u/Quadradisque

The Firm is still sealed.

The shirt on the right is from a local company that does a lot of cheaper local fare shirts, and I always assumed it was from some old design that they changed up a bit.

Well lo and behold while out digging today I found the original shirt design on the left (actually for cheaper than what I paid the reprint design on the right)! You can instantly tell the difference in print quality and the fact that the reprint took out a lot of color on the design, the OG is sooo much more vibrant.

“Sports or Consequences” was a daily sports trivia show hosted by Gary Burbank on 700 WLW in Cincinnati, OH where the callers asked the show sports trivia. The “We Don’t Mess Around” slogan was when the show answered the caller’s questions right!

I’d buy that for a dollar!

Ozzie does not want to be disturbed in his favorite spot in the whole house - the top of the refrigerator haha

I’m a bit of a big fan of this band and I even just found this out today! It’s on the corner of 7th and Brighton St. looking north towards Cincinnati

Now if you excuse me, I’m going to go cosplay as a rich kid, play some polo, and then get strung out in the bathroom 🤣

Yes, that’s a multi system Beta deck that can do NTSC/PAL/SECAM tapes, assuming it was sold in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia based on the marketing sticker still on it. Even has the original box for it.

Mega expensive for my tastes plus most likely it’s gonna need some work at some point but if I were actively importing tapes overseas in the PAL format it would be right up my alley

Super old Signals tour shirt that still fits well!

And of course I had to buy it!

Gotta love the 2nd photo has the $24.99 price tag which I bet this fool took inside the thrift store that they bought it from, thinking they were on their way to heaven.

Don’t worry, I sent him a message asking if their keyboard was broken with adding a 0 at the end and if I could have what they were smoking lol

This was a deck that my late father had new and I got repaired and wasn’t sure if it could even record…and to my amazement it does!

Had an older Scotch tape lying around with nothing recorded on it to test - recorded at Beta II speed with Beta Hi-Fi. Recorded off my MacBook using a HDMI to composite/S-Video adapter, then composite to the Lexicon DC-1. Source is from the WeatherStar 4000+ app so this was actual weather data from the time I recorded this over the weekend.

The DC-1 is really flexible as you can then feed in the audio from either RCA or using the coaxial or optical in ports even if the audio is not coming from the video source, so I pulled appropriate music for the WeatherStar 4000+ and played it over a WiiM Pro streamer feeding into coax into the DC-1. Wound up sounding awesome in Hi-Fi, better than my older Panasonic Hi-Fi deck!

A good chunk of this was my late father’s gear and some of my own and I decided to utilize it to make a surround setup, but utilize a surround processor to send out the signal across all three amps.

Front: McIntosh C28 preamp > Sansui BA-5000 driving a pair of ADS L1230 speakers (note: I do have my father’s CA-3000 preamp but I swapped in the McIntosh because it has independent bass and treble for both speakers and independent gain controls for both, helps to compensate)

Side: Sansui AU-717 > Sansui BA-2000 driving a pair of ADS L520 speakers

Rear: Sansui 8080DB driving directly a pair of ADS L400 speakers.

The main brain of the setup is the Lexicon DC-1, which mine has the later updates that does DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 AC-3 which is feeding pretty much everything here - the old media formats across VHS, Beta, and Laserdisc, and also my 4K TV that can send out AC-3 audio via optical. I love the Logic 7 mode, which is Lexicon’s own take on turning any stereo source into a matrix 7 surround mix, and it sounds really good on how it steers certain parts of the song in the side and rear speakers.

CRT is a Panasonic CT-S1390Y monitor which I have for those formats above plus I have an adaptor chain to hook in any HDMI source to S-Video as well.

My late father was a former district manager for Blockbuster and had a lot of cool promo stuff from the company and also had some internal company tapes like this one! This was the year I believe that they had the opportunity to buy a little DVD distribution company called Netflix…

Not sure if this part mentions about this specifically but I need to see if I can find the other parts amongst his stuff!

From the description:

“I purchased this super cool road worn Fender Lead 1 about ten years ago directly from the rock hall of fame guitar legend, Rick Nielsen. Comes with Certificate of Authenticity signed by Rick himself.

It’s a 1981 US made Fender Lead 1 with coil split switch and series/parallel switch. Check out the gorgeous birds eye maple neck!

Includes finish checking, chips, and other blemishes you would expect from a guitar that’s been played a lot. Very naturally relic’d.

I cleaned it lightly, put new strings on it, and tested it out. Works and plays like it should. Just an awesome piece all the way around!

Comes with Fender hard case, strap, original strings, and paperwork.

No trade offers please. Cash or Venmo only. 🙂”

Managed to talk the vendor down on price a little and the casing has seen its days, but the picture on both of these sets looks great and this is just on composite, can’t wait to get S-video up and running!

I’ve listened to these speakers for a good while and they sound great, however my inner OCD is trying to trouble shoot the left speaker (pic 1) where the bass sounds a bit softer compared to the right speaker (pic 2)

I did check and make sure the polarity of the speaker wiring is correct and have these at equal distance from each other and from the wall, and also hooked into a different amplifier to confirm as well. When I used a dB reader I did notice that the right one was playing about 3-5 dB louder than the left. You can hear the lower frequencies of the bass more defined on the right, while the left seems to not be as emphasized even if you flip channels.

One of the woofers in the left speaker look like it’s been pushed in visibly vs. the right - would using the old vacuum trick maybe push it back out before I begin to really dive into a crossover issue?

With this S-VHS deck, long ago the player would turn on and then when attempting to load a tape in, it would simply not take it and the loading mechanism would not engage to drop it down to load on the heads. I’ve taken out the loader and following along with this guide, have went in and reset the door back on its peg, and after engaging the little clips on each side of the silver tray underneath I’ve been able to reset it back to the first of 3 positions (unload, loading, then the final resting where the tape is wound around the head).

It still will not engage and I did notice this cog system on photo 4 like in the video where it was sliding around on the guy due to a crack. Mine looks like it holds in place but I did notice this tiny hairline that might be a crack. Could this be tripping it up or any other things to check?

Don’t care about the price, they’re one of my all time favorite bands that I’ve seen several times live and have never seen this concert on any old format, until today and it just so happened to be on Beta!

The Hi-Fi track is SMOKIN’ on my audio set up!