Letting go of your Collection ♻️
If you are a collector, letting go of stuff can be challenging. I decided I would share how I have been saying goodbye to some items I enjoy.
I have been a collector of “stuff” for as long as I can remember. As a kid, if I had a box or shelf, I felt compelled to fill it with things I bought or found. Quickly, these things started to accumulate and take up too much space in my childhood home. Back then, when this happened, my Mom would find a way to make the stuff disappear. This new-found cleared space was just a new challenge for me to fill up, and the process repeated itself.
As an adult, I have found it necessary to police my collecting all by myself. This means I have developed criteria around what I buy, and more importantly, what I hold onto. Even with a page full of rules I have generated for myself over the years, I still find letting go of some things difficult.
For example, I collect stereo equipment. This is a collection that just sort of grew out of my desire to listen to physical media on a regular basis. At first, as I picked up a new component here and there, I wasn’t sure it was a “collection.” Eventually, though, volume dictated that I acknowledge that I had moved into the collection realm.
No big deal, I had done this before and I have developed a system around collecting that helps to constrain what I will collect. What I try to do is narrow the scope of what I can collect. In the case of the stereo equipment, it was simple:
What brand will I collect?
What window of time will I choose models from?
How much am I willing to spend?
What do I retain?
The first three were very easy for me to figure out. I knew that I wanted to rebuild a stereo from my youth, and that I didn’t want to spend more than I might on a good modern stereo. Retention, though, that was a tricky one.
It was tricky because over time I have learned to fix some fairly common problems with electronics. Unfortunately, this has also led me to believe that fixing a less common issue was just one good video or forum post away from being learned. This led me to hold onto things that were broken in the hopes that one day I would get around to fixing them.
That policy ended this month.
I have decided that once a broken component has gone beyond my ability to either fix it or pay someone to have it fixed, it has got to go. So this week, I am saying goodbye to my Technics SL-P1 CD Player from 1985. Although mine was made in 1984.
The SL-P1 was Technics’ first commercially available CD Player. This monster has a great sound and a handsome look that was guaranteed to turn heads. Unfortunately, it also stopped working.
After tinkering with it for a few months and watching lots of videos, I decided that it was time to donate it to a thrift shop. My hope is that it will find its way to a more knowledgeable owner who can fix it or use it for parts.
This brings me to my new tradition, and one that I think will help make the parting easier, the photo shoot. Before packing it up, I put it back up on the shelf and snapped a bunch of photos for posterity. It might not be mine any longer, but I will at least have something to remember it by.
So, enjoy these photos of a great CD player that I hope has gone on to bigger and better things.
The Technics SL-P1 was my first CD player. I had the version with the black case. I git mine around 1985 as well. I was in the Air Force at Pope AFB in Fayetteville, NC and bought the player via mail order with the extra money I earned on a temporary duty assignment in Panama. I remember around December '85 getting the player shipped to me, but I had no CDs yet to play in it. I spend Christmas that year with my folks down in St. Simon's Island, GA and bought my first 5 CDs there: (which I still have: Pink Floyd -"Dark Side Of The Moon", Thomas Dolby - "The Golden Age Of Wireless", Dire Straits' first album, David Bowie - "Ziggy Stardust", and Pete Townshend - "Empty Glass".
The player served me faithfully for several years, even making it to Italy, and back to the States again to New York, then Germany, then England where it finally gave up the ghost in the mid 90's. It was beyond my patience or capability to fix or to have it fixed, so I replaced it with a Pioneer 5 disc carousel model. A couple years ago I had to get another one on line as the original stopped working properly and I was unable to use the videos I found on YouTube to fix, so I bought a replacement with a dodgy optical deck and wound up putting the deck from the original machine into the replacement one and it works fine.
I can definitely sympathise with your plight. I still have my very first computer, an Atari ST (1988), as well as my first PC, (1994) both still in perfect working order. Also an Atari 2600, Jr. I bought in 1986. Hard to let stuff go.
I remember the stereo system my family had in the 80s was like a giant activity centre for me. I often slowly moved the radio needle to see how far away I could pick up stations, like obscure community radio. I used to also tape songs from the radio (and from LPs and other tapes). And I’d record my voice between each song like I was a radio announcer. Later I got a stereo of my own with a built in CD player. It was an all in one, not components like yours. But I loved the physical medium. When I listened to a CD, I’d often look at the album artwork and thumb through the booklet inlay. Some people might think I’m talking nonsense but I think the album artwork actually coloured the music I was hearing. If it was a good album cover (Nirvana Nevermind being a good example) it made the music sound better.