Hi folks, some of you may remember me from the old forum, and also may have noticed that I was not that active in here. Why? I didn't even have a desk to sit on. The last year was very busy as I built myself a hose. I am not going to bother you with the details of the house itself, but rather present the man cave aka boombox room. I am still working on it as I made pretty much everything myself (from the bare walls) - I will keep this post as a journal of what's new as well. Sorry for the bad quality of the pictures, they are made with the phone, no time for artsy stuff. It all started November 2015 with this: which lead to this: Fast forwarding a little... This is where the real work really begun, as I did everything from this point myself. Boomboxes coming soon, now I got an error message that files are too big, perhaps I reached the number of attachments per post?
So...after I got the bare walls and windows, my work started. I did this in my spare time, along with a million other projects that you need to do with a new house. Straighten up walls , paint and self leveling floors. Next step: flooring and electrical system At this stage I had to get all my boomboxes, that were stored for 2 years in boxes, out of the storage area. Agent Orange was a very good friend and helped me with the entire process (of unboxing the boxes) that took about 3 days and was actually very hard work...so hard that I only took these pictures, and these do not even contain my entire collection: I did the paint and walls and floors on the storage area as well after that And built a big workbench (5X1 meters) so I can work on my boxes (and have some hifi equipment as well) Well folks, that's about 2 years in 2 posts. As I am working on this project when I can, it does not go as quick as I want to but it's all I can do. Next steps - I will build a shelving system for the boxes. The man cave is about 70 square meters and the plan is to have each wall covered with boomboxes from top to bottom. Not sure what I will do with the rest of the boxes - will have to reach that stage first. What are your thoughts on the project so far?
Damn thats quite a project Nev! AO said he had given you and hand moving some boxes in, must feel so good to get them out of storage and see them again. Keep us posted on how the man cave comes along. Will be great to see it all unfold. Welcome back man
That is almost as big as my entire bungalow ! (75m2) It looks as if you have plenty of room to get some more and still display them nicely.
You might be the first one to say you had to build a bigger home to fit all your boxes! It's fun unpacking stuff that's been in storage, kind of like getting them new all over again.
I actually said that I need to build a bigger home for my boxes on the old site, when I was still keeping them in storage. That was not a good period as I was not able to actually enjoy them. Now I have started bit by bit. The boxes were packed quite good, only one was damaged, a Grundig which I was fond of, but I think I will be able to repair that too to a certain level. For the shelves I don't want the standard "long shelve with a line of boomboxes in", but rather I would make some kind of frame for each boombox, then put them together like a puzzle. I just started woodworking but I am confident that with enough time I will be able to pull that trough. This will take me probably a lot of time, but hey, it needs to be as good as I imagined it, right? otherwise what's the point . I will also ask AO to put some pictures if he can, he took some with his DSLR - should be better quality than my phone's camera.
It is indeed a great project. Your man-cave is spacious. Please share some pictures of your progress I have plan to build something like this in a business district in LA to be a showroom for walkmans. Unfortunately haven't found the appropriate land yet.
Amazing work and a lot of effort ! When you sit back and enjoy a drink or two watching what you did it will be well worth it Mihai AO told us about what you were doing This is the stuff of what dreams are made of ! Welcome back.
excellent stuff but i rather think this has taken you much longer than expected, cant wait to see the end result buddy...welcome back
It did indeed took me longer than expected. Some days I am simply too exhausted to work on this. Some days I simply don't feel like it. Some other days I need to do some other more pressing work, it's not just this I am working on, but the rest of the house and the yard as well. And I also have a day job and a kid that needs attention too. And the project definitely needs to look like I want to otherwise what's the point? I have the pride of doing it all by myself, because I am learning useful skills in the process and I am fed up with contractors that demand money for a mediocre job. I can do bad all by myself, thank you . To my surprise, I can do a good job as well. Of course, the 2 major constraints are time and money, and both are in finite quantities. It will be finished when it will be finished, until then I can't way that I am bored even for a second. Until then... join me for the ride, I will update this thread as soon as I am doing new stuff.
