Soundesign 8 track player update

Did he own a ranch as well? many of the bigger streets are named after
nearby ranches such as Sepulveda blvd or La Cienega blvd.

On 28 Dec 2005 11:30:16 -0800, "rusty" wrote:

My family has lived here since 1973. It's a very nice area. snip

ACK! Another intruder!

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 19:51:56 GMT, "William W Western"
wrote:

I meant Western Avenue, should've proofread. oh well. Are you from
socal, DB?
Few recall that it was named after my great-great-great uncle
Wichita P. Western, famed bare knuckle brawler and tattoo artist.
William W Western snip

Uh...no, sorry, the record does not show such a tribute. In the very
early days of LA's massive expansion in the 20th century, there were
two long avenues that were supposed to contain the coming
megalopolis...Western Avenue, running what is now eastern Hollywood to
the sea, and Eastern Avenue, which runs from Cheech and Chongville
(East LA) similarly southward, but not as far. Didn't work out that
way, since both were overrun by development by WW I, and annexation
around 1914 caused the city limits themselves to leap across the
former boundary boulevards.

My family's been here since 1876, a year before the great water and
power magnate, "Old Bill" Mulholland, an Irish immigrant like my
grandmother's father, stepped off a freighter at the docks in San
Pedro in 1877. Had it not been for Old Bill, LA would have still been
a backwater probably until WW II or later due to a chronic lack of
water. Old Bill turned the city's inherited Spanish system of ditches
and canals that provided the only water available in the 1880s into
one of the most advanced water and power systems in the country by the
time the St. Francis Dam collapse ended his awe inspiring career in
1928. The St. Francis Dam disaster completely wiped out an area
stretching from its site in San Francisquito Canyon all the way to the
sea, a distance of over 40 miles by sometimes 3 miles wide, through
Ventura County with a wall of water up to 60 feet high (at Blue Cut),
almost completely wiping out the town of Santa Paula in the process.
If you explore the hillsides around Blue Cut, you can still see where
the high water mark is, with everything below it scoured away by the
rushing torrent.

Mulholland is also largely blamed for secretively buying up water
rights around the turn of the previous century in the Owens Valley to
build his world famous aqueduct system, which still provides much of
LA's potable water supply. Increased levels of arsenic due to new
volcanic activity around Mammoth Mountain have tainted the Owens River
water sources, though, and much of the aqueduct water has to be
blended with now-scarce Colorado River water from the Metropolitan
Water District, another one of Mulholland's creations, to bring the
arsenic quantity down below state requirements. Further sprawl and
growth in Southern California will be probably stopped by a chronic
lack of water from now on, despite attempts by developers, conspiring
with brain dead governor AHHHHnuld Schwarzenpinkler, to hide the fact
from the public. The last drought got the entire southern half of the
state perilously close to water rationing, not seen here since the
late 1970s. One more dry year, and rationing, brown lawns and dirty
cars will again be a reality as they were in the '70s. After all, all
of Southern California is a desert, and deserts don't usually have any
water at all to speak of, so like America's foolish gas guzzlers, the
entire region is dependent upon imports for which to quench its
thirst.

dB

no problem on the dual post.

yes, the local Shack employees can barely change batteries- usually.
Once in a while a sharpie works there, but they don't stay long as the
pay sucks, and the hours are long.

BUT...

the place where they send the equipment to, the techs there are top
notch- that is farmed out to techs that know their onions. The counter
guys at the Shack only key in the repair order, take the model number,
etc. The unit is shipped off to a central repair center to be fixed.
So far, they've fixed every item I took there, including my GE VHS
video camera.

just another option.

Most times it's well worth delving into yourself on vintage repairs, as
it often can be an easy fix. I repaired my Telex 12-cart changer,
MYSELF- after (2) so-called "expert" online repair people failed at it.
Both had to refund my total repair cost. They ****ed and moaned about
hourly rate being high and cost being high to "find the bad component".
I simply traced the primitive cap/transistor logic circuit that made
the changer advance, and changed ALL the caps and transistors there.
Maybe a total of 10 parts that cost me $25.

presto- fixed. Point being, why spend $50 an hour to find the one bad
part, when ALL the parts together only cost $25. These repair techs
sometimes don't use common sense.

But in Radio Shack's case, you get a repair cost in writing, BEFORE
they do the job- and you can decide.

