sweetbeats
Reel deep thoughts...
Well...I’ve been keeping busy, but I do believe you can’t entirely take the sweetbeats out of the sweetbeats...and since I tend to troll craigslist and eBay...and Reverb...when I find a good deal it tends to follow me home even if it’s been rode hard and put up wet...if I think I can fix it or shine it up and make somebody else happy and make my money back and then some, well...it does get irresistible every now and then. Diapers ain’t cheap, and Christmas is coming, so when I saw a deal that ended up totaling $75 cash and about $8 in gas I went for it...
Behold a Technics RS-B50 cassette deck:
This is a straight-ahead 2-head single-direction cassette deck. The neat thing is it has onboard dbx noise reduction in addition to Dolby B and C. It needed a little cleaning up, but not a lot, and I think it’s seen a pretty easy life. Cosmetically it’s a solid 8.5 out of 10, and everything works as it should. I was surprised...was expecting it to be in need of a capstan belt and expected the pinch roller would either be hard as a rock or soft as gum. Neither is the case. It just works. Cleaned up the pinch roller and it feels like new:
Ran some time ladders and recorded some program material and everything is in spec and it sounds really nice.
And then there was this thing...a 16x2 rack-mount mixing console made by Phonic.
Now, this is no boutique mixer...it’s a budget model, but it’s got a decent feature set for what it is (phantom power, 3-band EQ with swept mid band, 3 AUX busses, one of them globally switchable pre/post, PFL circuit, a little assignable talk-back mic input, inserts on all inputs and outputs)...and it sounds alright. And I enjoy opening this stuff up to see how it was designed. I think some engineer got their way against the marketing team and the bean-counters on this one...each channel is on its own card, all wiring is connectorized and/or point-to-point, and each card is mounted by two screws to the frame...all pots are individually nutted but to an individual channel structural member, so once the cover is off the chassis, pull the knobs off of a channel, remove two screws and unplug two harness connectors and a channel is out. That’s not as convenient as individual plug-in modules, but it’s a whole lot more serviceable than scads of more expensive gear out there:
All the jacks are individually nutted too...chassis is all steel and the faceplate is relatively thick in addition to each card having its own steel structure. So while it isn’t boutique, it’s kind of neat and physically should stand up to quite a bit...if I had a bar that did live music and I was on a budget I’d have no qualms about using something like this.
And then there were a couple boxes like this:
Full of stuff like this:
Much of it was junk...really cheap hi-z unbalanced mics (but I’m keeping a couple anyway), low quality bulk wire...stuff like that...the second box though was full of XLR-XLR cables of varying lengths, 7 long ones and 9 short jumpers, but all with good quality cable and genuine Switchcraft connectors...this is not to say the first box was a bust...there was this:
That’s a Shure Unidyne 544...low impedance balanced mic...father of the SM-57...this 544 has a less common PITA threaded 4-pin connector on it, but an acquaintance had an adapter that screws on that he sold me for cheap...it’s a beautiful mic...
Behold a Technics RS-B50 cassette deck:
This is a straight-ahead 2-head single-direction cassette deck. The neat thing is it has onboard dbx noise reduction in addition to Dolby B and C. It needed a little cleaning up, but not a lot, and I think it’s seen a pretty easy life. Cosmetically it’s a solid 8.5 out of 10, and everything works as it should. I was surprised...was expecting it to be in need of a capstan belt and expected the pinch roller would either be hard as a rock or soft as gum. Neither is the case. It just works. Cleaned up the pinch roller and it feels like new:
Ran some time ladders and recorded some program material and everything is in spec and it sounds really nice.
And then there was this thing...a 16x2 rack-mount mixing console made by Phonic.
Now, this is no boutique mixer...it’s a budget model, but it’s got a decent feature set for what it is (phantom power, 3-band EQ with swept mid band, 3 AUX busses, one of them globally switchable pre/post, PFL circuit, a little assignable talk-back mic input, inserts on all inputs and outputs)...and it sounds alright. And I enjoy opening this stuff up to see how it was designed. I think some engineer got their way against the marketing team and the bean-counters on this one...each channel is on its own card, all wiring is connectorized and/or point-to-point, and each card is mounted by two screws to the frame...all pots are individually nutted but to an individual channel structural member, so once the cover is off the chassis, pull the knobs off of a channel, remove two screws and unplug two harness connectors and a channel is out. That’s not as convenient as individual plug-in modules, but it’s a whole lot more serviceable than scads of more expensive gear out there:
All the jacks are individually nutted too...chassis is all steel and the faceplate is relatively thick in addition to each card having its own steel structure. So while it isn’t boutique, it’s kind of neat and physically should stand up to quite a bit...if I had a bar that did live music and I was on a budget I’d have no qualms about using something like this.
And then there were a couple boxes like this:
Full of stuff like this:
Much of it was junk...really cheap hi-z unbalanced mics (but I’m keeping a couple anyway), low quality bulk wire...stuff like that...the second box though was full of XLR-XLR cables of varying lengths, 7 long ones and 9 short jumpers, but all with good quality cable and genuine Switchcraft connectors...this is not to say the first box was a bust...there was this:
That’s a Shure Unidyne 544...low impedance balanced mic...father of the SM-57...this 544 has a less common PITA threaded 4-pin connector on it, but an acquaintance had an adapter that screws on that he sold me for cheap...it’s a beautiful mic...
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If all ..ok or most' :>) of that stuff works, 'yee hah ' now :>)
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