Recently, I've been spending a few hours every Sunday working part-time for a former colleague who started up a small business, focused on helping a poorer minority niche market here that most businesspeople wouldn't bother with. She's paying me less than 1/4 of what I would usually charge, but that is all her struggling start-up can afford, and I just felt I would do my part to help her get the business going; it is doing a lot of good to change the lives of one of the "underdog" groups of society here. You might call it semi-charity.
Today, after I finished the work we had a talk. She was telling me she was concerned that right now, her entire business actually depends on me, and on my continuing to do what I'm doing for at least a good while longer. Two large players (one government-substidized) are taking steps to enter the exact market that she is pioneering, and she is worried that to compete, one of them will hire me away for several times what she can pay me. If I left suddenly, her gradually growing but still-on-thin-ice business would collapse. [If the customers followed me, it would do so almost instantly!]
I tried to calm her fears, explaining that if I were just after money, I could already have done a dozen other things to make more money on my Sundays, but I respect what she is doing, and am willing to do my bit to try to help it get started. I told her I thought that "what goes around, comes around," and if I did a good thing, maybe one day something good would happen to me, too.
Well, I don't know if there is any connection, but something good happened to me, not long at all after that conversation. Something so uncommon, so unlikely, so unbelievable (to me, at least) that I'd almost call it a "miracle"!
By the time we finished talking, it was getting fairly late in the evening, and I almost went straight home. I decided instead to head off to the audio market, to check a few things if I could get there in time. Went there, looked at a few things in one place, and stopped to grab a very quick dinner, as I was hungry.
Then I headed to another place, and along the way I happened to walk past a truck with some gear piled in it. I glanced over, and saw a vaguely familiar speaker piled in with a couple others near the edge of the truck's tailgate...
I actually walked two or three steps further with the sight of that speaker still mentallyt dancing before my eyes, because it took my brain that long to process the image. Then I stopped and turned, thinking, NO WAY... IT CAN"T BE!...
IT JUST WOULDN"T BE...
COULD IT BE?...
NAW, BUT I JUST SAW...
WHAT ARE THE ODDS?...
But even as I was turning back and looking towards it, I KNEW what it was. Had to be. There are only a few speakers ever made that look just like that. I look at a pair of them every day, on the shelf up high above me as I sit (here) at the computer, at home!
My eyes KNOW that speaker... It HAD to be...
It had the very distinctive color.
It had the angled top front edge with the little square tweeter grill.
It had the printed graph on the top,
and the magical brand name...
MARANTZ!
I picked it up, held it up in the dim evening light, and there was no doubt left as my eyes took in and read off the lettering on the front... P, M, S 7, 0, 0, 0 s-p-e-a-k-e-r s-y-s-t-e-m!
Yep! This was a speaker off of one of those extremely rare MArantz PMS-7000 boomboxes! But I only saw ONE.
I asked the seller-guy there if this was just an orphan speaker, or might he have a pair? He said, "No orphan, both speakers are here," and pointed halfway back along a shelf running the length of the truck's interior. I could just dimly make out the other speaker, sitting there. Wow! A pair of them!
I then pointed to the mounting flanges on the side of the speaker box and said, "This should be part of a three-piece set. Do you have the middle part, too?"
"No, sorry," he replied, "I just have the two speakers. That's all there was."
Was I diappointed by that? HECK, NO! I was almost as happy as a lab rat with electrodes in its brain's orgasm center. In a way, this was BETTER than finding a whole PMS-7000, at least to me, because...
Some of you may remember a while back (earlier last year) I posted about getting a back-up MIDDLE SECTION ONLY of a PMS-7000. It was missing both speakers, and some circuit boards inside were cracked and some knobs were missing, but the actual case was almost perfect and the faceplate absolutely pristine. Replacement knobs are not a huge problem for me, but PMS speakers? What are the odds of finding a pair of PMS-7000 speakers by themselves (without the middle section), in great condition?
I wouldn't be too shocked to find another complete PMS-7000, but even that would be a real rarity and a surprise. What are the odds of finding JUST THE SPEAKERS?
I was sure if I ever found these speakers at all, they'd be attached to the rest of the box. I thought maybe once in my life I might be bizarrely lucky enough to find a box with a damaged middle part, and could re-arrange the parts to make a better-looking one and still have a poor mid-section left orphaned. But finding JUST THE SPEAKERS alone? AND in SUPERB condition (just some dust behind the woofer grill), to match the flawless faceplate of my "parts" middle section? FOR A MARANTZ PMS-7000, of all boxes, as rare as it is? Even though I know that around the market here in Hong Kong, almost any audio rarity MIGHT be found sooner or later, I never thought I'd actually find THESE, just like this!
