Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

the thermionic watercooler

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby DeathRex » Mon Aug 11, 2014 8:17 am

skidave wrote:It will soon be to the point where all components need to be ordered online.


Worser than that ... It will soon be to the point where all components need to be ordered online from China.
At first I wanted to be a ET. Now I are one.
User avatar
DeathRex
KT88
 
Posts: 1014
Joined: Wed Nov 18, 2009 8:13 pm
Location: Cortez, CO

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby Geek » Mon Aug 11, 2014 2:58 pm

DeathRex wrote:
skidave wrote:It will soon be to the point where all components need to be ordered online.


Worser than that ... It will soon be to the point where all components need to be ordered online from China.


Might not be a bad thing.... my store partner and I are hooked on AliExpress. Stupidly good quality from the right sellers and no middle-man inflation (y)
-= Gregg =-
Fine wine comes in glass bottles, not plastic sacks. Therefore the finer electrons are also found in glass bottles.
User avatar
Geek
KT88
 
Posts: 3585
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 3:01 am
Location: Chilliwack, British Columbia

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby kheper » Wed Aug 20, 2014 9:34 am

In the 1980s, RadioShack's semiconductor reference guide was huge, > 250 pages. It also contained circuit diagrams, RS part numbers, etc. Here's one from 1991.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1728 ... ence-guide
User avatar
kheper
KT88
 
Posts: 1252
Joined: Wed Dec 21, 2005 10:14 pm
Location: Philly, PA

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby Robert Cham » Thu Sep 11, 2014 11:22 am

Back in about '61,IIRC , I had money from my first real part time job. I hustled down to Radio Shack and bought a Rek-o-Kut Rondine 2 belt drive turntable, with a Pickering cartridge, rebadged as Radio Shack. That's the day my HI FI addiction started, and my discs stopped being destroyed by my mother's VOM console.

I've still got it, but with a Rabco ST 8 arm and modified suspension. It was followed by an EICO ST 40 and 8" Heathkit coax speakers, that went into a succession of enclosures. That got me through high school and college, when the Dynakits slowly replaced them starting with the FM 3 that I also still have. It is the best sounding tuner this side of the old Marantz 10B with the CRT tuning display.

So yes, I shall mis Radio Shack, just as I do Lafayette, and all of those great locally owned electronics shops that were destroyed by on-line purchasing.

Bob Cham
now located in beautiful Nelson County Virginia
Robert Cham
 
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:35 pm
Location: Houston, TX

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby Cubdriver » Mon Sep 15, 2014 10:41 pm

I don't think we can really blame online purchasing for Rat Shack's demise - I'd say they slit their own throats starting back in the late 90s when it seems by my recollection that they began cutting down on parts and kits, and became a Christmas toy store that sold some other electronic stuff. If you REALLY want components, I think there are some in the corner in that dusty little cabinet, go take a look. Oh, a what? What's that? I really don't know what those are. Sorry, we don't have any of them. But wait - before you go, can we talk about your cell phone plan?

Online purchasing is one of the nails in their coffin, for sure, but it seems they've been rudderless and adrift for quite some time now.

It's interesting - when I first started getting involved in electronics back in the mid-late 70s, Digi Key and Mouser had little catalogs that were like thin magazines, Digi Key's being what, 30 or so 11 x 17 sheets stapled in the middle and folded over? Now both have catalogs the size of phone books. It hurts to look at the Rat Shack catalogs from the 60s - how much they changed, even by the time I started in the 70s. Perhaps if they'd had more of a mail order presence to begin with (as DK & Mouser did) that could have naturally morphed into online dealings, they'd not be in such dire straits. As it is, their website seems almost an afterthought, and is not in any way user friendly as far as searching for parts goes. I just called up resistors. I can filter by power rating, but beyond that the options are best sellers, or price H-L or L-H. Values in any of the sort modes are all over the place, and you have to slog through to find anything. Digi Key on the other hand has an amazing search engine that lets you drill down to exactly what you want - RS is a joke in comparison.

It will hurt to see them go because they played a huge part in my early interest in electronics - P-box kits, Archerkits, XXX-in-one project kits, a local source for components, etc, but at this point they're no longer even a shadow of what they were. I was in one in New Mexico a few months back and one I visited there actually had (to my great surprise) some kits and experimenter's boards. I'm not sure if this is part of the re-vamp that's likely too little too late, or a function of the owner of the store (he was an older gent, and had a few big transmitting tubes on display up on the shelf, so he seemed more of an electronics guy), but it was a pleasant Radio Shack experience for a change. Sadly it was also an anomaly as a Radio Shack experience in the past 10-15 years. And he had the switches I needed, as well.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than to say that I'll miss them, but I think it will be more of a nostalgia thing than practical since they've moved so far from what they once were.

-Pat
User avatar
Cubdriver
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Thu Aug 30, 2012 10:17 pm
Location: Litchfield Co, CT

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby dcriner » Tue Sep 16, 2014 6:55 pm

RS makes whatever little money it makes from remote-controlled toys at Christmas time. They are not a reliable local source for electronic components. Best to use internet suppliers. RS, RIP.
Doug Criner
dcriner
KT88
 
Posts: 309
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 4:19 pm
Location: Illinois

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby TomMcNally » Tue Sep 23, 2014 12:56 pm

We really can't blame the demise of Radio Shack on mismanagement. Times have changed. Kids (okay 50 and under) don't build or fix electronic gadgets any more. They don't put up antennas, fix radios, play with tape recorders, build kits and all the things many of us did as kids. They don't mess with car stereos much, since the ones that come with the cars are either pretty good to begin with, or part of the car that can't be removed. Who is buying Radio Shack parts ? Mostly older guys I'm sure. Kids go on their iPhone or Android and "get an app" for everything. Radio Shack tried by carrying BASIC Stamps and Arduinos and the like. Again, a very limited audience is interested in anything. That makes me wonder, where are the new guys going to come from? Ham radio used to be where kids learned about electronics. The average ham is probably 75 years old now. No new blood, no interest unfortunately. Why go to all that trouble and expense when you can communicate around the world for free. The extent of most electronics ability now is probably plugging in an HDMI cable.

