Long overdue.

I've been gone for a long time, and honestly the deals have kind of become stale. There were plenty since the last blog post, so many I don't remember most of them but not as plentiful as when this blog started. I'm going to post the ones that came up most recently and as I dig through all my old gear I will post those as well. We've moved and had two more kids so my time is limited.

Here goes nothing!

Last week Peter and I went to Sams Club after running some errands to pick up water and milk. We always veer off to the left to the clearance section they always stash behind the photo center. Legit, who still uses a photo center? I'm imagining 1 Hour Photo with a creepy Robin Williams to be honest. I haven't purchased a Sams Club clearance item in years to be honest as there really aren't many. It's up to the manager's discretion on how they mark down stuff so you have to be there virtually every day to catch that one deal a month or quarter. It's the approach I used to take with Goodwill and it worked for many years.

We came across several TVs, but this Vizio 43" 4k  HDR model caught my eye since it was barely over $100. It's not a high end TV, but hell it'd make a great monitor in a pinch. I snagged it up, went to the register and purchased it while the cashier's jaw dropped. It's sitting on a stand at home while I figure out what we'll do with it - we tested it and it's basically brand new. The plastic was still on it and the remote had never been opened. The picture is about a $300 worth with contrast that 's not super great but for most people it'd work fine. I played Altered Carbon on it from Netflix and the HDR is a nice touch but nothing to write home about (I bet it's not a 10bit panel, but who knows).

The deal? 5 stars.
The rest? I don't rank anymore as I don't buy to resell. It's just not worth my time.

The next day we went to Best Buy just on a whim to see if there were any appliances or odds and ends that Peter might be able to use since he's building a house right now. There weren't a whole lot of deals but he did come back while I spoke with some past coworkers and mentioned they had pedestals open-box. We went over and there were two white Samsung pedestals for $50 each. We've come across literally a dozen or more of these over the past 5-6 years but they were always mismatched, or we didn't have room, or the wrong brand. We happened to have the wife's Escalade so it made sense to be honest. The feeling of guilt about buying stuff isn't super strong when its cool stuff for your wife, right? We got them home, installed them and made a mess cutting aluminum sheeting as we had to get a periscope to hook the exhaust up. As the old dryer sat the exhaust port lined up exactly with the hookup on the wall. Drats. This was an awesome deal since we now have recovered the space above the washer/dryer and can store whatever underneath. The dumb part? Normal washing detergent doesn't fit in the pedestals. Oh well, towels or something. The best part? You don't have to lean over as much when you pull laundry out and move it to the dryer.

Deal? 5 stars. MSRP was like $250 each.

The last one for this week, arguably the highest % savings but the most useless for me. We went to Target and found these:

We make the rounds on the back wall like any good Target bargain hunter should. That's where all the clearance is. There was a big cardboard box on the bottom that said "Lumisource" or something to that matter. To me that reads "I'm some sort of lamp, because Lumi means light". Well I was wrong. They were 24" stools. I pushed the box back into the clearance pile since our counter is 30" stools and these were 24". Wait a minute, Peter is building a house and I'm pretty sure his counters are lower. So we got them. They were marked $16.xx. I'd say that's one hell of a deal, over 90% off.

Deal? 5 stars xxxx!!!! (ebay ratings) A+++

So, perhaps the next update will be less than 4 years away.

Long term update!

Sorry for the late update guys and gals! With my daughter being born and us generally getting busier I have really let this blog slide. There's a bunch to cover so I'll start with some updates!

Accurian 8" powered subwoofer(s). I picked up one at the local goodwill probably 18 months ago and it just sat in my garage forever. I finally decided to use it and installed it in my bedroom alongside my PSB T65 full tower speakers. I have no specs on it and  honestly there are none that I can find on google. No reviews, specs, nothing. It added a decent amount of bass but nothing earth shattering. I suspect it came with a cheap 5.1 setup and it got separated when it went to goodwill. It was probably $5 if that. I couldn't go super loud since it's in my bedroom and my wife always complains about how loud the TV is at night. Fast forward a few months (almost 2 years apart from the first one) and while on vacation in Cambridge Ohio I decided to stop by the local goodwill while waiting on the girls to get their hair done. Nothing was great and we were about to walk out with nothing more than a $0.29 toy for Kaytelyn when I saw them carry out a very familiar box. For $2.99 I got a second Accurian 8".... 900+ miles away. What are the odds? I'll probably sell the pair for $100, they're pretty decent stacked and turned up. 