I had picked up that middle section mainly thinking at least I'd have some spare parts from it for my complete PMS-7000 if it ever got damaged, and in the absolutely freakishly, extremely, unthinkably rare event that I ever came across a good pair of PMS-7000 speakers without any middle section, I could even complete it and try to restore it.
Well, that "will never happen in a million years" event happened tonight. I found those speakers. In great shape. Just the speakers! I can still hardly believe it.
Now all I have to do is restore those broken-up circuit boards. That won't be a very fast or easy project, as I'll have to line up and glue the fractured pieces back with some good strong epozy-type glue, then manually restore the electrical connections between the broken traces, one by one. Then I'll have to make sure the components are all properly mounted, and that there are no short circuits or still-broken traces, etc...
It has been a while since I looked at those boards; I'm not even sure they are all repair-able that way. Worst-case scenario, I may need to scan in the broken-up traces and clean them up in Photoshop and print a stencil from that, or try to get a good scale drawing out of a service manual, and using that, have brand-new circuit boards made. It will be a LOT of work, with either approach, but still it is do-able.
At least on the outside (cosmetically), I now have two essentially complete Marantz PMS-7000 boxes, even if one is missing knobs and has real interior damage.
I feel really glad now that I picked up (for I think it was five bucks) that middle section. It might have been thrown in the trash if I hadn't, and then the "reunion" could never have happened. I doubt anyone else seeing those speakers would happen to have the exact middle section to "complete" them, either. I've been lucky enough to be able to -in effect- "save" a rare box where one didn't even really exist as any more than orphaned and scattered parts. What a great feeling that is!
Ironically, the one with the busted-up boards and the orphaned speaker pair are probably a bit newer-looking than my good box was when I got it. I might even be best off swapping a lot of parts around, to put the good "guts" and knobs of my complete one inside the cases of the "united orphans" one. I probably won't, but I'll look at them carefully before deciding for sure.
Interestingly, this particular box has the pre-amp in the center portion, but the power amps for each side are actually distributed out in the speaker cases themselves. Since there is no damage to them, even if I can't/couldn't repair the busted inside boards in it, I could easily modify that one to play off of an iPod or Wlakman or something in the middle part, using the power amps in each speaker. But I'll try to fully restore it, instead, as I like these and would rather keep it as-original.
After getting it, the good evening still wasn't over. I had three excellent conversations with people I know in the market there, among the most interesting and rewarding conversations that I've had in months around there. I also bought a Marantz SD-6000 dual-speed cassette deck, found another lower-level (but rated XXXX-rare) Marantz 5010 deck, and indicated I will buy the M70 and Disco-Robo the same dealer has. What a way to cap off the day's finds! 
I came home "floating on a cloud". Somehow this was a great evening, mostly because of those simple, old plastic-boxed speakers. Half the conversations were actually about negative things: first the lady's fears I mentioned before, then I was helping one guy deal with being evicted from his warehouse space by a court action he didn't understand (he's illiterate), then one of the few long-term minority (Pakistani) guys in the market was discussing the history of the market, the slowing and "squeezing" that is happening now and shutting down many of the smaller players, how 'complicated' the people were and how outsiders are shut out, etc... BUT in every conversation I felt like I was really connecting with another person, and even helping them out or at least helping them feel better, and I learned some useful stuff, too. And there were a few positive notes scattered in there, too.
It all just felt a bit "magical" tonight, somehow. I feel like I won a lottery or something... especially with those PMS speakers!
I know no one else around here would appreciate my being happy about finding two old plastic-cased boombox speakers ("old rubbish" to most people), but I wanted to share this with someone who would appreciate it; hence, this post. Sorry to write another l-o-n-g post (esp. without pics) but if you read this far, thanks! If you made it this far, I hope some of the luck I had today rubs off on you, too! And I hope no one feels jealous or like I'm gloating or anything like that: I don't mean to come across that way. This wasn't even a whole box, just a pair of speakers! They were only worth something to me, because I had the missing center part waiting for them.i have a donor 7000 if you want the boards, might take a few weeks to get it though.
Great story Arkay and what are the odds?
You may end up with a fully functional and complete 7000 after all, that's awesome!
Excellent tale. What goes around does indeed come around. It seems as though all the pieces are coming together and surely you'll have a great box fully restored. Well done!
Great for you Arkay.Keep up the good work with your friend. She should be happy to have a good loyal friend such as yourself.
