ava @aurora@social.bau-ha.us

it lives! some disassembly, some grease, some bending things back where they belong, some cleaning. and a different pickup, the one in it would only play the right channel. of course i had a spare pickup for a 1970s gdr record player, who do you think i am, some kind of normal person? and i swapped out that west german classical music for something more appropriate.

look what i just found on the street! and carried home several kilometeres, and it's fucking heavy, and now my arms hurt, and i really shouldn't be left alone around old audio equipement. but it's cute!

von wegen im sozialismus war alles grau

it's cold as fuck here, but at least that cleared up the sky - which is pretty nice, haven't been able to see that many stars from my window in a long time

i'm out of cassette decks, so i did this thing today. not much wrong with it, had to replace the lcd lightbulbs (my bulbs were too small for the original blue bulb condoms, so instead i used orange ones in the right size) and cleaned the laser. it's a philips cd210, and for complicated reasons these still sell for around 40€.

ok, so this deck really must have been used a lot. sound was a bit dull, kinda missing the heights. so i tried demagnetizing the heads. i don't really do that anymore, as i've never seen an audible difference, but this time it really did help - heights are back, sound is better, 10/10, would disassemble again.

not another tape deck today, but the same as before. the akai still had some problems, autostop was unreliable (which meant autoreverse, the main feature of this deck, also wouldn't work), motor control was kinda fucked (tape would be way slower in reverse, that should not happen), and it threw a belt and rewind/ff stopped working. realigned the reed switch, disassembled & cleaned the motor, replaced belt, and cleaned a bunch of switches. and painted the replacement knob. better now.

yet another day, yet another tape deck. nothing really interesting about that one, had a bent spring that was making noise, a switch not making contact, and the dirtiest tape paths i've seen in a long time. it's quiet now and works fine again. i really don't like these plastic decks from the 90s, not my style at all, they always look and feel really cheap, even when they're not.

another day, another tape deck: the drive belt in this one turned to a black sticky goo. eww. cleaning up is the hardest part, that stuff is really hard to remove. there was also a broken latch in one of the switches, replaced that with a paperclip. polished the glass, replaced some missing screws, and it's working again. 😄

i found some stereo potis! wrong value, and for horizontal mounting (they came from a mixer), but i have a file and a schematic, so whatever. of course the deck had mechanical problems as well, one slipping belt, one broken lever, one stuck hinge. and i replaced most lightbulbs, which is not that easy as two of them are mounted inside the vu-meters. polished the glass, found a replacement for the missing knob, and...it works! and looks kinda nice!

started with this one, akai cs-732d. used to be a pretty decent deck back then, and they are still sought after. the reason it looks that terrible: a really thick layer of nicotine combined with basement dust. ew. frontplate is soaking in hot water now, i started with the rest and reached a dead end for now: one of the potis is broken beyond repair, and i don't have a matching replacement. :(

well at least i have enough to do now that i'm stuck at home. i'm the person that always get's these "i was going to throw this away/i found this and thought maybe you want it" calls, and this is what accumulated over the last months. while most of these things are pretty much worthless (probably 10, 20€ if they work and i sell them), some of these sell for >300€ (if i get them working), and that would be great, my other jobs are canceled right now...

still working on this thing, and i got something done today! the record player works again :) i rebuilt a broken lever, glued a broken switch, and re-lubed the whole thing. some parts needed treatment with a heat gun before they started moving at all.
now i just need to source a pickup for it, because of course dual used a proprietary mounting system. oh, and fun fact: this actually has all the mech for a record changer, it's just missing the record spindle. i might just get one...

i know i spend most of my time complaining about hardware, so i just wanna do some hardware appreciation: i just realized i've used the same music player for over 12 years, and it just keeps on working. <3 it's on its 3rd or 4th battery, i switched to rockbox a couple years ago, that's all. the original 30gb hdd still works fine, which is pretty cool for a 17 year old device that's been in daily use most of its life (and still is!).

(og2-23 does not, because og2-23 is old as fuck and has no xy-mode, which means i need to hack it)

eo213 says trans rights

@bauhaus_fm kein kabel? kein problem. heute mit studiogast cisco (klingt erstaunlich gut)

had a job recently where i got to work in a cinema projection room where they have two of these enormous czechoslovakian 35mm projectors, and this amazing construction with a system of dozens of guide rollers and pulleys running the film through the whole room and onto these giant spools. too bad they are only used once every few months nowadays.

a friend showed me some freecad basics and we constructed and 3d-printed a new counter-reset-button for my tape machine :) really happy with the result, that button had been missing ever since i got the machine (8 years ago?), and spares for 50+ year old equipment are impossible to get.

aber es gab auf dem weg auch schöne neue graffitis!