David Nebenzahl wrote:
After dicking around for many months trying to find a replacement belt
for my trusty Philips cassette deck, by searching the Web, I did what I
should have done first: went to my local electronics store, after having
seen on a previous visit that they had an assortment of drive belts.

Well, it turns out not only did they have *a* belt which would fit, they
had the *exact replacement*! And not only that, but they had the
foresight to have saved a really old copy of the cross-reference book,
which listed my unit (long out of production: I bought it in new in 1980).

So I'd like to sing the praises of what few remaining local electronics
stores there are. Amazingly, around here (the San Francisco Bay Area),
there are just a handful left, even in the high-tech South Bay (I'm not
counting big places like Jameco here, but talking about old-school
stores where you can walk in off the street and buy a few resistors or
whatever).

And I'd like to give a shameless plug to this particular store, Al
Lasher's Electronics in Berkeley on University Ave. They've been there
forever; they have ton of stuff; they know what the hell they're talking
about, and are not above helping the clueless customer who needs a
replacement thingamajig for their old radio, computer setup, or
whatever, find what they need; I hope they're there for a long time to
come.


Unfortunately, most local electronic parts stores (don't even say radio
shack) have gone the way of the DODO bird with this disposable society.

Back in the days of tubes, pre Internet, they were thriving. Then solid
state came in. They would stock ECG, SK replacements and such. This was
not bad, but they were replacements and not original parts. Then
nationwide distributors began to stock ORIGINAL parts at a fraction of
the ECG/SK prices. It was a no brainer to service companies to get
a parts order together and mail order. The bread and butter of selling
tubes and generic semi market was going way down.

Then China came into the picture with no name disposable electronics.
I cannot even ship some of the stuff back to China for what they sell it
for. The number of repair shops shrunk by 1/2 over a 10 year period.
The old guys retired or went out of business. The new guys?
What new guys? The only thing they teach in schools these days is
computers. The old TV repair tech schools are a thing of the past
for the most part. More TV's are put on the curb these days than
repaired. What do you expect when you can buy a 20" color TV for $99?
Most large shops charge more than that for labor these days.
And when the USA DTV changeover takes place in 2009 or so,
the CRT will be near extinct


There are a few holdouts in major markets. But the local parts stores
are a shell of what they once were in the 1960/70's. As is the repair
shop business.

The few repair guys that have found a niche or are the last Mohicans
will survive. The rest are either taking on water or have sunk.
Its easier just to go to wall mart and buy a cheap new pacific rim
TV than get it fixed.

Bob

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