The holy grail of my growing up. Polk LSi 25 loudspeakers. The highest speaker of it's time, in a totally different class than the rest of Polk Audio speakers. The original price was $2799/pair. I would have never had the cash to do that. I had resigned myself to never owning a pair and moved on to the usual hunting for cheaper alternatives. One late night as I was perusing the local Craigslist, a pair of these came up for $900. Not bad actually, but way more than I am willing to allow myself to spend on a single pair of speakers right now. I figure, hey...why not check out the Polk forums. I hadn't been on in months and thought to check it anyways. I hopped on and the identical pair was for sale in their classifieds for $475! I messaged him immediately and told him I'd take them if available. 12 hours later I paypalled him and they were mine, undercutting some other bidder who was dragging his feet (thanks for the payment Nolan). We went on vacation for almost two weeks and I went to pick them up in Chickasha.

After building some custom jumpers out of some Clearance AudioQuest cabling I fired them up. A.Ma.ZING....... Wow. These will not be resold so no value/ranking on them. But the value I give ***** five stars. Funny, as soon as I purchased these a 2nd pair was offered to the guy who got mad at me for buying them from under him. I told the seller I'd take second dibs as kind of a joke. Two days later he messaged me saying he was also in OKC and if I was local... they're mine when they came up for sale later this year. Might have two pairs soon.... and I may be done for a very long time in terms of searching. Now to find an LSi Center....

Polk E10 speakers. Got them for $5... not bad little bookshelves. Haven't given them the full testing yet.

Probably sell them for $40. Value four stars, resale three stars.

Boston Acoustics VR975 speakers and center. Talked down the seller from $150 to $100 for the set. They just moved in from out of town and the new house had no place for them. The wife really seemed eager to let them go, and the husband begrudgingly helped load them into my car. I hope I'm never in the position that my wife frowny faces me into selling my audio gear. I already took the initiative once when we had a smaller house to sell it all, it won't happen again. They sound great and have awesome power. They weigh as much as the Polks above. These were the best speakers I could think about when I was in high school. Something like $1600 a pair retail in 1999, with the center being $599. The caps need some glue, but are otherwise in amazing shape for being 16 years old. 4 more years and they're considered vintage. These sell for $700-1000 a set still, being amazing and all.

Value five stars.

Resale five stars.

PSB T65 speakers.

I got these in a trade with someone I call "Steve the Speaker Guy". He got me into vintage speakers and we trade gear on and off. I usually give him a lot more gear for one or two pieces of what I consider more desirable gear. Probably worth $600 or so, they're terrific sounding speakers. Resale is difficult as no one knows what they are.... damn Canadian speakers. These currently reside in my bedroom and at full blast will probably destroy some of my wife's fine linens. They're massive, over 20" deep and weighing over 70lbs each. They're definitely for sale.... because some new speakers are coming in soon.

Value three stars (since I traded and had to trade a lot).

Resale two stars (been listed for a while)

Is it cold in here?

So we've REALLY slowed down the thrift shopping lately. Pretty much we've stopped going to all of them except the one down on the south side that used to be a Circuit City. It's got the best Target stuff, but pretty much crap when it comes to rare things like audio products.

Anyways as we've become domesticated and my ability to run to GoodWill every day has ceased. Now I look for things that used to bore me. Is that a sign I'm getting old or complacent?  Getting a NEST (or 2) installed in my home was the most exciting thing in August of last year and in the new home last month.

Back to the story - last week we were in GoodWill and people were mobbing the buckets as they came out. I guess 2pm is the primetime. I found a Ninja food processor which for our usage is awesome (making guac and wicked hot sauce). Then the next bucket came out and contrary to my commentary on how everyone was crazy for bumrushing the buckets I ran over and had to see what was in it. There was a huge box - a Vornado whole room heater brand new. $20 seemed a good deal since I don't want to resell it. We have a big house and for some stupid reason it's still snowing/icing in April. Next month will be 105F I bet. Then I ran back to our cart and on the way I hit a smaller box on the shelf... a Vornado personal heater! $12 wasn't terrible so I picked that up too..

