Must Have Let the Magic Smoke Out of the Home Stereo...

 

Electronic things such as guitar amps, public address systems, cell phones, riding lawnmowers and home stereo units have magic smoke inside. Sometimes this smoke gets out and occasionally I have seen it escape it's container in very visible ways and when this happens said unit does not work anymore. This happened to my home stereo receiver this week. It was a 1990s Teac model that had served well powering turntable, cd player, cassette deck, two sets of speakers and a cobbled together bluetooth apparatus that could broadcast to outdoor speakers. 

 I purchased the Teac brand new and it's demise started when I noticed the digital display no longer indicated which accessory was inputting the sound. No problem, I'll just push buttons till I get sound. I listened to my new Hot 8 Brass Band cd, "Big Tuba" and a couple more. I did notice there was no display on the volume level which is semi important as I set it by the number that sounds best according to my location in the house or on the property somewhere. Next time I tried to play music there was no sound and it brought to mind a rhyme I bastardized from an old tune by bluesman Son House. 

I've had four stereo receivers in my life,

One bought by my mother,

One from my sister, 

One given by that good girl,

And one from my wife...     

Actually I have probably not owned that many and the sad fact is in this mad modern world of enshitification you can't go into a store and put your hands on a unit, maybe actually listen to it and buy what you want. I browsed on line all kind of info on home theater systems, bluetooth, karaoke inputs and more none of that are actually things I want. I did see a promising unit of an unfamiliar brand that seemed to do some attractive things such as play USB drives and record directly directly to them which would be handy to get the tunes on my old records into a format that would play in a late model automobile but besides being throwaway cheap junk it seemed you might need a pre amp for the turntable. That's not a good look to the budget manager on location to buy something and then immediately buy it a present.

So for a replacement I browsed online at used gear. The exact unit I am replacing is available which is tempting in terms of the learning curve but at $100+ the argument could be made for buying new as the level of quality I require in the digital world has become cheaper. Instead of this I turned to ebay and purchased a Panasonic made in Japan unit (used to be a good thing) that looks pretty simple for $40 plus $20 for shipping. 

Hopefully this will last till I forget how to hook all this up or how I want to listen to music is no longer valid in this world.