| OT: the only 'vintage' thing in my studio other than me [message #93815] |
Fri, 21 December 2007 13:25  |
TCB
Messages: 1261
Registered: July 2007
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Senior Member |
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So, a few months back an acquaintance owed me some money. Not a lot, a few
hundred dollars for doing a bunch of computer editing for a hip hop project.
He's a good guy, struggling to get a couple of local CT artists known. Yes,
people in the hip hop world struggle, a lot some of the time. Anyway, the
project was for a very good, edgy, female rapper and I think it came out
quite nicely. Then, my acquaintance had some personal money problems and
I was about to write the thing off as a complete loss. Not a huge deal, my
day job is so off the charts busy I only take work I enjoy doing anyway.
So I politely ask him about the money a two or three times and he's genuinely
upset he can't pay me. I don't hear anything for a while and then one day
he calls to say that he has two Technics 1200s that he'd be willing to give
me instead of cash. As an enthusiastic but not especially skilled DJ it's
kind of overkill for me, but what the hell, I take them. They're obviously
in need of some work, but they come with flight cases and have a certain
amount of cool to me because they've obviously been doing battle in the hip
hop trenches forever. My guy was a professional DJ for a long, long time
and the cases are covered with stickers from Public Enemy, Noriega, Tupac,
and probably a dozen others. They've been sitting in my studio, used only
occasionally, for a while but as I'm probably taking over a night at a club
again I thought I should get them some TLC
So I took them to the best turntable guy I could find in CT. He's a slightly
eccentric fellow but clearly knows what he's doing. There's fancy high end
tube amps for audiophiles on the shelves, next to Parasound amps and all
that kind of stuff. So I lug in my battered up flight cases and leave them
with him. Last night, they were done so I drove up to get them and hear the
diagnosis. I walk in and he says, 'Hey, it's the duct tape guy.' To which
I reply that no, I did not put duct tape in the inside of my 12s. He goes
on to describe the shape they tables were in. First, he said that when he
pulled the platters off there a thick coating of gunk, probably a combination
of spilled beer, cigarette tar, and who knows what. So much of it that he
was initially worried it might have ruined the motors in the decks. Luckily,
that hadn't happened. The bearings were 'bone dry' and the previously mentioned
duct tape had been used in various places. One headshell was wired incorrectly
and the leads were almost rotted out. All that was fixed and we fired them
up and they sound great.
But here's the funny part. I thought they were a pair, but my repair guy
flipped one of them over to show me the serial number. It was made in 1979!
That's only the second year Technics made the mkII, and it's freaking almost
30 years old. Then my repair guys said, 'These things are built like a safe.
I'm sure this one has another 30 left in it.' Now I just have to learn to
DJ as well as a guy who owns these should be able to.
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