I have to say - these things don't put a lot of instant heat out, but they do put a large stream of lower heat (result is same btus I suppose) that circulates in the room so the whole room heats up evenly. You don't have that one spot that's really warm and the rest of the room is cold. Good deal? Yes. For $32 we bought $90 worth of heaters and saved $70 off the Ninja. A good week indeed.

Sorry I've been missing so long - been busy having a kid (which is the primary focus of thrifty picks now) and maintaining the house.

Tomorrow I  make my own thrifty picks for others at my garage sale. Hope it does well!

Long time

Sorry for the lack of updates guys! We've been busy. Getting married, buying a new house, etc. The wife is pregnant and we are busy just about every day. The thrifty picks have been few and far between lately. I'll start getting some more blogs posted as I clean out the junk and find stuff I've purchased in the past few months.

Idiots on Craigslist

Okay this isn't a Thrifty Pick at all. But I am so tired of the people on Craigslist saying the stupidest shit.

Here we go:

http://oklahomacity.craigslist.org/mcy/2601508815.html

I have a pair of STOCK Harley mufflers for sale. Picture, part number, and description in the ad. You'll notice I've modified the ad because I keep getting stupid emails/texts asking questions that are obviously answered in the ad.

One person asked if they were aftermarket. Google what "Stock" means buddy.
One person asked me what bike they were for. Dude the part numbers are in the ad.
One person was so bold as to ask why I had them. Noneofurfuckinbusiness.
I got tons of these with no offers to buy. Well, one guy offered but never showed up.

Today however, was a doozy of an interaction. This guy just didn't friggin' get it. For some reason he couldn't get it through his damned head that the "dents" in the mufflers are supposed to be there. They're manufactured into the muffler so when you mount them to the bike these go on, they clear the frame and don't rub. He kept saying he'd offer me $20 because they were damaged, or dented. I'm like dude, you can't offer less based on a feature. I explained it to him no less than four times that the dents are how they came. He might as well have been a brick wall. What's even stupider is his offers went up and down. Seriously. I'm just going to paste the conversation because it tells the story by itself:

+14057590502: How much for your mufflers since they are dented 9:47 AM Me: They are not dented... 10:29 AM Me: Those are shaped that way so it fits the bike curves 10:29 AM +14057590502: Oh so how much do you want for them 10:45 AM Me: Make an offer.... 10:45 AM +14057590502: well since they have a small dents ill give you 20? 10:46 AM Me: They don't have ANY dents.....why don't you get that? 10:47 AM Me: And no. I can send them off for more than that 10:47 AM +14057590502: Well give me a base price so i know where to start 10:52 AM Me: Retail on them is 288 per side. That's 576 total. Ill sell them for 200 total. 10:55 AM +14057590502: would you take 125 for the small dent in the side i see in the picture 10:57 AM Me: (1/2) Dude you aren't getting it. Those dents are normal.....they are manufactured that way so it clears the under side of the bike. Its not damage, its built t 11:01 AM Me: (2/2) hat way 11:01 AM Me: That's why the recess is in the same place on both mufflers... 11:05 AM +14057590502: AHH i see how do you think it would cost to take the recess's out 11:06 AM Me: I don't know, they are manufactured that way. They face the inside of the bike so u won't see them anyways 11:08 AM +14057590502: So since they have a manufacture defect of a dent would you do 100 11:09 AM +14057590502: sorry i meant 175 11:13 AM Me: Its not a defect 11:18 AM Me: They are made that way. Its curved to fit the harley. please stop acting like they're messed up. They are stock. Google the, its NORMAL 11:19 AM +14057590502: So will they fit my suzuki intruder with those dents on there 11:20 AM Me: You tell me, I don't own a suzuki or any bikes 11:21 AM +14057590502: Why do you have an exhaust? 11:21 AM Me: Because my friend told me to sell it 11:22 AM +14057590502: Did you ask him if he laid the bike over twice and dented the exhaust? 11:27 AM Me: Dude forget it, you are gettng the message 11:28 AM Me: I'm tired of telling you they are not damaged. Google the model numbers and you will see they are designed that way 11:29 AM +14057590502: what is the lowest you will take 11:31 AM Me: Already told you. You aren't listening 11:31 AM +14057590502: will you take 150 11:31 AM Me: I'm going to block your number because you are not listening to me at all. I said 200. Not 20, not 100, or 150. 11:33 AM

What's even funnier is he said he understood halfway through, then went back to not getting it at all.

