The MiniDisc adventure continues.
This is the last one, I swear. And as is my self-imposed rule, one comes in, one has to go out.
I wish I’d done more research fifteen months ago before I got back into Minidiscs. Instead of just working off an old photo of the last deck I’d owned back in the day—forgetting that it lacked the PS/2 keyboard input for titling discs—and smashing “But It Now” on the first one I ran across that was fully functional and looked good, I could’ve saved myself a ton of money over the past year and went after one that was a better match functionally to my original deck from 2000 that also had a keyboard port,
As I got more and more back into this hobby, I realized how many functions and just little tweaks the deck I’d bought last November was lacking. Why did I go with that one then or even back in the day? It was a combination of faulty memory and the fact I was laser-focused LP2/4 recording capability. Back in the early 2000s it was probably a combination of not needing the keyboard port (I was able to label discs via my portable recorder and computer in conjunction with Sony’s admittedly horrible NetMD software) and more than likely it was cost related, since there were units in that lineup with keyboard ports.)
Oh well…the 480 still holds a place in my heart for nostalgia’s sake and it did what I bought it to do—so I haven’t been completely disappointed with the purchase.
Still, I got a pang whenever I ran across my original deck online—even if it didn’t do long play. But then I discovered the models that came out a year later had the same design and features and did the long play modes. Noted, and filed. The trouble was these days, the immediate successor to my original deck, the JE640, was pretty rare in the US. Even rarer was the top of the line, the JB940. Both models are readily available on the Japanese market, but they run on 100V (necessitating a step-down transformer if you want to use them in the states) and are seemingly only available in champagne gold. Nevermind the import tariffs!
I have triggers set up on eBay to email me when certain items show up. A week ago, a 940 appeared, and for once, it wasn’t a champagne gold 100V model. It was black (matching the rest of my gear), located in the US, and the price was—reasonable (all things considered). Even so, I made the seller an offer at a substantially lower price, never expecting that it would be accepted.
It was accepted.
It arrived today, and I have to say the build quality is so far and above the deck I bought fifteen months ago that it’s crazy. The 940 wasn’t Sony’s absolute top-of-the-line across their entire inventory that year, but it was top of the line for this particular series, and it shows.
So now I’m throwing my old 480 deck up for sale, hoping to recoup at least some of what I paid for this “new” one.
And yes, so far I’m enjoying the fuck out of it.
Congrats on the newest member of your Family! And, on a totally different topic…
Two days ago I was in the supermarket. As I turned my cart into another aisle, I (HONESTLY) thought that the man I saw standing there was YOU! For perhaps several seconds I froze and that thought to myself why you’d be at my market, and also in a Cold Climate. You were even wearing that white hat and the same outfit in your most recent photo of the 4 of you taken in your backyard. You have a Doppleganger, Mark.