Even the electronics box stores come and go pretty quickly. The "stereo" stores are gone, it's all "home theatre" and kids growing up don't care about fidelity. They listen on .25" speakers in phones and think it sounds good. A friend was telling me his car radio broke and he postitions his phone in the ashtray to amplify the sound. Sheesh !

So what is a company like Radio Shack with 1000's of small stores going to sell to stay in business? There is no magic answer.
User avatar
TomMcNally
Darling du Jour
 
Posts: 2729
Joined: Sat Nov 19, 2005 2:19 pm
Location: Northfield, NJ

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby Geek » Tue Sep 23, 2014 8:30 pm

Well said, Tom!
-= Gregg =-
Fine wine comes in glass bottles, not plastic sacks. Therefore the finer electrons are also found in glass bottles.
User avatar
Geek
KT88
 
Posts: 3585
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 3:01 am
Location: Chilliwack, British Columbia

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby tomlang » Wed Sep 24, 2014 9:27 am

So...I wonder if they will have a "liquidation" sale at each individual store that all of us can participate in or if some entity will buy the contents of all the stores quickly and quietly...
User avatar
tomlang
 
Posts: 192
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 8:14 pm
Location: Augusta, GA

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby Geek » Wed Sep 24, 2014 9:33 pm

They did up here, Tom. Grabbed parts for pennies on the dollar. Hope you guys have that luck! :))
-= Gregg =-
Fine wine comes in glass bottles, not plastic sacks. Therefore the finer electrons are also found in glass bottles.
User avatar
Geek
KT88
 
Posts: 3585
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 3:01 am
Location: Chilliwack, British Columbia

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby nyazzip » Thu Sep 25, 2014 12:37 pm

kids growing up don't care about fidelity


....i found this interesting, and true. i wonder why? i have a theory: rock and roll, and the subsequent decades long phase-out of all acoustic instruments. lets face it, electric beats and heavily distorted guitars sound, well, just fine on substandard equipment....not much string/brass or woodwinds in the top 40 charts since the 1960s
User avatar
nyazzip
KT88
 
Posts: 1073
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2008 1:24 am

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby Geek » Thu Sep 25, 2014 3:35 pm

Some MP3's I've heard are mastered for iPod earbuds and sound terrible on a real HiFi system :'(
-= Gregg =-
Fine wine comes in glass bottles, not plastic sacks. Therefore the finer electrons are also found in glass bottles.
User avatar
Geek
KT88
 
Posts: 3585
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 3:01 am
Location: Chilliwack, British Columbia

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby jwhitmor » Fri Mar 13, 2015 12:53 pm

My Radio Shack survives on cellular phone sales and accessories. The help knows phones, but nothing about electronic parts, although they do stock a few parts
There is hope for "HiFi". After selling music in dismal formats for years now (even SACD was about DRM not fidelity) the industry has suddenly embraced, "High Resolution Audio". Now you can download lossless 24bit high sample rate audio files, (for a price). Soon (maybe now?) you will be able to download the original digital master studio recordings uncompressed. So you get to buy your source material all over again. New vinyl is still alive too, but kind of pricey. My wife was raised in a 45 RPM compact portable, single speaker, record player home. When she moved into her own place, she graduated to a combo, Karioke / Boom Box, (which still had when we got married). When I fire up the tube gear she looks "stunned." "OMG, I never knew it could sound like that."
Last edited by jwhitmor on Sun Mar 15, 2015 9:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
If it is not making X-rays, your B+ is too low.
User avatar
jwhitmor
 
Posts: 60
Joined: Tue Jan 20, 2015 5:42 pm

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby Geek » Fri Mar 13, 2015 1:41 pm

jwhitmor wrote:Soon (maybe now?) you will be able to download the original digital master studio recordings uncompressed.


I've been buying FLAC downloadable CD's and tracks from CDBaby for years (???)
-= Gregg =-
Fine wine comes in glass bottles, not plastic sacks. Therefore the finer electrons are also found in glass bottles.
User avatar
Geek
KT88
 
Posts: 3585
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 3:01 am
Location: Chilliwack, British Columbia

Re: Radio Shack: if you need to say goodbye, better go now

Postby jwhitmor » Sun Mar 15, 2015 9:18 am

I also use FLAC lossless as much of my source material. If you like to check out independant artists, "BandCamp" is a great websight to download FLAC files, and not expensive (you pay whatever you want to). I was thinking more about getting access to the recording studio digital master sesson recordings, as opposed to what I download now, which I suspect are FLAC files ripped from a CD. Still much better than MP3, but the CD red book audio format is a compromise in itself, so any FLAC file derived from a CD, is also a compromise. I want to move up the chain, before the music is converted to CD format. Then again, as my ears get older, it makes less difference. The proliferation of DACs for sale, including some that are astoundingly high priced, leads me to believe many more people are taking their source material seriously now .
If it is not making X-rays, your B+ is too low.
User avatar
jwhitmor
 
Posts: 60
Joined: Tue Jan 20, 2015 5:42 pm

PreviousNext

Return to diy hifi

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 22 guests