Visual, LP storage and Audio Improvements

Gentle reader,

If you saw my last couple posts, you may have cringed at the way I set up the Center channel speaker. It was a temporary thing. Above is how it looked prior to my changes today.

We visited a new "super" thrift store, there's two new ones in our area, one called "Bee Thrifty" which is kind of low budget in operation and we're not even sure if it supports any charity as thrift stores traditionally do. A lot of the prices, for big stuff especially, are outrageous, and almost all the prices are written with a grease pencil. How LAST millennium! It's hard to get off, especially on wood.

The one we went to yesterday for the first time is very nice, nicer than "The Village" and at least as large if not larger. It's called SAVERS THRIFT SUPERSTORE. Very well organized with great prices, everything computer-printed prices with bar codes. We bought a LOT of stuff. Me far more than Nancy. I found a set of Zane Grey books, 19 matching and two from another publisher, all hardback and $1.99 each. I'd never read any of his books, and had found The U. P. Trail in paperback a few weeks ago and am now into him. Bought a bunch of other books including David Baldacci's latest (2012) The Innocent for $2.99(!), LPs and CDs and various nick-knacks. Their website is: www.savers.com and they support the Viet Nam Veterans of America.

Thursday, which is 30% off at Bee Thrifty, I went back and bought a homemade, & very well made, shelf that must have been built to house LP records. It is 13" deep, perfect for them, 35" wide and 75" tall, same as me. They wanted $89.99 for it but with 30% off, it was a more reasonable $63.

Got it home and had a dickens of a time getting the price off, hesitated to use WD-40 on wood, but that's what it took and PURPLE POWER cleaner removed the WD-40 residue as well as accumulated dirt. Hand rubbed in Old English lemon oil and it looks great.

Below, you can see it filled and the radios. The gap on the middle shelf is between regular Tschaikowsky and all the 1812 Overtures, freed from the little cabinet beneath the CD tower. The gap on the next shelf is between Mono compilations and composer-specific LPS. There is now room to buy more boxed sets as well!

I was able to move all the Classical LPs from their various places onto it, so finally they are all in one place. I moved the old cobbled together shelf out and was able to still have six of the radios on display. The other two, the "tombstone" replica and the Aria tube radio will be going on eBay. I found use for the extra set of speaker stands as you can see. The left radio, the GE is plugged in as it is the one I listen to, especially on Sunday nights Old Time radio shows. The one on the right is the one I upgraded with a larger co-axial car speaker. I use that when I'm working in the work room or outside. It sounds great as does the GE replica. Below is the Rock/Pop and Soundtracks/Scores now residing where most of the Classical LPs were. I now have room to buy more Jazz LPs.

One of the cool things I found at SAVERS was a new-in-the-box TV wall stand. Different brand than the ones that hold the BOSE 301s, but same width. Because the wall stud was about 6 inches to the right of the wall's center, I had to create a wooden bracket that I screwed to the stud and the bracket to the left side of it so that the speaker would be centered on the wall and in between the BOSE'. Here it is below:

This, of course, allowed me to remove that cobbled together center channel speaker stand and all the pieces of Lexan and foam tape that I'd placed under the Kenwood power amp and Sony receiver. Plus it looks a heck of a lot better as the two photos below attest to.

Below, is a close-up of the Sony receiver with the new-to-me OPPO DV-970HD universal player that replaces the Sony unit. It is OPPO's first universal player. Sounds great and has multichannel outputs for SACD playback. I'd bought a Sony SCD CE-595 five disc SACD/CD changer via eBay, but it will not detect SACDs so it was useless to me. Fortunately, the seller promptly refunded all the money and told me to trash it, which I can't do.

 

Below is a vintage UNIVERSITY corner horn speaker that I'd found at Bee Thrifty. It originally had a 12" full-range speaker, but someone had replaced it with a Wharfedale 10" woofer. They did a lousy job of it. I'd done a proper job and added the 4" by 10" horn tweeter to it. I don't have an amp that can handle a 16 ohm load, and had put it on eBay, but no takers. I'd also bought one of those carpet covered woofer cabinets that had the Alpine 10" woofer you can see below in it. eBay'd it and no buyers. So, I took the Wharfedale out, disconnected the tweeter, and installed the Alpine. Sounds AMAZING! On top is a Sherborne 75 watts-per-channel power amp that I'm going to use to power it. The crossover and double input terminals have arrived so that is my next project.

Below is the vintage Sony speakers I'd bought. I figured since the rest of the speakers all have wood or wood-looking veneers, I'd keep these and had sold the Wharfedale Diamond 7.1s that I'd been using for surround speakers.

These projects and the shopping has occupied most of the weekend. Saturday morning before it got too hot, I was able to figure out which of the two cooling fans on the Capri was blowing the fuse. I'd bought both, used, via eBay and it turns out to have been the far easier to replace main fan motor. Now, I can get back into the car, not worry about overheating and enjoy air conditioned comfort. Much as I love our old Ranger pickup, it's not exactly sporty which the Capri is. 

So, now you are up-to-date with what I've been up to. Been a lot of fun. Plus, Nancy had Saturday AND Sunday off this weekend, so we both got lots of quality time together.

Thanks for stopping by!

Scott