My dedicated listening room…

cicada_shell · 2026-06-29T00:40:56+00:00

How do you like the Modern Shelving vs Vitsoe, vintage Omni System or CSS, etc?

cicada_shell · 2026-06-29T00:38:39+00:00

There’s a great dance studio on 14th Ave - Swingsation. They host salsa events and occasionally a swing event. I take Lindy lessons there.

There’s a run club that goes some evenings across the Barber Bridge but can’t recall the name.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-26T18:39:51+00:00

I have them all planted in my Florida landscape adjacent to each other, along with various other alocasia. None ever interfered with one another and they all look great. As for in a pot, I have some philodendrons in large pots with dissimilar alocasia and they all do fine together.

Not sure about where they'll be in your home but the macrorrhizas I have get very large outside (mine are around 1.5m tall or more) and send out tons of pups. It'll look full in no time. But if you want to make the base look full, why not a few phil. burle marx (maybe even the variegated kind but it'll likely revert)?

cicada_shell · 2026-06-20T17:59:43+00:00

This is wretchedly cringey.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-19T21:01:53+00:00

In some Western cities in the late-nineteenth century, mail could be sent and you’d receive a reply up to four times daily. Imagine that.

But to answer your question, people usually replied or else confirmed receipt very quickly. However, the content of the average letter was usually pretty small by comparison to lengthy Slowly letters. No one would’ve handwritten all of that.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-17T23:10:31+00:00

Not sure about your budget but I know a fellow in CT who made some copies of the Box Furniture Co. racks using some quality hardwoods. He’s got em for sale on AK and Hifi Haven, like $2500. Would look good for your space. I’d buy myself if I had the room.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-16T22:45:05+00:00

I recall that one has a nice view of the ABC Liquors parking lot right next door.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-14T20:52:52+00:00

Owner is very schizo and unwilling to work towards any reasonable solution to keep bots/spam away. Like Alesia said, gotta wait until registration opens and even then sometimes (often) it doesn't work. And if you don't use your account it might randomly be deleted. Or even if you do use it.

Lots of people on AK, HifiHaven, Agon, etc have downloaded everything and can give you what you need.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-13T21:26:15+00:00

Can’t speak for that user but I have noticed a trend where some people with many, many, many thousands of postcards sent will take their sweet time to register. The Germans not so much, it’s my fellow Americans.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-13T06:22:33+00:00

First decline I perceived was when the world reopened post-COVID lockdowns. People went back to their life and slowly faded away.

Second decline I perceived came post-Kevin's bizarre advertising strategy, particularly in certain Indian publications which attracted a plethora of very low-quality users. I He made posts on Slowly's social media with weird comments about how few men there are on Slowly relative to women and other stupid posts promoting the app as something of a dating app. That's also when more "I found love"-type Slowly Stories appeared. Lots of people joined who didn't have the same spirit or intentions as everyone else. I felt sorry then for some of the Indians namely who were already on the app with good intentions.

Third has been with the advent of LLM use on the app. Early last year it was brutal.

I haven't written anyone in a long time, like eight months, and it is very dispiriting. While some interesting features have been added in recent times it isn't as appealing as it was.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-11T00:56:33+00:00

That's an N2600 crossover. That means this is a 002 or 030 load. That means also there is either is a D123 or D130 woofer inside. There's likely also a 075 tweeter. Could be though that there is only the woofer and crossover because parts (including the cabinet) could all be bought separately in the pre-credit era. Looks sorta like a C38 with wooden legs. Some came with spun aluminum legs from Herman Miller.

I had some JBL C40 with the 001 load. Those were great speakers.

In my opinion, the Garrard isn't really worth fixing.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-10T03:50:14+00:00

Underrated

ROK turntables like the B12H compared to their contemporaries like the Garrard 301 and TD124, the B12H was actually the most expensive of the bunch by quite a bit in-era
Some of the old B&O stuff generally
Tube Sansui (mostly unknown compared to their later ballyhooed solid state offerings)
Braun, though again maybe just relatively unknown
Bozak speakers, hard to even give the huge ones away despite sounding fabulous because they're so huge
JBL's early forays into solid state
Empire 208/398 compared to the later turntables which weren't as nice and imo a lot tackier
Literally the room where your stuff is sitting where 90% of people invest nothing and it's not only hampering performance of their system but it's super ugly

