Retro Sweetness…

[the elephant]

[Username]

That is nice.

[UncleBeer]

My family had several of these around the house.

Strobotuner.jpg (146.93 KiB) Viewed 618 times

[bloke]

This is the first product that Peterson ever made, and is rare as hell.

It was given to me by a former student - current friend/colleague, "just because" (ie. thanks for your help and friendship, etc.)

It has NO microphone and is ONLY a tone generator (ie. an "electronic tuning fork"), and was mostly used for tuning ORGAN pipes.

As one might easily guess, it works off vacuum tubes.

[arpthark]

I first saw a Conn Strobotuner in a repairman's shop when I was in college and thought it was cool as heck. I'd still like one for my little shop, now.

[the elephant]

My family had several of these around the house.



Strobotuner.jpg

Here's mine…



This past summer I went home to San Antonio to see my ailing mother. I also met with Mike Lynch to return the tuba he loaned me a while back. He decided to give me one of these for my own use. I was going to try to cobble the two together to net me one that looked and worked like it was brand new, and then sell the other once it was in good shape.

THAT SAME NIGHT in the hotel parking lot, two creeps broke into my Jeep and stole it. [Oddly enough, they also took my maroon Kellyberg that I keep in the center console. Nothing else was touched. I guess they thought the tuner was some valuable retro tech that might be pawnable, and the mouthpiece must have looked like some sort of crack pipe to them. Idiots.]

Eight of them hit sixteen cars in the lot that night. (This happened at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Schertz, if anyone cares.)

Nice.

[bloke]

You folks reminded me (had forgotten) that I also own this much later transistor-era Peterson tuner (yeah...it works), which came with a pile of stuff from a salvage place...a whole bunch of band instruments, this (picture below), and a

Woodson P.A. - with two gigantic columns...incredible output. (Woodson, Kustom, and Kasino amps/P.A.'s all featured the same guts and speakers, but looked different on the outside. That way, competing stores could sell them in the same town. They were all assembled in eastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri...Kustom and Kasino were assembled in Kansas.)
I'll photog the Woodson, if anyone is interested in seeing it.
It's something that I hook to my laptop, when I ACTUALLY want a youtube (etc.) recording of grand piano or symphony orchestra to be ABSOLUTELY AS LOUD as in real life - to play along. For that Woodson P.A. to be VERY loud, I need to turn it up to about "3". Other than being unwieldy, it would make an incredible - if LOUD is REALLY needed - bass guitar amp.

[The Big Ben]

I first saw a Conn Strobotuner in a repairman's shop when I was in college and thought it was cool as heck. I'd still like one for my little shop, now.

I think we had one in my junior high. Can't remember if we ever used it. Maybe it was broken.

[bloke]

My Dad had a WALNUT VENEER 8-track tape DECK (which could even RECORD).

I SHOULD HAVE kept that.

[UncleBeer]

My Dad had a WALNUT VENEER 8-track tape DECK (which could even RECORD).

Huh: I wonder if anyone ever developed 8 track recording for those, like the 4 track cassette recorders of the '80s.