Day two

After a late start (needed after being awoken at 2am by my Mum cooking eggs and bacon for her ficticiuos friends) we popped out to Tescos in Helston to get lunch things for the rest of the bank holiday weekend.

After lunch my Dad discussed with me what his options would be to replace the HiFi we bought in 1990 as both the tape drives have died and the radio no-longer holds its stations if it’s turned off. Basically, the old Sony is on its last legs. Anyway, I thought I might cost up a separates system for him so did some Googling. I could put together a reasonable system, including turntable, for about £620. That’s quite a bit more than even the most expensive non-separates system and the separate units wouldn’t have half the specification.

I then did a little more Googling. The DVD derivative of my Technics HiFi I have at home is still on sale and at less than £500. Now, with a separate turntable with inbuilt pre-amp this would save about £100 and would be a *FAR* higher specification.

My Dad decided there and then that that would be the way to go. It would amongst other things simplify the wiring in the living room as there’d be no need for the separate DVD. So we went off to Camborne and bought one.

Now, concidering that my HiFi is 8 years old it’s surprising that a direct decendant product would be on the market, let alone it looking almost identical. This is even more surprising in the fast moving, fashionable world of HiFis. Other than a few tweaks to accomodate the 5 disc DVD player, some advances in the sound processor and a change in the colour of some of the speaker decorations it looks the same as my unit. Maybe Technics have found a good design and are loathed to change it. It certainly works well and more importantly sounds good.

Anyway, after dinner we put it together, set the clock, preset the radio and watched a DVD (which was surprisingly good quality display seeing as were merely using composite video as we don’t have an S-Video cable). As with my unit, there’s no need for a separate sub-woofer as the speakers have one.. and they shook the room at the part of Spiderman 2 where the mini Sun Doctor Octopus is ignited.

Anyway, it’s now time for bed. Night all.