Speaking of Silvertone, a nice elderly gentleman came in this morning. Has an old Silvertone hawaiian lap steel guitar and amp from the fifties (I'll have to check the serial number, but that's my guess...). His dad had a farm and traded it for a pig (!) to a local boy that was down and out. And a real honest-to-goodness 8-track tape player. Haven't seen one of those in years. Wants to know if I can fix it for him (it eats tapes, something most of these machines did regularly). Normally I'd send him elsewhere, but I happen to know a little bit about fixing these things and there's no place to send him so I told him I'd have a look.

Did you know that working 8-track tape players sell for around $1500 these days? That's because there are still a few people out there that collect the tapes but nobody (and I do mean nobody) makes the players anymore. A huge chunk of the remaining functional players are 12 volt systems for cars. One that works off AC is rarer than hen's teeth. This one is AC... It's also a Panasonic. I know this model well. I've worked on them before. Couldn't even tell you how many times I've popped the cover on one of these.

I took care of it. It no longer eats tapes. One thing is certain; that it will eat tapes again someday. But not today...