Goodbye, old friends, it's time to die ...

"When I was sixteen, it was a very good year .... "

I had my pristine collection of vinyl (before we acquired cats, and they clawed the spines off every album), and a state-of-the-art (mid-range, admittedly) hifi system.  Trio amp and FM tuner, Garrard deck, Akai reel-to-reel - and my hand-built Peerless speakers.  Literally.  I bought not one, but TWO sets of stereo speaker components from Peerless (tweeter, midrange, bass, plus crossover circuit board), and constructed the cabinets themselves.

I can still remember going down to the wood yard (in my white Renault 4) and, in my innocence, asking them to cut out from three-quarter inch chipboard all the panels I needed to build the boxes.  Amazingly, they did!  Then all it took was days and days nailing and glueing them together, cutting out with a jigsaw the holes for the speakers in the front plate, fitting the speakers, soldering and running the wires, filling the cabinets with rockwool, screwing the front plates into place, wiring up the terminals .... and then standing in trepidation as I connected them to the amp and played .... oh, I can't remember ..... 'Mothers Live At The Fillmore East', say.

You can't tell me that that's the same enjoyment you might get from instant access to YouTube, or from opening a box of bits bought on Amazon and plugging straight in. 

And let me tell you, these cabinets could withstand a tactical nuclear missile.  And they delivered 40 watts RMS - that's Root Mean Square, none of your 'Total Music Power' rubbish.  And I once used all four in a pseudo-quadraphonic setup (to do with mirror placement and phase shifting) and I could have spent my whole life in the centre of that square of speakers.  Except that of course I would have died of thirst in about four days.  Hmmm.  Wonder if I made the right decision.

Any road up.  I have clung on to these speakers through university, marriage, multiple ultimately unsatisfying jobs and one almost-career, two house moves, childbirth (not me personally, you understand, I am male), but finally have to admit that they are, after forty years and not to put too fine a point on it, clapped out.  And at great expense and offspring insistence I have just bought some floorstanding Tannoys that hardly even work up a sweat when you put the MC5 through them.

So on Monday, it's Kingston Dump time:

What's that you say?  You didn't realise any 1986 Ford Escorts were still running?  Have you learned NOTHING from this experience, Grasshopper?  And do you not observe the all-natural hazel branch holding open the car boot?  (One day, I will get those air supports replaced.  Ford parts are made forever.)

OK, I'm a retrophile.  OK, I hate change,  But as long as it works, or works well enough, don't junk it.  We have had enough of the throwaway culture, and planned obsolescence.  Save the planet, a bit at a time.