Thrift store finds?


Your experiences on any thrift store finds?

I just snagged a Technics SL-PS70 CD player for $5.50 Cdn. the other day. Brought it home took the cover off to see under the hood and it was clean and nicely built inside. Wiped the dust off the unit and fired it up. Was not expecting much from it as my feelings on MASH dacs were low in expectations. But low and behold, she sounds pretty nice. Good etching of vocals and instruments, fairly deep soundstage, a nice rounding of notes, not tinny or edgy, not a ton of air in sound but a pretty nice sounding machine.

I like its brawny build. It's got a nice display that can be switched off, gold plated jacks and even a digital out. I dug out some old cony of mags and found it to be a rather pricey unit for 1990-91 between $600 and $800 Cdn brand new. The old Canadian Sound and Vision mag of the day had two of their four editors pick it as a critic's choice pick for 1991 in the $500-$800 range.

Anyways for $5.50 a nice higher end Made in Japan player of the day.

Comment and / or your thrift store finds?
les_creative_edge

Showing 1 response by jlc76

The Goodwills in Austin (and Houston) now have employees that recognize good gear and records and if they don't take them for themselves they put them in a bid case which quickly gets out of hand. I have given up on the "chain" thrift stores and found more gold at the mom and pop outfits, especially in the surrounding smaller communities.

As for my best find audiowise, other than a slew of turntables which I did fix up and flip when I was working in a record store in the mid 90's (pre-ebay) my best find was a pair of KLH 20s for $5 and some Pioneer HPM 60s (tweeter was blown in one) for about the same price.

As for the guy saying he was going to buy them, I would have gone to the manager and offered an amount for all of them and see if the guy could match it right then and there (assuming there was some good stuff in there). $50 would probably have done it. On a similar note, Half Price Books was notorious for having the employees take the best stuff (I have several friends who still work there and they use to get some killer rare stuff for cheap). A while back mgmt got wise and now they limit their hold bins and the amount they can purchase. They can also "check" items out which they take home and copy. The quality of their stock has gone up immensely.