After lunch today, I had the idea to visit the Cash America pawn shop. I don’t bother much with pawn shops anymore, and it’s rare that I visit them, much less buy anything. I have the assumption that most everything there is overpriced or has some problem with it. Although, I do admit, I bought two Wii systems from pawn shops and those have been just fine. That’s probably my last purchase, a couple of years ago.
So today, I browse around and ended up spying and buying a graphic equalizer for my stereo setup. It’s made by Technics and is the correct vintage for my CD player. The model is Technics SH-8017. The EQ was $25, but was marked down to $20 early for President’s day. And when I checked out, they made it $20 after tax, so even a little extra.
But when I went to check out and pulled out my credit card, they asked for my ID. I said, "That’s new," and the manager said it was, because, you know. Yeah, pawn shop. And then, I was completely set up in their system with an account. Name, address, phone number, date of birth, the whole works. To buy something! midway through, I though this wasn’t worth it for $20 and almost pulled out cash, but also considered, this was going to happen sooner or later and the sooner I can get in the system, I won’t have to do it again.
But what a weird thing, to have to create a customer profile to buy something. Then again, is it weird? You do it all the time when shopping online. It is weird when buying something over a counter. But is it? You usually give up all that stuff when you sign up for loyalty or reward programs, too. And it is a pawn shop, after all. Everything behind those doors is a strange legal limbo.
But anyway, with all that behind me, I took the device home and plugged it in. Everything worked quite well. I noticed no additional noise when running it inline with the Technics CD player. The only thing wrong with it is it’s missing one rubber foot (not seen in the front right), which I’ll be able to buy replacements for easily enough. I tested out its capabilities using my CD of ZZ Top – Afterburner, which is notoriously anemic; even more so through the Technics CD Player. As shown, I simply boosted the lower two bands and that raised the bass level to something more appropriate.
Could I have done the same with the tone controls on my preamp? Well, yeah, but two things: first, there’s no quick bypass for the tone controls, so I would have to adjust them every time. With the EQ, I just turn the device off to bypass it. Second, the bass control is probably centered around a higher frequency than the lowest two bands on the graphic EQ. That usually causes some "boominess" and is why tone controls aren’t that good for sound shaping.
I recently read a quip from a blogger whose opinion I trust and he said while using studio monitors for music listening (as I do) is fine, they tend to make the music more clinical, whereas normal amps and speakers are designed to reproduce music with a bit more excitement or punch. So now, I have to consider if I want to go that route and if so, what amp and speakers to get. My setup has been pretty good to me so far. I guess it’s time to go to the next level.
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