30419&hilit=broken+dreams#p30419

They did a try to sell them, but nearly nobody bought.
Most ended in the shredder.... :'-(

 

[Eddy]

There's a guy at work i talk to regularely. He is a so called HI END freak . He was talking to me today about a HiFi store he visits often . The guy at the store says it's bad times in that sector. So everybody is listening to their music on these crappy IPOD docks ?
Damn , people don't enjoy listening to music anymore . As long as the silence at home is gone using that Ipod crap ......
The prices of the boomboxes will continue to rise i guess. These things will become rarer and rarer

 

[MasterBlaster84]

Eddy if everything eventually gets trashed or recycled and only the gear in our collections exist then it will eventually become impossible to even find parts. :'-(
I hope that day is truly a long way off.