Monster Cable Y-Adapter, Part 1
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| Posted on July 12, 2020 at 12:39:13 | ||
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Posts: 7332
Location: Bay Area Joined: December 11, 2000 |
Sophomore year of high school (1986-87) was the last time we had more guy friends, than girls. One of my friends/classmates, Jake, had parents who were divorced. During the school week, he lived with his mom in San Francisco, maybe a half-hour ride on MUNI from our school. On weekends, he lived with his dad, in some nebulous, far-off land, on the other side of the East Bay Hills. You see, for us San Franciscans, just going across the Bay to Oakland was a challenge. But Jake's dad lived in Orinda, which might as well have been a different planet. One foggy Saturday morning in the Spring 1987 semester, I met two guy friends, at the Montgomery Street BART station. We normally used this station's MUNI Metro level. But on this day, we had to read the BART maps and fare calculator, to find the Orinda BART station. We would meet Jake there. When we got to the Rockridge station, there was no longer any fog. Then it got dark, as the train headed into a tunnel. It emerged on the other side of the East Bay Hills. When we got off at the Orinda station, it was frickin' hot! In jeans and light jackets, we felt like fools. Trying to find the right exit, we looked lost. Jake was waiting near some exit gates. This being a Saturday, the lots were empty. Jake led us to his dad, who was waiting in a Volvo station wagon. Then I knew why Jake's parents were divorced; the dad was gay. But he was such a nice guy, and when he asked questions, I did not feel any pressure at all. Versus tiny and cramped SF homes, Jake's dad had lots of square footage. In the living room, he had NAD electronics, and I can't tell you what the other brands were. But he mentioned terms like "bi-amping," "splitter," and "crossover." I did not realize it then, but Jake's dad (not intentionally) was laying the groundwork for my later entrance into high-end audio.  Jake's dad asked us which new music had made an impact on us. One friend said that, because our school's mascot was the Indian, Anthrax's killer "Indians" was our unofficial but beloved anthem. I said that Slayer's Reign In Blood was like hell on earth. But currently, we were trying to come to grips with the all-instrumental Not Of This Earth, by Berkeley's Joe Satriani. Back in our school, some of us convened in study hall. Jake made an observation about those who had musical talent. If you could sing, you signed up for Mr. Land's choir. If you were a boy who played an instrument, you joined the school band. If you were a girl who played an instrument, you were funneled into the orchestra. My girlfriend at the time, CT, was academically in the top 10% of her class. CT knew how to play piano and clarinet. But her strict parents forbade her from taking activities which met after or outside of school. Thus, she was not in either orchestra or band. Her parents kept telling her to practice. Yet, if she said she wanted to be a professional musician, her parents balked. But anyway, I did not realize it then, but CT was paving the way for my future girlfriends to come from that small percentage, whose GPAs were north of 4.0. Because of Jake's living arrangement, he never came out to play sports with us on weekends. Nor did I ever get to meet his mom or sister, who was back east for college. Jake pointed out that if we guys held hands, we would be called fags.  When the Fall 1987 semester commenced, my guy friends stopped coming out. In came hordes of nerdy and mostly wussy girls. Many of them held hands. But no one called them fags. Even in the 2000s (above), our girls were still holding hands. While they did not hold your hand, they would come up behind you, and latch arms with you.  Our friend Skull lived on Hyde near Turk, just a block away from Hyde Street Studios. He swore that he had seen Joe Satriani walking towards and back from Market Street. Turns out that Skull was correct. At the time, Satriani was recording a new album, Surfing With The Alien. And he walked from the studio to the Guitar Center, which used to be located on 9th Street, south of Market. During this time, Skull, Roy, and I would get a few of our nerdy female friends to go to rock concerts. You feared that the girls would get harassed and beat up, so you were protective of them. But you know what? The girls held hands, and locked arms. By doing so, you felt solidarity. All of a sudden, you felt safer, as if the chances of getting mugged dropped. You would even give one of the nerd girls a piggyback ride, so she could see above the crowd. The icing on the cake was when the band performed a power ballad, and your female friend came to like you! You didn't realize it then, but they were laying the groundwork for you becoming a hardcore hi-fi rocker. In February 1988, a bunch of us, 2-to-1 female-to-male, went to SF's China Beach. Hardly anyone was there. Via a small boombox, we played Satriani's Surfing With The Alien. With no wind and fog, hearing the final song, "Echo," was pure magic. We did our arms-around-shoulders chain hug. The outdoor showers weren't really working. So Wayman and I went to the men's restroom, to wash off all of our sandy stuff. Four of the girls walked in, and Wayman, taken aback, uttered, "Goddamn, what are you doing?" In her dry and humorless diction, Cat said, "Don't you like us [girls] coming in here?" Karen said, "I thought you could use some help," and did just that, squeezing out the clothes and gear Wayman and I had rinsed off. One passerby stuck his head in, wondering why he had heard girls' voices emanating from the men's restroom. But that was it. He quickly split. Afterward, everyone went over to my place. It had two bathrooms, so that made showering off fast and easy. Meanwhile, our dirty clothes were in the wash.  I *think* I had ordered the Monster Cable Cramolin contact cleaner and enhancer and RCA Y-adapters from J&R Music World. The latter were used on two monaural sources: an original NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) and a VCR. Monster Cable IL-400 then went from these adapters to a Sony STR-AV780 receiver.  In the early-2000s, one of our old high school friends married a guy who was interested in audio/video. They moved to Hawaii, where she fell in love with the warm waters, which allowed her to take up surfing. These Hawaiian waters were so unlike the deadly-cold Ocean Beach and Bay waters around San Francisco.  She and her husband were recently back in the Bay Area. They went up to the Sonoma and Mendocino County coasts. Due to COVID-19, parking lots at State beaches were closed. But it's sparsely populated up there, so street parking was easy to find. While the waters are still deadly cold, she said they are a few degrees warmer than they used to be. A warmer climate means less upwelling. And less upwelling means less fog. But enough of that. She and her husband had been in possession of the Monster Cable Y-adapters since 1994 or so. These gold-plated adapaters hadn't been used in 20 years, so she returned them to me. It's like a piece of childhood just came back. I have no idea how much these adapters originally cost, but it can't be that much. They probably cost less than the Cramolin set. -Lummy The Loch Monster
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