A story to make you all cry

[JASIII]

I just remembered all of this recently: I live in Green Bay, Wi, very near the university of wis-green bay. I went there and most of my friends were music majors, so i hung out in that building a lot, took music classes, etc. the campus was built around 1969-70. on the second floor of the studio arts building there is/was a recording studio. a few years ago they completely re-did the whole thing, modernized it, digital, etc. i can recall when i first started there the "studio" was completely un-used and not in working order, the control room was used as a faculty members office. Long story short, the "old" studio had huge metal racks full of "gear", vintage 1970. I have no idea what the stuff actually was except that there was a LOT of it and and it was huge, heavy, vintage stuff, don't recall seeing any tubes though. But the console......I can't remember the brand but it was huge and old and battleship grey and made of steel and looked like something from Abbey Road, there were 2 huge JBL monitors mounted on the walls. the tape machine was covered with a cloth and lots of junk piled on it, never really saw it. About 3 years ago (before I was into recording) the school decided to "update" the studio and built a new, modern digital studio. My friend was a music major and told me a story about how a bunch of them , armed with screwdrivers, dis assembled the whole thing, piled the "junk" up and had it hauled away! I heard the guitar instructor made off with the JBL monitors, but the rest got scrap heaped, I believe. I want to cry. I probably could have had all of it for free. Why, God, why? End of sad, sad story......

[djdrake13]

AHHHH now i would shoot myself in the head.

[Devlars]

.....why would you share that sort of story and cause this sort of reaction. That's awful, awful, awful. You need to do this to your friend for helping participate in such a tragedy!

[Rob Christensen]

That story makes me feel really good about our audio guy at Humboldt State, Glen Nagy. While we don't have a studio recording program here, we do have a couple of Audio Production classes which are tied in to the film program. Several years back the university radio station went on a similiar "modernization" bent and threw out a couple of UA LA-4 compressors, a couple of Otari MX 5050 1/2" reel-to-reel machines, and who knows what else. Glen was smart enough to snag the gear for his audio classes. These machines are now happily in use in HSU's all-analog Audio Production 1 class, which I'm currently enrolled in. Needless to say I'm loving every minute of it and feel fortunate to have an instructor who has that kind of insight.

[joelpatterson]

At times like this... I always for some reason recall the lyrics to a cheesy song that was in a TV movie... I think it was the title of the movie... a surfing movie, and the ballad/theme was a sad kind of Brian Wilsonish rip-off...

"Baby, the rain must fall..."

[Coco]

The airport in my city auctioned off 6 UREI 1176 comps when they upgraded their pa system. My friend got them for $50 Canadian a piece. He sold a consecutive pair on ebay foor about $2600 US and has two which he never uses and the other two are used as parts. That made me cry.

another friend of mine was demolishing an old radio station building and came accross a bunch of Valley People comps and 3 ATR 102's for free. He called a mutual friend of ours to come and get them. The other guy then traded two non-working ATR's for one that was working and overhauled and has the other for parts. That made me cry.

[dynomike]

I don't know why I read this thread with a title like this. Tear.

I think we all need to keep a very watchful eye out for older high schools/airports/churches/radio stations shutting down or "upgrading"... or, adopt the philosophy of many on this board and commit to regular dumpster diving.

[drewbass]

the school where i used to teach gave me a tour before i began. the old recording studio had an ag440 and a atr700 mastering deck. and some old no-name board.
i said , at the time, hey, let me know if you decide to throw that stuff out.
they did, and i hauled the tape decks back to my place. i pulled the board away from the desk and threw it in my garage.
when i decided to check if the board was worth anything, i found that it had 14 api 312-5's, 18 325's and 14 melcor gme-20's.
i've since recapped 6 of the melcors and 6 of the 312's.
it was like a lottery.
drew

[wedge]

I think there's a lesson, here... Focus less on ebay -- where everybody is looking -- and start asking questions and combing through local schools & such. Clearly, there's still boatloads of people out there who haven't a clue as to what they have, and are more than eager to give poor saps like us their "garbage"... It might even be worth it to consider this in an archeological vein: dig up the stuff, keep it, protect it & cherish it before it's long gone and it's too late...

[Coco]

You just have to phone the old radio and tv stations and see if they are selling off any of thier old tape machines and analog gear. Most if not all have all switched to digital, but the stations in the small cities and towns still have tape machines, probably unused, but they are still there clogging up storage space. My local station has a 1" 16 track Tascam that they wanted $3000 CDN for two years ago, I am going to call them in a few more months and offer them $500.

[puls]

check out my post from a coupla days ago about the studio that's disposing of a former custom built spectrum studio console. They're quite content to haul it to the dump - they say it's old, large, & needs lots of upkeep. I've gotten permission to keep it in the garage (i rent) until I can figure out what to do w/it. Geez.

JWP

[Coco]

Score! One man's garbage is another man's gold.

[Professor]

Just remember that while the difference may be subtle at times, there is a difference between "vintage" and "just plain old".

Most every state institution be it a state university, government office, etc. will have to "surplus" their old stuff rather than just throwing it out. This is to recover some small amount of the taxpayers' money and to ensure that the folks using the gear don't say "this is too old, buy me a new one" and promptly take the old vintage item home for themselves.
The school where I work happens to have a large warehouse that serves as the surplus point for the school and the state as a whole. Lots of stuff goes through there. And I'm told that before I arrived, a pair of vintage U-47 mics was surplused by the physics department and sold to an antique dealer who paid a hefty $10 each for them. He promptly tossed them up on eBay where they sold for something in the $4-6k a piece range. Talk about a heartbreaker, but at least the story got around, and the music department decided not to surplus their pair of U-67s that were removed from the concert hall several years ago until the new recording engineer arrived. I spent about $1k having Korby fix them up and they have served me well for the 2 years since.

Sometimes there are happy endings.

-Jeremy

[theBlubberRanch]

Thanks for the story
I now have no hope for the world.
Wait a second...
I didn't have any before.