The Five Dollar Bill and How I Spent It

Five dollars. What does that get you these days? Two Monster energy drinks? A medium fast food combo? Like 53 Arby melts? What if I told you that five dollars bought me a chunk of history? Well believe it readers. Believe with all your heart. I present to you: The Realistic TR-822 8-Track Cassette Player and Recorder aka A Snapshot of the Seventies.

The TR-822 with her cover slipped off for inspection

A bargain if you ask me

Now, you might say to yourself: "Where is this idiot going to get 8-track tapes?". Would it surprise you if I told you I had a few NOS unopened 8-tracks in a box in my garage? Yeah, I know, seems like only something a hoarder would keep on hand but, by some miracle, a regular jamoke like me had such a box. So I unwrapped a James Gang tape, popped her in, and glued my eyes to the twin VU meters in anticipation of some jammin'-ass needle sweepage. Wrong. I heard some whirring from the cavernous recesses of the wooden cabinet but no audio output. Time to get the screwdrivers.

Yeah, right. Nice try.

So, it turned out that something very important was missing in here: the drive belt. This is not rare, rubber belts were never meant to last more than a decade or two. I don't have documentation, but style and build wise, I would guess that this piece of equipment was manufactured in the 1970's or early 1980's, putting it at around 40 years old. In that span of time, the rubber belt that turned the drive wheel inside the machine had become goo. Let me tell you in case you have never had the pleasure, removing the goo is a pain in the ass. Isopropyl alcohol is your best friend when cleaning belt goo from the drive wheel and the motor pulley.

There should be a belt somewhere in this picture. Can you guess where?

Belt goo is some nasty shit

Once cleaned, the pulleys were ready for a new belt. Problem is, I'm not going to order a belt for a five dollar 8-track player. Spending twice the amount you paid for an 8-track player for a single replacement part is idiotic. Even I have my limits. You see, even when they were mint, 8-track players sucked. They have terrible speed and pitch control, the tapes are built like shit, and whatever means of signal reproduction these things use is just terrible. The best case scenario with an 8-track is slightly warbled playback. I just bought the thing because it looked cool, not because it was some kind of audiophile wet dream. So the cheap and easy solution was to rig it up with a standard rubber band. However, the funny thing about rubber bands is that when you don't need one, they are everywhere. When you need one, they are nowhere. No matter, rubber bands are cheap, right? Wrong. I am not going to name names, but I went to a big box office supply store to buy a bag of rubber bands under the false assumption that one could buy rubber bands in units smaller than a one pound bag. Therein lies the rub, kids. This office supply store had only bulk quantities at ten dollars per bag. Conveniently, all of the small bags that would normally line the pegboard wall of rubber bands were out of stock. Note to office supply stores: DON'T PUT BULK MERCHANDISE IN RESEALABLE ZIPLOCK BAGS! So, after "finding" some stray rubber bands, I went back to the task at hand.

The liberated band stretched into place

After reassembling the case, I popped in that James Gang tape, plugged the player into my receiver, and fired this mutha up. Ahhhhhh. Just like I remembered. Pure shit. The James Gang never sounded so terrible. But, for some reason, those sweeping needles coupled with the loud echoing clunk of the track selector banging its way down to the next track still makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. For some people, these shitty tapes were a way of life. Jamming out in the car meant cranking up the volume on your in-dash 8-track player and just rocking out to the warbling sounds of your favorite band. Much respect if you lived through that era. I fixed this beast in your honor. I will subject my ears to this mangled mess of sound as a way of paying my dues just like you did. I won't take Hi-Fi sound reproduction for granted ever again.

"You need some new hobbies," said no one ever.

Well, I guess I found myself a new hobby. Yep, I'm gonna try my hand at restoring speakers. Well, not restoring per se, rather just the process of refoaming the woofers on speakers. But this shit is still gonna be heaps fun, son. You might be wondering what drove this sudden urge to just randomly start refoaming speakers, and for good reason I suppose, I mean it is kind of an odd thing to just pick up out of the blue. It comes part and parcel with a sudden unexplained urge to piece together a vintage console stereo system. I'm talking about a full blown, ballin'-ass, woodgrain cabinet, analog dial, warm incandescent lit 70's era stereo component system. Oh yeah, I know, who doesn't want that setup, right? The only problem with building such a setup is the physical deterioration these components suffer at the hands of Father Time. This isn't an issue with the stereo receivers and components as much as it is with the speakers. A blast from some Deoxit on the switches and rheostats, and most components are good to go, but speakers need a little bit more help. The problem with them is the foam surrounds that serve as the speakers suspension become brittle over time and eventually crack and split. I personally blame MC Hammer. It was Hammer Time that blew out all of the woofers that had the misfortune of living through the early nineties. The end goal here is to buy a set of old Bose 501 floor speakers and restore them for my future ballin' console system. I think that they epitomize the the 70's era floor speaker in every way.

Oh yeah, the Bose 501. Sexy. So fuggin' sexy.

They are wood veneered, they have the beige/brown cloth covers, and they just look the part. But before I commit money to a set of 501s and fuck them up beyond belief trying to "learn" on them, I'm gonna experiment on a more modern set of Infinity Sterling SS-2002s that I bought from the Habitat store for $4.99. I am currently waiting on my surround kit to arrive from the nether reaches of eBay, but here is how the project is starting off.

