I used to play music in my room on my Marantz (Eclipse SR-110 & CD-110) system with a nice set of Infinity (Reference 31) speakers. The sound was great. You might think this a bit excessive, but I got it at the bargain bin at Correct.
I had been enjoying superb audio for some years up until the standby button got up and broke. I had already lost the remote to some haphazard malfunction or other. After the Standby button broke, I had no way anymore of turning the thing on.
Opening up the thing revealed the broken foot which wasn’t hitting a contact internally anymore. One possible plan was to replace the standby button with the much less used mute button (noted on the Flickr page).
I don’t have a picture ready, but the internals of the receiver are a horrible mess of Phillips-head-screwed-together particles almost all of which have to come out to provide access to the buttons. I could have done it with a photographic trail of crumbs, but I wasn’t feeling particularly up to this task.
I called Marantz and they weren’t particularly helpful. They referred me to a defunct specialty audio shop in Delft. The other remaining specialty audioshop in delft called Audiohuis took my receiver in.
The guy there was pretty busy and so was I, so I guess my receiver stayed over there for a couple of months. Months of Macbook speaker sound in my room which isn’t horrible, but also isn’t exactly my idea of a picnic.
Finally when I asked the status of the repairs, the guy said he couldn’t do anything because the internals of the receiver were very cramped. No shit Sherlock.
That I wasn’t feeling up to taking the thing apart is one thing, but I thought the old geezer with his years of experience could pull it off blindfolded with both hands tied to his back. Apparently not.
He even could not order a replacement remote for me and referred me to yet another specialty audio shop somewhere in the Hague1.
Long story short: I looked around online a bit. A Dutch guy was selling replacement remotes for €85 (!). Fortunately Charles Hyde & Son had the same remote for £19. Postage and handling added a tenner but it was still a lot cheaper.
So now I’ve got the Stevenote blasting through my speakers and John Mayer ripping it up like nothing else. Cool stuff.
I understand where the guy is coming from. The target audiences of these kind of shops are people who have oodles money to spend and who are fundamentally stupid. I am not one of those people. ↩︎
