Selling on Craigslist

Man, is this a chore! I figured there would be a percentage of no-shows and general runaround, but the figures are out. No one wants to respond after I answer their questions concerning availability (which, considering I listed an item and they initially responded., is beyond me, totally!)! Seems like this time around, after risking flagging for overposting, I managed to get one audition booked for tomorrow at 11:00am. I'm up and running, and the old girl (Kenwood KR-6030) sounds good enough to keep, if you didn't have the pieces I've reviewed thus far...They are by far my favorites, and I'm starting to have seller's remorse and the deal hasn't even been completed!

The only wonky features of the 70's Kenwood (80 wpc into 8 ohms, low low distortion, and switchable tone defeat and subsonic defeat, nice features for the no-tone-control-havin' crowd) are that the speaker connection knobs are pretty brittle, due to age. Two have snapped off, but I have 4 good ones fitted to the A speaker lugs. It's presenting well otherwise, and again, it's really filling my space with quality sound. Sometimes, when powering on, the combination power on/speaker selector switch gets a rush of voltage that blinks the lights pretty strongly (common for this type of combo switch at its age), but upon powering up for the first test run today there was no surge, giving me a much better feeling about the final outcome of the deal and its potential for success. Thank God this is only obviously intermittant.

Listening to Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, a sophisticated pop/rock recording reviewed recently on these pages, the Kenwood really shows off the Fortes in all their glory. It seems to be solid in every important aspect, things that a buyer might be most concerned about, like static, tuning FM, and the like. I'm pulling max signal from a local FM giant with a simple hunk of speaker wire as an antenna! I'm currently listening to the new ZZ Top on KSHE-95 (pretty lo-fi sound coming from Rick Rubin, Billy Gibbons' Pearly Gates Les Paul and whatever rattletrap amp he's touting this week), and the Kenwood's suited for much higher-brow recordings than this Tex-Mex gumbo (putting it nicely). By the way, the song abruptly stopped in mid-phrase, surprise, surprise, "forever CD's" are anything but, even if you're a high-fallootin' FM giant like KSHE!! By the way, Working Man and the Stones are well-represented on this combo.

Hey, if this deal doesn't go through, and anyone local is interested, get on over here and pick this thing up (No shipping this time around...)! It's a winner, whoever ends up with it. If I had an extra room or two I could pay it the attention it deserves, it's the most powerful receiver I own after the Sansui 8080DB!

Tomorrow we'll feature yet another music or audio item worth reading about, so in the meantime, keep your tubes hot and your antenna up! See you then!