Today I picked up the old Bang & Olufsen speakers from the stereo shop. They needed new speaker cones. I think I picked them up for no money at a boot sale, I can’t quite remember because I’ve had them for decades, hidden away in a storehouse. But when I picked them up today, the lads in the store said they were such great quality, the wood and the build, that this really was something worth fixing. As I have a Bang & Olufsen amp from 1964 (that I literally found) and my old original Sharp turntable from the seventies, I have the perfect set-up for another system, this time in the L’office, that’s the library and the office combined, and all for little cost. The system is so old that it is connected with DIN plugs, but is still a wonderful great sounding blast from the past, and giving another room sound.
I didn’t venture too far today, the stereo shop is close, but I did remember I went out. I had to make two trips, unable to carry two speakers at once. Before I went back for the second speaker, I dug out a CD player from under the bench in the front room. It had no mains power cord and I realised that I needed an output cord that went from a modern digital device (two RCA plugs) to a DIN plug on an old-fashioned amp. Where could I find such a cord? I went back to the shop and in two minutes, diving into a tangle of discarded cords, the exact rare cord needed popped up. It probably hadn’t been used for years and was randomly coiled amongst other sad castaways. They also found the correct two-pin narrow power cord I needed, entwined in the spaghetti, so now we have a CD player in the L’office too.
I don’t suppose there are many people out there that are excited about old stereo components, but there’s a lot of love in this shop. It’s the same in the record stores and the music shop I go to. It’s always disappointing when you go to a shop that has any kind of musical connection and the people behind the counter are, let’s say – unhelpful. We need enthusiasm from the bridge between interest and knowledge.
My mate Des came around and accompanied me for the plugging and then we sat and made the world’s problems worse by smartly coming up with few answers, frustratingly unable to simply push forward reason as an option. There’s an expression that was used by Rudyard Kipling:
“The phrase never the twain shall meet was used by Rudyard Kipling, in his Barrack-Room Ballads, 1892: ‘Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ Kipling uses a colonial lens to bemoan the lack of commonality and accord between the British and the indigenous East Indian”.
Music today has been Bob Marley – Exodus (1977), so good.