Please, go crawl back under that rock you came out, I'm done dealing with retards.

THX guys, I do like it loud...

Once again it's been a while. Craigslist has been crazy the past few months. I've sold more on Craigslist since my last post than I have in all my time otherwise, combined.

In the months of October and November I made more money selling the crap in our closets at home than I did working for Dell on my salary/wage. What does that mean? I sold a TON of high margin stuff. I just sold a DBX 4BX sound expander the other day for $225, and it only cost me $5 at Goodwill about 8 months ago. Most of my sales were like that. I was sitting on a gold mine and finally cashed it in.

So anyways, back to the topic at hand, something THX certified. In our home we have 3 systems you can watch movies on, one in the bedroom with my 46" LED, one in the middle living room with the 37" LCD, and one in the big living room with the 100" drop down high definition projector. Well my goal had been to upgrade all the systems eventually to HDMI with high definition codec decoding (DTS MasterHD, Dolby TrueHD, etc). So far I only had a mid-line Harman Kardon AVR254 7.1 HDMI receiver in the big living room. It's pretty damn good actually, but I've always wanted more. Don't forget my 10 year old Sony 555ES receiver that I sold for $200 as well, that's what started all this.

So, step 1 - make some money to buy a nice receiver. Well how do we make money, my thrifty pickers? Buy low and sell high. I perused the Best Buy auction site as usual, and craigslist, and Goodwill. In the end I bought two receivers for the time being, a Pioneer 820-K and 1019AH-K. Both were HDMI receivers, supporting 1080p and high def codecs. The 1019AH-K was last years model, 7.1 channel top of the line. It's identical to last years Pioneer Elite, sans the pre-outs and cool amber display. The 820-K is this years 5.1 HDMI 3D capable. Basically I paid about 100 for each one, as is coming only with the receiver. I used them in my bedroom and middle living room for a while.

Well the performance of them was unimpressive, so I sold them both. The 1019 sold for $225, and the 820k sold for $150. Not bad, I ended up with $375 made from $200. I also sold the Velodyne sub I bought at Goodwill, $200 on a $30 investment. So I decided to spend about $400 on a receiver, because Christmas is here and I didn't want to unload all my money on a receiver. I figured I'd get a mid line receiver, that was higher end than what I got from the Best Buy site. I looked around at Yamaha, Denon, Sony, and Onkyo. In the end I settled on the Onkyo TX-NR807 7.2 (9.2 with additional amps) Network receiver. It's last years $1100 HDMI receiver. The only thing it doesn't have is 3D capability. I could care less about that feature.

Well I ordered it refurbished from accessories4less.com and it arrived in 3 days. Cost? $429. I got the box with all the accessories and manual, and opened it up. It's in brand new shape. Not a single scratch on it. I seriously don't think this thing was ever used. It probably left the factory, was delivered and opened, and then returned. Well it saved me over $600 so I'm not complaining.

I was actually lazy this weekend, normally with a new toy of this magnitude I would have stopped any and everything I was doing to go hook it up. It wasn't until Sunday night that I decided to hook it up. I yanked all the wires out the back of my trusty HK AVR254 and put it to the side. Lately I've been on a kick of trying to clean up wires. I'm tired of having to twist speaker wires and stick them in the terminals, and screw it down. I bought a ton of Nakamichi banana plugs and I screwed them on the ends to make setup easier.
Anyways, the actual hookup of the receiver took about 30 seconds. 3 HDMI in (Bluray, Cable, HD-DVD) and 1 out (LCD/Projector) along with the power cord. That's it. Oh and the speaker wires.

The other ten minutes came from plugging all the power cords back in and routing them through the stand. The problem with my Z-Line glass stand is you can see ALL the wires behind it. Any one know a way to hide grand-central station of wires?

