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Stick with me...
I picked up a cabinetless Fisher 500c at an estate sale semi cheap ($65 with TWO sets of Fisher Speakers from the early 60's and a set of end tables...some folks just don't know how to price stuff), got it home and plugged a very crappy Sony dual cassette into the beast, screwed down a set of hand refinished AR-2's (another estate sale, $10), dropped a store bought cassette of Supertramp's Breakfast In America. I ran side 2 first, as that's what was closer to being ready. "Take The Long Way Home" is how that side starts. Honestly, I have heard that song more than 500 times in my life, more than a thousand, A LOT, anyway, you too probably. Well, I'm here to tell you that I heard MORE of that song in that initial Fisher/Acoustic Research/Piece of Crap Sony playing than I had ever heard before. Immediately, from the sustaining piano at the beginning and being able to hear the individual breaths in SPACE between harmonica wails, I said to myself, this was THE stereo setup that I'd been looking for my whole life. The tapehead in me feels it's important to say that this WAS the A&M Chrome clear re-release version and not the off white original version. Music that shines...
Step 1 was to clean the green coating of whatever it was that was on the 500c off of it. The Fisher was kept in a basement, built into a giant console, and it was covered with a kind of a sticky stuff, and it seemed to be on every exposed surface. I settled on Lysol 4 in 1 cleaner, as I was unsure of the green stuff's biological component. I used it sparingly and now all the dingy surfaces are a back to a clean metal. I didn't want to, but I felt I HAD to remove the tubes to clean the surfaces, so I did it gingerly, one at a time. I had a can of DeOxit and gave each one of the tube sockets a spritz, and wiped the metal prongs. I also did an app of DeOxit on the speaker connectors and the input and output rca jacks. For not having a cabinet, It was looking GOOD.
Step 2 was the install of the Nakamichi. I opted for the BX-1 (I am a tapehead and have a few), again estate sale priced at $25, a little high actually. It's not there best machine by a long shot, but it should trouce that Sony.
As Alec Baldwin said "Third prize is You're Fired". When everything is reattached it sounds like something is terribly wrong. Crackly, static, general badness. The volume is an uncontrollable mess, there's sound coming out of both my speakers, but it's not good, I can hear music, but it's buried under static and I feel like I killed it. Can anyone offer me any where to START, because I'm feelin' REAL BAD.
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