Dual-gang audio rotary pot with switch?

[Adrian Brentnall]

Only need 12v dc in this application....

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh? Muy Bad. Thread drift etc..

In which case, yes, car boot sale and old car radio.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes - but very useful if you couldn't get a stock one. I'm 'listening' to one at the movement - the selector switch for the sound system in the workshop.

[Adrian C]

Probably not as rugged (uses a hard drive), and the items for this project have long since dried up, but I made one of these before the Apple iPod came out. It still works today and the playback sound quality is rather good...

I've started collecting highend 80s ghettoblasters. I feel one could do with an MP3 heart transplant with the above gubbins.

Another DIY project on the back burner, is a ghettoblaster made of wood, decent speakers and a car stereo for the electronics, or more probably - the processing and storage guts of a laptop.

There is a hip hop / martial arts film staring Forest Whitaker, "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai", that features one of those DIY efforts. It looks kinda cool.

[Frank Erskine]

As is (was?) also Realistic and Archer.

[Frank Erskine]

The trouble with combined switches/pots was always that there was excessive wear on the pot (at least carbon-track ones) due solely to switching on and off.

[Adrian Brentnall]

Same principle though....

Not sure hdd would be such a good idea - the kit needs to stand up to the 's*d it - I'm cold, it's raining, there's not customers and I'm going home' syndrome - which tends to results in a rather less 'careful & precise' attitude to packing the van at the end of a market...

Same reason pro band stuff ends up in enormous flight-cases - your average roadie feels the same at 3am after the gig!

The velleman kit works very well. It's possible to 'program' it - so, on switch-on, my module just sets up the usual parameters, chooses a track at random, and starts playing (which is what I wanted it to do) The dryfit battery also lasts 'forever' between charges - Mk1 of the kit used a little portable MP3 player, the same speakers and battery and a dual-ic PA - but the MP3 was always needing recharging....

With the new kit, recharging is so infrequent that I'm going to add a volt-meter to remind me to do it !

nice!

Haven't seen that Adrian

[Adrian C]

Visited one of their shops in the US sometime ago. Seemed a bit low on peg boards displays, and they were selling a lot of other brands and generally looking a bit bland. The large catalogue is online, and electronic bits are to order & expensive ;-(

Got quite a nice "Realistic" 3-way tape deck source/monitor switch discounted when they were shutting up here, fully regret not buying more as it's a useful bit of kit still in use that I've never seen cheaply elsewhere.

In me youth, I remember gawking at their catalogs and flyers, at wonderful 'badge engineered' stuff. Sometimes it wasn't hard to spot the original manufacturer - I remember Awia made a few of the cassette decks.

Oh, yes - Like most spotty kids of the time, I was a member of the 'battery club'. Free battery once a month :-)

An interesting Train spotter fact ...

The Tandy Subway

[Adrian C]

Here's a picture of that box.

Ok, on secong glance it looks a bit ruff 'n' ready - but me likes the concept.

[Frank Erskine]

I've still got a Tandy battery club card!

[Jules Richardson]

"Rat Shack" is quite a popular name. I still smile whenever I walk past our local one - most of the inventory seems to be phones. I don't even know if they have a components section - the store's very narrow and deep, and I've never dared venture into the back.

I'd forgotten that name. I think I still have a Realistic reverb unit in storage back in the UK.

cheers

Jules

[The Other Mike]

"As is" is was what they put on the sales receipt for damaged packaging / discounted / returned / cosmetic defect items.

I think they thought that it somehow exempted them from the Sales of Goods Act or whatever was around in the 70''s

[Man at B&Q]

Tandy shops were still very much in existence until well into the 80s, and after Maplin started expanding.

Sold out years ago, that's when it went downhill. I gave up on Maplin after experiencing their first attempt at on-line ordering.

MBQ