Another Level of Recycling
I signed up for a couple of recycle / “freecycle” email lists, one for Pinellas County, and the other for Manatee County. If you haven’t seen these, people who want to pass along items that they aren’t using will put up an “OFFER: item” type email, and people interested in using the item can respond and arrange to pick it up. I haven’t put up any “OFFER” emails yet, but I expect to do so as we start going through our boxes here. But I have responded to three of the offered items so far. One was a largish coffee table with a baby-proof modification of a rubber bumper on the edge. The second was for a couple of DVDs and a couple of VHS tapes. The third was the most interesting of the lot, as it was a Sony receiver.
The receiver model was a Sony STR-6065. It is an old, heavy receiver. As far as I can tell, it seems to have been manufactured around 1972 and offers something in the range of 50 watts per channel. The modern trend to digital media players and small plug-in amplified speakers has just about killed the urge to locate and use a largish component amplifier or receiver. The one issue noted by the previous owner was that the tuning knob kept falling off. I fixed that with a screwdriver applied to the set-screw in the knob. I plugged it in for a test this evening. The VU meter lit up, but the tuning panel stayed dark, so if I get ambitious, I might replace the 12V lamps inside. The disappointing news was that despite hooking up an FM antenna, I was not able to tune any stations. The AM side of the receiver worked fine, which isn’t very helpful, as my tolerance for talk radio or salsa music is pretty low right now. Plugging my trusty Sansa E280 digital media player into the auxiliary input worked, too. Even driving a pair of Radio Shack Minimus-7 speakers, the unit sounded pretty good. It would probably sound even better if I went after it with a DeOxit cleaning kit. I’m looking forward to using this for reviewing our compiled audio data. A decent amp is pretty much an indispensable part of an audio research toolkit.
For everybody who is looking at clearing out unused but usable items and doesn’t care to go through the hassle of selling on eBay or via a yard sale, I recommend the recycle “freecycle” email lists. I hope to do my share of sharing soon.