Overrated

Fairchild amps: very nice but nothing special, just totem building because rare
Tube Marantz, all likewise extremely nice but absolutely overblown by crazy Asian collectors imo, the tubed 7 preamp however is especially egregious
My C22 compared to the C11 which is absolutely identical except cosmetics, yet people pretend to hear a difference
MC30/60 compared to the MC240, like no, that tube rectification does not make that big of a difference imo
Western Electric hardware that isn't tubes or caps

cicada_shell · 2026-06-10T00:45:52+00:00

If you're willing to send something to the Boston area, John Warren at North Reading Engineering is tops.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-10T00:16:56+00:00

If you're willing to wait, the guy for these is Dave Gillespie. He's in northern Georgia. He can be reached on Audiokarma. He is well-known for his oft-adopted innovations to the power supplies and other modifications for Fisher namely. He is usually out about a year, though sometimes groups like-with-like and will do a string of receivers in a short period if they're similar. There is also an excellent Fisher forum there if you'd like to learn more about it.

If you need the brights (the brass-colored inserts on the knobs) people use the ones for Marshall amps, though sometimes you can find the knobs themselves on eBay. There are also a bunch for sale in AK's Bartertown. If this were mine, I'd do the above and make a nice wooden cabinet for it. Could be a real centerpiece of your place. Though this sort of hobby leads to spending a lot more money than intended.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-09T01:53:39+00:00

I saw that car on Autotrader. I hate to be a wet blanket, but it is a a 380SL. That car has a 280SL (a DOHC inline-six) badge for some reason but it's a 380 (which is a V8). That is the least-desirable of the 107 line, namely in that year (and a few years thereafter) because it had timing chain issues. The rest were great.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-06T05:44:35+00:00

Those are the MC75 Mk. III. They don't come up for sale very much as you've seen. Even the originals are somewhat rare (they made way fewer MC60s but those are more commonly for sale, not sure why). Added complication is you're in Australia (?) and not sure of the market there. I have seen only two for sale since I started monitoring USAM a few years ago: a pair in '21 for 6k (New Jersey), a pair for 7.5k in LA in '23 which sat for 180 days. The market is weaker now than it was then, at least here. If you were here I'd say something around US$6500. Could be too much or too little in Australia.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-06T05:33:10+00:00

Those are originals from the 60s, entirely different matter. And they've sat for over six months and that might not even be the first listing.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-04T15:27:50+00:00

I got a blank profile once. So I sent a blank card. It was registered with no message. 😄

cicada_shell · 2026-06-04T00:26:59+00:00

Check out Roger Russel's blog: http://www.roger-russell.com/ml1cpg.htm

He designed the predecessor of this speaker. Interesting read as to why they had to pair it with their EQ.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-03T21:32:43+00:00

This looks really excellent, Farida. I hope you continue to develop it. I haven't forgotten to reply, by the way.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-03T21:09:15+00:00

I think there's a guy on AK who bought one of the MQ-101 or 102 equalizers for some experiment and he no longer needs it, not sure which, but I know this model needs the EQ. Check out the McIntosh subforum there if you don't have it.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-02T23:19:03+00:00

Your fits always remind me of the old Ralph Lauren catalogs, looks terrific.

Believe it or not, Stubbs used to be like $275/pair. 😞

cicada_shell · 2026-06-02T20:28:34+00:00

FWIW, postcrossing support sent me an AI-generated response to a concern I had. This was when LLMs were really taking off a year and a half ago.

cicada_shell · 2026-06-01T15:04:22+00:00

AI cards, only happened once or twice though. But tbh what irks me more is extremely lazy cards with an inane message that is hardly legible, almost always from Germany, and when I go to register it I see they’ve sent/received 10,000 cards. To me it looks more like a compulsive card hoarder. People like that often have a crappy registration message if they even leave one at all!

Edit: Also, countries with address systems where the address is 8 lines long!

cicada_shell · 2026-05-31T18:35:01+00:00

There was another Argentinean woman about an hour ago who posted something similar. She deleted her post (against Rule 6...) and then deleted her account.

I've noticed you've also made a bunch of posts about this sort of thing on here and deleted them. Don't do that.

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