[78-L] recording times #2

[Swamp Daddy]

Hi all:  Well, my eBay LP hunt didn't go well; and, I still have that hang over from being up too late last night.   After the tape thread spread into several mini areas of nostalgia I am unable to pull the pieces out in any particular relation to the various posts left as Mike successfully recombined them into one stew of partial things.    All I can say is WHEW ! and Good Grief, Charlie Brown.

I really wasn't attempting to write the authoritative history of it all; and, I sure didn't mean to worry you.   And, as I am sure you would recall, when less excited over it all that 1 meter = approximately 39.37 inches.   So a 1 mps would be a 39+ ips machine.    As a quite young lad I had a collection of many things (speaking here of catalogs, magazines, etc. relating to this area), now mostly gone, that I do wish I had now kept them for the extra decade (or the extra year for some of them) to have them now.   But, each move, I ended up with less and less space.  And, this last move many things (old mags and catalogs), due to a lack of space had spent a decade at the old place in an unheated garage or the only slightly less unfriendly location of the attic (alternating blistering hot and freezing cold).   

A lot of the paper items were in poor shape and even some mold on the garage ones.   Rather than fill the attic at my new place which is very difficult to use (small hatch in the closet) vs. folding ladder at the old one; I decided to trash them.  A very few boxes survive today in my new garage, eventually to meet the same fate (trash) as the previous ones.   As the kids are grown and gone, the wife and I parted, I downsized during the move and had to make some choices.

I did keep a lot of old hi-fi; and, stereo stuff that no longer works and is mostly obsolete as I dearly love it when younger.    I do wish I could have kept it all like Mike has; but, I am sure many of you have faced that "what to do with it" problem when moving.    And, it must be rewarding to see someone such as your daughter actually use this material in a scholarly fashion.   I won't even get into what my family thought of my hobbies except to say if they were ever in charge probably a dumpster would be used.   And, it did take NERVE to part with that stuff as I would have preferred to have kept it; but hard decisions come to us all.

Now, you'll note I made brief mention of the first and last parts of your post.  I have no idea how, what, where, or even if I should try to go into this piece by piece for a reply.   Apparently, you confused a look backward with some nostalgia as delving into your area of technical expertise.  I probably did mangle the time line a bit; but, it was a fun thread with many contributing an item here or there from their own past memories and uses.

Oh, if by accident in surfing, I find some of the things I referred to in my various posts on the net I'll be sure and send them your way Mike.   But, I'm not going to spend much time at it.  The net is amazing; but, spotty as to many historical things.  As an example, I happened upon a Rek-O-Kut nostalgia site a few weeks ago.  So I decided to look up my old Rek-O-Kut turntable (still residing on a shelf this very day in my museum of obsolete equipment - i.e. an unused closet).   Mine was an early consumer deck with a belt drive, single speed of 33-1/3, model NL-33-H (hopefully I have recalled this model number right with my half-hiemers memory), after several hours, then many hours over several days and many sites, no one lists this model, nor have I found any photos of it.   it was a minor variant of the N-33-H as I recall, the metal deck plate on mine was rectangular rather than  square as it's more popular brother and had the hole for a Rek-O-Kut tone arm predrilled.  As far as the internet is concerned (so far) this unit does not exist.  Any literature I might have once had on it is no longer around.  But, the unit itself is here (until I kick the bucket and the relatives give it the heave-ho).  After many, many hours on the internet I gave up trying to find it.  And, amazingly enough, I can vividly recall the day I got it.   It was in an old style radio and electronic parts store called Radio Electric in Camden, New Jersey (pretty sure it was 1962).   [more nostalgia] They had a tiny room in the basement devoted to stereo stuff, it was 1/2 flight down from the entrance and the main sales area 1/2 flight up.  I had decided to splurge and get the then new, hot cartridge by Audio Empire to go with the new turntable I was picking up (and that cartridge in non working shape is also in my museum). At around $40 (more big bucks relatively speaking in them days) it was a stretch to add to the already expensive, $89, turntable I was getting.  As I gave the sales person my name and address (I was in nearby Moorestown, NJ for the summer on a coop job from school) he said, "your dad is downstairs".   I must have looked silly; so, they took me downstairs where I got to meet myself in the basement.  I was twenty one and this fellow with an identical first name, last name, and middle initial at about 40+ was a regular there and happened to be in the basement at the time I was there.  Different middle names; but, the same initial.  We had a good laugh over that and I told him to remember me in the old will.   Going back upstairs I found he already had put me in the will, as since I was now "a regular" simply by having the same name as one of their favorite customers, I got an extra 25% off my purchases from then on.  Good old dad #2.

Well enough of that nostalgia which has gotten me in enough hot water already.    

Maybe more some other time on this when my eBay hangover has receded,  Swamp Daddy