I think SWMBO got a pretty good deal here -- $40 at Value Village. (empeg not included, of course...)

tanstaafl.

She got the stereo equipment and the speakers for that? Wow. Can you give us a quick rundown of the haul (brands and model numbers)?

Can you give us a quick rundown of the haul (brands and model numbers)?

Not just at the moment (I'm at work now) but it is all a matched Pioneer setup -- an amplifier (bottom of the stack in the picture) that has to be used with the top unit, which contains a tuner and inputs for Video (VCR/Laser/DVD), Audio (CD, tape, Microphone, Record, etc.), a graphic equalizer, bunch of other stuff I don't know how to use (no instruction manual), a pair of remotes, and the two speakers. It has line-level outputs, and speaker level outputs for I think seven speakers. There are two remotes -- one for the tuner, one for the amplifier to select inputs/outputs/gains etc.

Some weirdness -- like the cooling fan in the amplifier only comes on if there is audio being fed to the amplifier. If I pause the audio source, the fan stops. I only noticed this because the fan needs replacement -- bearings are pretty noisy.

I think the model number on the tuner is something like SX-770, the amplifier something like CX-790, but don't take these numbers as anything more than an approximation.

Sound quality is not as good as my car stereo, and I place the blame for that on the speakers. Highs are nice and bright, and why not with that two inch tweeter and four inch so-called mid-range speaker. I'd have preferred to see a 6.5" speaker there. And the subwoofer looks like a 12" but is really a 10" (the surround is unusually wide) and is muddy sounding, but that's to be expected with a ported enclosure, I guess...

It will sound better once I get some speaker wire and can separate the speaker cabinets by more than half an inch and play around some with the equalizer settings as well. And of course the EQ settings in my empeg are not appropriate for that setup either -- my AC equalizer settings there are optimzed for a set of ear buds.

Frankly I was pretty surprised to plug it in, have lights come on, and sound come out of the speakers. For $40, that was a bonus! Sort of reminds me of last summer when I took my very cheap garage-sale microwave to the dump transfer station where they have an area for people to leave stuff they don't want that is still good enough that someone else might want it. I left my microwave oven, and right there next to it was another microwave oven, a really nice one. Obviously it was not going to be in operable condition, but the friend helping me haul the stuff to the dump was an EE and he said let's take it home and see if there's anything salvageable. It had a blown fuse... replaced that and it has been working perfectly ever since.

tanstaafl.

Are you sure they didn't do something like dry a show dog's hair in it?

I think the model number on the tuner is something like SX-770, the amplifier something like CX-790, but don't take these numbers as anything more than an approximation.

OK, I'm home now, here are the real model numbers:

Tuner is CX-770
Amplifer is M-770.

tanstaafl.

Couldn't smell any worse than burnt microwave popcorn.

True, but I don't really care if I'm using a microwave that once burned popcorn. I'd care a little more if it housed cooked exploded dog remains.

A few months back, I bought myself a popcorn popper -- one of those that's basically a hotplate and a stirrer. That is, not an air-popper. I was a little concerned with my transfat intake from the microwave popcorn, and air-popped popcorn -- well, I might as well eat packing peanuts.

Other than the cleanup, which is not bad, but still worse than just throwing a bag away, I love the thing.

Not too long ago, I ran out of popcorn, but I still had a few bags of microwave popcorn around, and I was jonesing, so I popped it up. I ate one piece and threw it away, along with the other few remaining packets. It was foul. I can't imagine how I ever ate it. Weird how your body does that. I suppose that meshes with our recent coffee thread.

It would be worse if it smelled like the fake butter substance they put on the microwave popcorn.