It was great fun unboxing NevOne's stash, we got very excited and got to hear nearly all of the functioning units. This has to be the best/largest collection of Boombxes in the Slavics. He'll hate me for saying this but many were packed away in some stunning 90's club wear. Some of those sweatshirts, sheesh !! It's important to remember that there were simply no boomboxes in Romania before 1989. Communication in and out of the country was strictly forbidden. This makes Nev's collection even more interesting, many from eBay.de and Yahoo.jp. Particular favourites of mine are the Telefunken M1, Panasonic RX7000 (is that right Nev?), a very nice Sony CFS-77 plus some very rare tiny Sony's.
You might want to check out the GarageJournal.com website, it's mostly garage related stuff but they love builds like this and they might be able to give you some shelving ideas. I do a little wood working and would highly recommend the Kreg Pocket Hole Jig. You can make some really strong joints with this unit and it's pretty inexpensive. Of course a tablesaw and router would open up a whole new world.
I'll join others in saying to NevOne: "Welcome back." Your skill and discipline in learning and applying various aspects of home-contractor work is little short of daunting. It's all the more commendable to do all this while also raising a young one. It's also interesting to be reminded how extensive your boombox collection is. (All those units we see in photos 17 and 18, and you're just getting warmed up for the full reveal!) Would that more of them were fully functioning as of picture-taking time ... Ah, well, it's good anyway to see a big, black dual-deck unit (a "Super Jumbo"-type boombox, right?) taking position in photo' 13, dutifully ready to inform and to entertain. (Maybe Radio Constanţa on 100.1 FM or a breakdancing audiotape to try out the new flooring.) Again, great work, Nev, and good of AO to help you out.
@AO, yes, you are right, National RX7000 (I would have loved a 7200 but who knows, I may get one someday) @MisterX - Thank you for the suggestion, I am familiar with the Kreg Pocket Hole jig, I have a Wolfcraft pocket hole jig that does the exact same but it's in metric (kreg is not quite available in Europe, and I wouldn't import one just to do unit conversions all day) - however for the big frames I may go with lap joins (or at least that's what I had in mind, we'll see more when I get to that part). I don't have a table saw or router, but i have a miter saw and a few other electric hand tools. Next on the line is covering in wood the stairs connecting the basement to the ground floor. That is about the last "ugly concrete" part. @Easthelp yes, that's an Elta aka Mitsumi, in quite bad shape, but should clean up nice someday. P.S. AO, could you post some of the pictures you took?
Great stuff, this is an amazing project. Delighted to see that, little by little, you're heading toward one of the most incredible boom room around. Built right from the foundations!
OK, here we have a teetering mound of cardboard boxes. I think we can all identify with this.... Some laid out on the floor. Just drool at this man's space. Gazing in wonder at the Telefunken. Now, I've always dismissed this box until I heard it, wow !!! This is loud Some familiar boxes here... You will notice NevOne likes his Sony's
You say that the boombox I noticed in photo' 13 is "an Elta aka Mitsumi" and that it is "in quite bad shape"? Ah, maybe I spoke too soon, assuming a nicely functional unit. Do neither of the cassette decks work? Does the recording bar need a good cleaning? (James Pierce, the member known as Cassette2Go, has stated here on S2G that the recording bar is probably always neglected.) Does the radio tuner only tune up to 100 MHz in FM mode? (A nine-battery Sanyo I saw earlier today in the Ukraine on eBay has a partially working, four-band tuner with an indicator that the seller states won't visually tune past 106 MHz, though it functionally does so. Calls for quite a bit of frequency-guessing in those last 8 MHz or so across four bands -- even more than is already the case with analog-era, pre-RDS tuner equipment.) You say that the "bad shape" Elta "should clean up nice someday." Hopefully “someday” finds you putting the screws back into the rear cabinet after you’re done scrubbing the stereo’s nooks and crannies, changing tape belts, adjusting pulleys, wiping down recording bars and calibrating channels with an oscilloscope – and all of this in good health. And, of course, all this talk of imperfect portables doesn’t detract from the amazing diligence you put into having your “Boomboxville” built and equipped.
Isn't the Studio 1M something, AO? As far as definition of sound is concerned, no box is a match for it -- not even the Sonys of the FH-series, some of them may be possibly louder but definitely not better Talking about Sony: that Energy (CFS-99), what a beauty!!!
