Audiophile Scrapyard Treasures

[Paul R]

Have you found something utterly cool in the scrapyard, at a flea market, or perhaps at your neighbor's garage sale? It's amazing what will occasionally turn up!

 

I just picked up a set of vintage speakers! Working, and sounding not too bad at all! Estate sale in my neighborhood. Just purely wonderful.

 

Oh - what were they?

 

Vintage AR9's without a scratch on em - $10

[esldude]

Got a Mac MX110 tuner/pre-amp and MC240 amp in pristine condition at an estate sale once. Mostly Telefunken tubes in them.

 

A couple odd Fisher tuners or integrated amps.

 

CTR eletrostatic tweeter from the days when everyone had mono rigs complete with teak cabinet for a couple bucks in a thrift store. Some Koss ESP9 ESL headphones at a pawn shop complete with original box and manual and test sheet. Koss even sent me new replacement leather ear covers as they had gone bad and the headphones had a lifetime warranty.

 

Friends have gotten some odd things. Acoustat 3's for cheap at a pawnshop. Best snag I think was a pair of working Quad ESL-63's that didn't sell at a police auction of recovered, but unclaimed property. Pretty close to just take them away price on the Quad's. Was the reason I ended up with some. I had to pay for mine, but liked those so much upon hearing them I wanted some of my own.

 

One I couldn't get were some Marantz 9's mounted inside custom end tables as furniture. They were having an estate sale, but were calling it part of an entire living room suit. Wouldn't separate it as it all matched. The price they wanted was too high. Still not something you expect to see turn up. Especially two of them.

 

Another odd useful find. B*K 747 Jet-tester tube tester. One of the better such to have. A place was throwing out old equipment, and a buddy spotted them being thrown in the dumpster. Ended up with two units. One worked, one didn't. I troubleshot and repaired the non-working one so my buddy let me have one. Still have it. Was taking some electronics courses at the time. Walked into an instructors office the next day, and he had of all things the book with settings on his shelf for that B*K 747 tester. He let me copy it and I was good to go. Real serendipity.

[thesurfingalien]

Here in Brasil the better audio-stuff is rare, even new, although one can find interesting stuff online at MercadoLivre Brasil - Onde comprar e vender de Tudo.. The same goes for the pawn-shops (basically used items stores) here...

 

However, vintage items (or just older stuff) that are sold for pennies or even put to garbage in other countries are sold here for ridiculous prices.

 

As an example, I saw an older model (pre HDMI) Yamaha surround receiver some time ago at a pawn-shop. At first I thought they had mistakenly added a zero before the dot... R$ 3000 (about 1500 US$). Even at the "new" price, including shipping and import-taxes (60% here), it would not get to 1500 US$!

 

But I have also seen a vintage (25 y/o) Pioneer amp in very poor condition for R$ 2250.

 

It seems the general notion here is that older=better, and you will pay for it. So I guess I will not get so lucky as you guys

 

Peter

[realhifi]

Yep. I have found a Marantz 7 tube preamp at a pawn shop and once found a huge JBL Paragon speaker at a pawn shop also.

Sold them both to audio nuts in Japan.

 

Ps. I always have liked the AR speaker line. Those were a steal!

[samirevah]

This was several years ago, but a friend of mine who knew I was into audio told me his church had upgraded their PA system from "some old tube stuff" to a more modern system. He asked if I had any interest in taking that old junk off his hands. I said sure, why not. It turned out to be a pristine Marantz model 7 preamp and model 8 power amp!

I got many, many years of enjoyment out of that "old tube junk"!

[mwheelerk]

Just curious.

 

Are you going to these locales (swap meets, pawn shops, estate sales) specifically for vintage audio gear or was each of these occurrences just happenstance? If you are searching for it how often does something interesting pop up?

[Brian A]

I got a phone call one evening around 1987 from a man named John Lishman. He had gotten my home phone number out of the phonebook. John was an audiophile since the 1940s. At breaks at work, we talked often about his old days of audiophile; matching cartridges to phono pre-amps etc.

 

John said, “My wife and I are retiring and moving to a condo. I found that Dynaco I mentioned so many times in our conversations. If you want it, come and get it. It is currently in the back of my son's truck and, if you don't want it, it is going to the dump in one hour.” I dropped everything.

 

At the time, neither John nor I really appreciated the value of the amp. It crapped out (corroded tube sockets/shakey quad capacitor) in 2008 but I fixed it up again and made substantial upgrades. I like to think it can now hold its own against the best.

[realhifi]

I got a phone call one evening around 1987 from a man named John Lishman. He had gotten my home phone number out of the phonebook. John was an audiophile since the 1940s. At breaks at work, we talked often about his old days of audiophile; matching cartridges to phono pre-amps etc.

 

John said, “My wife and I are retiring and moving to a condo. I found that Dynaco I mentioned so many times in our conversations. If you want it, come and get it. It is currently in the back of my son's truck and, if you don't want it, it is going to the dump in one hour.” I dropped everything.

 

At the time, neither John nor I really appreciated the value of the amp. It crapped out (corroded tube sockets/shakey quad capacitor) in 2008 but I fixed it up again and made substantial upgrades. I like to think it can now hold its own against the best.

 

The Curcio is good but if you can get ahold of an ARC modded ST70 and hear what that little gem ca do. I have seen them occasionally on the used market and they are superb little amps.