Infinity Sterling SS-2002s. $5 for a pair. A good starting point.

Here is the separation of the foam surround on the woofer.

The 6.5" woofer was carefully coaxed from the speaker.

The old surround was removed from the basket and cone and a bit of isopropyl alcohol was used to remove the old adhesive.

I removed as much adhesive from the cone as I was comfortable with. I was scared to go gnat's ass on it for fear of damaging the cone.

Well, the saga will end here for now. Hopefully when the parts arrive in the mail, everything will go together like it's supposed to. My only fear is that I have to complete this task without shimming the voice coil because I am scared to cut the dust cover from the voice coil. That is the proper way to do it, cut the dust cover off, shim the voice coil so it is perfectly centered, then adhere the new surround. Right way, wrong way, my way. Guess which one I'm gonna choose. To be continued.........

Why Am I Trying To Restore A Beta Player?

What am I doing with my life? I just spent an hour carefully tearing down a Sanyo Betacord VCR that I found at the thrift store in an attempt to figure out why the tape loading mechanism and playback drive are FUBAR. All of that effort was put forth just to find out that a belt had melted on the counter assembly and made a real fucking mess of things inside this unit. On top of that, I just found out that this particular model video cassette recorder is near impossible to find a belt kit for. Seems that every other Sanyo Betacord unit going all the way back to 1979 has a service parts kit available, but for some reason the VCR 4200, made in 1982, does not. But that's not the worst part about this whole purchase/repair/obsession fiasco. The worst part was the sudden realization that for some reason, I am actually dedicating time (and contemplating spending money) trying to repair a Beta tape player made in 1982, just so I can watch recorded episodes of Wishbone and possibly some Ghostwriter. Also, when I consulted YouTube for some visual instruction on disassembling the tape load mech, every narrator and/or Beta enthusiast seems to be, well, to put it nicely, a socially awkward basement nerd. Fuck. I am becoming one of them. One of the Beta enthusiasts. The scary thing is the fact that the $450 professionally refurbished Beta players I found online don't even seem like an unreasonable option to me at the moment. The cost to awesome ratio calculations keep coming back highly favorable of the restored Betamax. So, for now I am going piece this 4200 back together, put it away until I can weigh my options, and then immediately freeze my credit card in a block of ice, lest I end up with a crisp, mint condition, fully refurbished, fully warrantied Beta VCR. Hey, loyal readers, do you have a Beta player you want to get rid of? If you don't, maybe you want to raid your older family members' houses and find me one. Yeah, that seems like something you want to do, right? Find one. Please? (I currently have one pending lead and am scouring EVERY thrift store I can find)

case open

drive motors and belts

I'll never remember how all this shit goes back together anyways

Calculate Your Way to Survival

Seems to me like we are inundated daily with all kinds of shows about survival. Survive with a buddy, survive by yourself, survive the desert, survive the jungle, survive anything. If it has to do with survival, there is a show about it. One thing I have taken from these shows is the immediate and very real need for cordage in emergency situations. Enter the para-cord bracelet. It is a bracelet that is made from roughly eight feet of 550 mil spec parachute cord. The cool thing about the bracelet is that it can be worn everyday, and if needed, can be unraveled easily so that the cord can be utilized for any number of things. You can even separate the inner stranding within the cord to create even more smaller cordage. Cool right? Well, I thought so. So imagine my child-like excitement when I saw para-cord, buckles, and instructions on how to make para-cord bracelets at the store. IMPULSE BUY, MOFOS! I rushed home and tackled this project while enjoying some Full House. Once I had completed my own handmade piece of survival gear, I looked online to see what other people were up to with their para-cord. That's when an Instructables article about para-cord watchbands caught my eye. Me likey. Double utility is always a good thing. A watch and some emergency cordage, could it get any better? With my brain power at the wheelhouse, you know it can. Introducing the para-cord calculator watch!

Oh, yeah. I'm gonna calculate my way to survival with this thing. As far as I know, this is the very first para-corded calculator watch. Numerous spirited Google searches for similar products turned up nothing. Most people are para-cording Swiss Army watches or Casio G-Shocks with barometers and thermometers and altimeters, all forms of utilitarian watches, but no one had the foresight to para-cord a calculator watch. Do you expect me to draw out long division in the sand with a stick under great duress? I don't think so. When roving bands of mad-men put a wooden shank to your throat and demand that you calculate the height of a tree using basic trigonometry, you better be prepared. I know I will be. Then when I'm done calculating, I strike while they are in awe of my post apocalyptic mathematical prowess by unraveling my watch band and choking them all to death with mil spec para-cord. Jackie Chan style. Byaaaah! This is the best idea I have had since Bug-Out Fanny-Packs (tm). "Don't let your back-pack make you a target, conceal your goods in a conveniently located Bug-Out Fanny-Pack!". I'm still fleshing that idea out. 

Lookin' good in the 'hood. calc watch+para cord=WIN

All credit for the original idea and instructions go to Stormdrane over at Instructables. Here is the article I used to learn how to make a paracord watchband.