Keeping Hifi Equipment For Sentimental Values

Yeah, it's easy to sit around and remember, although the years have dulled our memory and the sound we thought we heard may be nothing realistic. Despite my failing memory, I can't get rid of my B&W 801F's. I remember them as my first big floorstander, full from top to bottom. Driving them with a succession of heavy weight solid amps was intoxicating. I don't think I ever considered the bass to be 'boomy', maybe it isn't. I listen now to two systems, one with Meadowlark Blue Heron II's, the other with Merlin VSM-MXE's, both superb to my ears, but I just can't put the B&W's on the market. ( I do need to rid myself of a pair of Harbeth 7es_3's though)!.

I still have the first, and second pair of speakers I ever purchased. The first pair are vintage 1965 Warefdales that sounded awful, but the cabinets are very nice, and solid . They weren't worth anything so I kept them. Eventually I used the cabinets and replaced the drivers and xover as a diy project. Now they sound great and I use them in a spare system.

The second pair are vintage 1975 Infinity Monitor IIas that I bought in college. They're still all original, in near pristine condition, and sound fantastic. I still listen to them regularly.

Up until about 5 years ago I still had some electronics from my college days, but finally parted with them as there was nothing special about them. I still have the speakers because I like them, that's all.

I still have my beautiful condition Nakamichi CR-1A tape player. I used to make a lot of recordings from CD. At the time cdp's were in their infancy and I could get the tape to sound awfully close to the player. I still have lots of the tapes I made; I play them now on the garage rig when my sons and I play basketball in the driveway.

I think of all the time I wasted making tapes, checking levels of each song, baby-sitting it through all the recordings, then making sure to fade out the last song perfectly before the leader. But, I enjoyed making tapes for other people of music I thought they would enjoy.

Back then, Nak decks kicked the stuffing out of every other tape player, and then some. They were THE machine! Even my entry level Nakamichi was awesome in performance. I couldn't get over how little hiss there was in a recording from disc. I would record them in Dolby C and play them back in Dolby B to get more of the treble presence but not the hiss.

Remember Metal cassette tapes? I found that I could get nearly the identical result with Chrome (type II) tapes for less cost. My favorite was the Maxell XLII-S, one truly sweet 90 minute tape, with an ultra cool black casing. I didn't really like the TDK or BASF so much, but the Fuji tapes I thought sounded good. :)

The Nak sits in my office rig; I should take my tapes there and reminisce. The sound would kill me, but the memories would be sweet.

I know someone who still has the first car he bought back in the day. A '68 Camaro, he restored it to pristine condition.

I should have emulated a few folks here and kept my B&Ws! Anyway that's history now. At least I know tape players are still going strong after all these years, and I thought they were already gone for good and went into extinction. Yes, there are some good old memories of making copies using the "high-end" metal or chrome Maxell tapes on my Yamaha cassette deck. Unfortunately, I didn't make enough copies(probably less than 10) to warrant any sentimental values to the cassettes, and they ended up in the trash years ago when I cleaned up storeroom. The Yamaha cassette deck didn't survive the test of time either and went earlier.