Anyways I powered it up and tried to play a movie. Conveniently, Avatar was already loaded in the bluray player so I just let it play. I fast forwarded to the scene where they blow the hell out of home tree and let it rip. Holy crap this receiver has power, but where was the bass? The front panel showed the sub was on, and so did the onscreen display. I played with it for five minutes wondering why my trusty Polk PSW150 sub wasn't firing off. Stupid me, I forgot to plug the sub cable into the receiver. Once I did the bass was back, but it was kind of disappointing. Nothing was shaking, the bass was barely felt. I decided to run the Audessey auto calibration at this point to maybe get some better sound.

The Audessey process is pretty cool, you get this odd shaped mic with a tripod mount that you put in your listening position(s) and run the setup. It sends out pings from all the channels first to see what speakers are actually hooked up. It correctly identified my setup as 5.1 instead of 7.1 or 9.1. I don't see any point in 7.1 anyways. After that it asks you to put the mic in your listening position 1 and runs some random noise through each speaker. I put the mic on a surveyors tripod and let it rip. The process measures the frequency response and time delay between all the speakers, so that it knows how big each speaker is, and how far it is from the user. It got each speaker down to the inch. The only problem is it set my center channel to 40hz and mains to 60hz. This means my front stage can put out a lot of bass by themselves, but it was odd the smaller center was measured as larger than the sides. Oh well, I reset them all to 80hz since this is a THX receiver and that is the normal THX setting. After it ran the tests, it took about 5 minutes to run its calculations and save the config.

I unpaused Avatar after this and it was amazing. The sound from the speakers was calibrated now and it was just like IMAX. But the bass was still missing. It was there but subdued. I hit some buttons on the remote and saw that the LFE/Sub was set at -15. Why did it set it so low? It must have thought my sub was way too loud. I set it to -5 and the house started to shudder like a tornado was approaching. Audio nirvana hit. 135 watts per channel, and near-reference levels of THX sound made it amazing.

The receiver gave my speakers a new lease on life. Not that the HK was bad, but the Onkyo has much more power (135w vs 50w). The HK will be fine in the bedroom. My Klipsch system sang to heights it had never seen before. The bass was tight, the treble was refined. I watched about 20 minutes of the movie and decided this one is a keeper, unless someone offers me more on Craigslist, hehe.

I hooked up the router to the receiver and let it do a firmware update. That took about 30 minutes, but at least it was automated. The HK unit took like four hours because you have to use a serial port and it has to do a bunch of random crap. After that I fired up the NET mode of the receiver, and it connected to Pandora. Logging in was a pain in the ass, as the remote has no keyboard and the onscreen keyboard was so slow. Thankfully you only have to do this once. I put Usher on and it sounded pretty good for internet compressed music. I need to get an SACD player some time and see how it sounds.

Highly recommended, especially for this price.

THX Power, finally

So this is one of the few Craigslist deals I've picked up recently. I actually emailed this lady about her Insignia receiver for $100. She said it was a $500 receiver eight months ago. Well the only $500 receiver Insignia has is their HDMI capable one which for $100 is pretty good. Turns out it was just a NS2000 - Stereo receiver, which is $100 retail new. But she said she had an amp with it for sale, too. What was it? I asked. Parasound HCa-1205a.

What's that? It's a THX Ultra certified five channel amplifier. 140 watts into five channels RMS @ 8ohms. 200 watts into 4 ohms. That's one hell of an amplifier. I picked it up for $200 (cheap) and took it home. The guy said he had a candle on it and it kind of melted. No joke.

http://www.parasound.com/vintage/hca1205a.php

I got it home and opened it up. I wasn't going to power it on with wax caked to the top. I take the top cover off and bang the wax out. No big deal. Then I look inside and theres wax ALL over the toroidal transformer. I scrape it off, and out. It's everywhere. Luckily it's only on the transformer and not on any of the circuit boards, that would be a nightmare to clean. Overall I pulled about 18 oz of wax out of that thing. What type of candle was he burning?

After cleaning it up I hooked it up to my RT-55s and let her rip. POWER. Wow is there power. The good ole' NAD before was great, but this was moving.

Great power. Great price. Cleaned all up - paired with my RT-55's bi-amped (first time ever) and a Velodyne VA-810 subwoofer... Awesome.