On Sunday I was biking around and stopped by a few yard sales in the manufactured home community down the hill. This park is always having yard sales and they're usually not that interesting, but one of the sales was offering this thing for $10, supposedly working:
[record scratch sound combined with bike brake sound]. Whoa, it's a... Technics SA-6800x. How many knobs and buttons and switches are on that thing? I examined it more closely and the answer is "a lot." Is this thing...quad? It's quad. I have no need for the quad features now that we're in the actual future, but more knobs and switches are never a bad thing, right? Plus three tape deck in/outs (!!!) so I can dub back and forth between any number of formats, both obsolete and non-obsolete.
I pick it up (with my car, not the bike - my bike heroism knows some limits), plug it in, and lo and behold, it does work, pretty much 100%. Knobs are a little scratchy, but a few twists later, things seem to be working OK. Definitely an improvement in both sound and fun over my previous adequate Denon receiver.
Plus, fun fact: My stereo now has pieces from the 70s (receiver), 80s (turntable), 90s (tape deck), 00s (CD player), 10s (Chromecast Audio), and 20s (work computer). And enough jacks to plug everything in. Thank you for reading this very nerdy entry.
