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The dumbest stereo experience ever!

Hello all. I went through a divorce 20 years ago. I really needed to convert some equipment into cash. I sold amongst other things my prized Sony TC 880-2 open reel recorder. I had a lengthy conversation with the buyer typical of us lovers of gear. I told him my situation and he said he would sell it back to me when I got back on my feet down the road. OK, fair enough. I lost track of him as this was pre Audiogon. I managed to locate him five years later. Someone informed me that he had 125 open reel decks and his wife wouldn't let him buy any more. (terrible woman!) I got him on the phone and after another lengthy chat I asked him if I could buy it back. He didn't want to sell it back as he said he didn't even have time to play with it yet. OK, I thought; I'm a horse trader. SURELY I have some bargaining power. I have many studio open reel tapes. I could trade him some of them plus cash in exchange for the Sony back. I asked him what kind of music he listened to. Here is what he said "Oh, I don't listen to music. I just like to watch the reels go around". I was dumbfounded. I told him to have a nice day and I hung up the phone. Can anyone top this one? Joe
jnovak
parabolic
106 posts
 
Not sure I can 'top' your story, but here's mine.

A friend and I got into a conversation about my new acquisition (Martin Logan reQuests) and commented that my Dalhquist DQ10s were "ugly as sin".  I found that statement amusing coming from a guy that doesn't have a single matching piece of furniture in his house.  In fact, he doesn't even have a decorating THEME (you know, like... Early American, Contemporary, French Countryside...), all his stuff is 'hand-me-down'.  His whole house looks as though he just drove a truck to the nearest Salvation Army and picked up whatever they had just to fill his rooms.  And the kicker is that he has a Porsche in the garage and can afford to buy pretty much anything he wants.

So, I guess I'll just file this experience under: "different strokes..."

koestner
683 posts
 
I knew someone who insisted his amp was the best because it went up to 11. Oh..wait ... that might have been a movie.
koestner
683 posts
 
OK this really is true. When I was a small kid I was given an AM/FM clock radio. I actually thought that I was supposed to switch it to AM in the morning and FM at night because I thought FM was really PM, only that mine said FM due to a problem with the printing and a bit of the "P" didn't print. Well, I was only about 7.
ghosthouse's avatar
ghosthouse
4,321 posts
 
Ha, koestner.  Good one.  Even at the young age of 7, some of us were trying to make sense of our world!  Hope you continued that trait and today's results, whatever they end up being, don't discourage you.  
bwaslo
51 posts
 
About 40-some years ago, I was a service tech at a TV/Stereo repair shop, and they took a contract as factory service for several very cheap brands of console stereos.  I went out on a service call at an older lady's house (she was probably younger than I am now, it just occurred to me!).  Her complaint was that the little red "Stereo" light would light on and off out when she was tuning through different FM stations.  Had a hard time convincing her that the light wasn't broken.

Another -- Not a stereo story, but we were also service reps for a brand of built-in burglar alarm systems.  They weren't designed with any consideration for RFI, and there was one installed in a house near to an FM radio station tower.  Every morning when the station came on-air, it would set off the alarm.  The manufacturer had us try this and that (capacitors across varying things) but of course we couldn't tell if we had fixed it till the next morning. Trial fixes went on for a few days. But one night, problem solved -- burglars broke in and stole, among other things, the main unit of the burglar alarm system.
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