On 28 Dec 2005 12:04:50 -0800, "rusty" wrote:

Did he own a ranch as well? many of the bigger streets are named after
nearby ranches such as Sepulveda blvd snip

Sepulveda Blvd. is named after the Californio Sepulveda family, who
had one of the huge Spanish land grants in what is now West Los
Angeles. Most of the family decendents still live in the area. My
mother went to school with two of them in the '30s. The Sepulvedas
played the game right when the US took over California in the 1840s,
and kept title to the land, sales of which over the centuries have
made them quite wealthy. Sepulveda Blvd, is another very long street
of the city, I think it being second only to Western Avenue.

dB

ps- RCA is as good as, or better, than the Realistic stuff was. The
problem is, these kids never saw a record player before. Their parents
and family, if they even HAD one, live a transient life where they
throw everything away every few years and move. No family roots, no
heirlooms, no heritage- and a daycare upbringing since birth. And who
wants to work for min wage 'til 9 PM every night. Not the best draw
for a highly skilled electronics tech.

On 28 Dec 2005 11:50:00 -0800, "rusty" wrote:

the people at my local radioshack are complete retards they dont know a
damn thing about electronics. snip

ALL Rat Shacks are that way.

the last time I went there was to buy a
turntable that played 78's as a gift for a family member who has a
large collection of 78's that she has'nt heard since the late 70's I
asked the salesman that worked there if they had a turntable that plays
78's (this was before those crappy nostalgic turntables that have a
very light tracking force were made). snip

Light tracking force is a benefit, not a detriment, as long as the
tonearm and cartridge are of the proper compliance.

he said he didnt know what I was
talking about! What I would like to know is how these brain-dead morons
got a job at Radioshack in the first place. snip

You don't have to know anything to work at Rat Shack. In fact, over
about the last 15 years or so, they've gotten rid of anyone who knows
anything about electronics, because they'd tend to command higher base
pay and/or commission. They just hire minimum wage zhlubs off the
street, give them a book that tells them how they want their Chinese
crap sold, and that's that. Most Rat Shack employees only last a few
months.

Things have been going
downhill for Radioshack since they axed the Realistic Brand (I still
have a number of Realistic products that still work) to replace it with
RCA which is known for making cheap chinese crap. Have you noticed that
radioshack sells toys now? what a joke. snip

Rat Shack ANYTHING are "toys." Do not buy their components,
either...$1.59 for 5 low quality chink resistors??? Come ON! The
Internet has doomed Rat Shack for electronics parts sales, and they
now concentrate on things like ripoff cell phone packages and poorly
made radio controlled toys. They're also well known for lying about
their warranty programs, and they do not service what they sell if
it's more than a year past the purchase date. Friends don't let
friends buy anything from Rat Shack.

Rat Shack's been going downhill for many years, in fact. The audio
tape and accessories they used to sell, including the splicing tape
and foil for 8 tracks, are of consistantly bad quality. Rat Shack
"Supertape" was hardly super, the later version being made by poor
quality manufacturers in Korea and India. I threw out probably 10 Rat
Shack cartridges and some 7" reels I've gotten here and there, because
they're basically useless for good quality recording, regardless of
format. During my tests of various cartridges over the last year, Rat
Shack "Stupidtape," as I call it, placed dead last, even behind crap
like Certron and "Trax" from "AudioMagnetics."

dB

On 28 Dec 2005 11:51:14 -0800, "rusty" wrote:

sorry for the double post. snip

"Goo goo groopz" does that all the time. Dump that piece of crap, get
yourself a good newsreader like Forté and use your ISP's freebie NNTP
account. It's FAR better, and you can locally archive posts for as
long as you care to, which has proven to be one of my better weapons
against fraudsters and pathological liars like Charlie Nudo, aka
66fourdoor, for about 14 months now.

Your ISP is the former SBC, now the "new AT&T," and I think they give
their customers access to a news server for free. Contact them to
make sure, and for the IPs to set up your newsreader. "Goo goo
groopz" is for retards like Charlie.

dB

I agree with you on that. Some of the Radioshack employees at the local
store are hispanic and havent bothered to learn english. they have a
few lines in english to pitch their cell phones but other than that
your on your own. i'm not joking

"Light tracking force is a benefit, not a detriment, as long as the
tonearm and cartridge are of the proper compliance."

From what I've heard is that light tracking force is worse than heavier
tracking forces. typically, the tracking force should be set at 3-5
grams to play LP's and 45's any thing heavier was designed to play
78's. 1-3 grams is not enough to play a used record without skipping or
repeating. I received one of these nostalgic turntables as a gift, it
couldnt play one of my Nazareth albums that had small hairline
scratches which is often your best case scenario with used records.
these are only useful for playing brand new shrink-wrapped records.