I am a digital hoarder. I admit it. But occasionally being one pays off.
It took a couple months longer than I initially anticipated, but next weekend I'm finally getting this back from my repair guy in Prescott—along with the distressing news that after he's finished with his current queue of equipment, he'll be hanging up his soldering gun and enjoying a much-deserved retirement. (He noted that since I'd already contacted him about my other Kenwood receiver to go ahead and bring that up as "it's already in the queue.")
What does this have to do with digital hoarding? Well, I asked Randy if he knew of anyone who could fashion some genuine walnut end panels for the receiver to replace the crappy vinyl veneered ones that it came with. He said he did, but after checking with the guy he reported back that he wasn't interested in taking on the project.
Well, shit.
When I got my initial Kenwood KR-7400 back in 2007, I'd contacted someone via the AudioKarma website who fashioned new end panels for me. Unfortunately the AK account I had at the time was long gone and I had no way of tracking the guy down now.
Or so I thought. A cursory search through the website was a bust, but since I am like a dog with a bone and not easily deterred once I'm on a mission, I got to thinking…what about old emails? Problematic, but it might work.
In 2007 I was still on a Windows machine using MS Outlook for mail. On a whim I pulled out the external hard drive where I hoard stuff. While I thought I'd saved all my emails from back in the day, it was still kind of a surprise to discover yearly archive files all the way from 1997 through 2008.
I knew they'd come in handy some day!
While I don't use it, I do have Outlook on my Mac, but I wasn't sure it would be able to read files that old. (Lord knows Word balks at opening any of its own files older than 2003.)
Not to worry. The 2007 .pst file imported flawlessly and almost immediately I found the email string between myself and the gentleman who fashioned the panels. And it turns out my memory really is shit; the panels weren't solid wood as I'd thought; he had merely stripped the vinyl off the existing MDF and applied real cherrywood veneer in its place. I could've sworn they were solid wood all these years, but obviously they were not.
I fired off a email to him yesterday asking if he remembered me and if he'd be interested in veneering these "new" panels for me. As of this morning the mail hasn't bounced back, so the address is obviously still active, but who knows how often it gets checked…or if he's even still alive.
Fingers crossed.