If you're not an audiophile or DIYer in Tokyo, there is something wrong with you. Forget that intensive trawling of overseas online shops for needed items, studying half complete specs to try work out if it's what you want, and breathlessly waiting for the parcel to clear customs (oh sh1t it's been stuck in customs for three weeks) to see if you wasted $700 or not.
Rather take a walk to the Akibahara district in Tokyo, and pick up your stuff from knowledgeable and helpful shop owners that stock everything under the sun.
Tiny little shops three stories up -- one selling just components for amps. One selling components for PSUs. One selling crossover components and speaker drivers. One selling RF testing devices. One selling every possible LED you could imagine. One selling enclosures and knobs. One selling... you get the picture.
Is that low noise or regular resistors, you'd be wanting?
Speaker wire, perhaps? Budget or high end?
I like ScanSpeak, but the Focals are on sale...
I'm building a crossover, do you have good caps... oh, I can pick from Mundorf, Jantzen, etc, or store brand or cheapies. Oh, you have a variety of off the sheld inductors too. Hmm. 15 or 18AWG? Round or flat wire? Want a pre-built speaker enclosure to go with that?
One little kiosk sells Fluke and other test gear. One sells tools... Japanese or Taiwanese made (remember when "Made in Taiwan" used to mean cheap and nasty?) Got a really nice screw-removing plier -- has a variety of teeth in various places to remove stripped screws. It's called a Neji-saurus. Neji being a screw in Japanese.
And then the audio shops.
Let's start with the music shops. One store just selling used and new brass instruments. One of many.
Instruments ranged from a couple of thousand rand to R250,000 or more.
Guitar shops -- just used guitars. Three floors of them. And there were about 20 of these shops, some with specialisation in types, some with customisation specialisation
One had a floor at the top with a workshop where you could get repairs and upgrades, or total custom work (they had a variety of woods to choose from).
Need spares to sort out your cheery axe? No problem, off the shelf Gibson, Ibanez, ESP etc etc
And then the audiophile gear. Shop after shop, new or used.
The used shops were like funny old junk shops, with all sorts of gear laid out on the floor, piled on shelves, all the way to the ceiling. Amps. Speakers. DACs. Turntables. Cables. You name it.
And not cheap stuff ... these were anything from a few thousand bucks to fifty or hundred fifty thousand.
The ulta-high end shops were something. Didn't get many pics as they're a bit twitchy about people taking pics. But huge rooms, one on top of the other with gear.
One place had four floors, the top three floor were dedicated to one guy. On his floor, there were two seating spots, with four or five combinations or ultra-high end gear (we're talking in the hundreds of thousands). That's all that guy did -- that was his expertise, and his choice of stuff. If you wanted something different, go somewhere else.
There was more gear in just one shop in Akihabara than probably SA's entire annual turnover of mid- and high-end gear.
Was good fun cruising round, me clutching my pitiful bag of new crossover components and new set of ultra-fine screwdrivers.
We then found a sake bar and got drunk :dop:
Rather take a walk to the Akibahara district in Tokyo, and pick up your stuff from knowledgeable and helpful shop owners that stock everything under the sun.
Tiny little shops three stories up -- one selling just components for amps. One selling components for PSUs. One selling crossover components and speaker drivers. One selling RF testing devices. One selling every possible LED you could imagine. One selling enclosures and knobs. One selling... you get the picture.
Is that low noise or regular resistors, you'd be wanting?
Speaker wire, perhaps? Budget or high end?
I like ScanSpeak, but the Focals are on sale...
I'm building a crossover, do you have good caps... oh, I can pick from Mundorf, Jantzen, etc, or store brand or cheapies. Oh, you have a variety of off the sheld inductors too. Hmm. 15 or 18AWG? Round or flat wire? Want a pre-built speaker enclosure to go with that?
One little kiosk sells Fluke and other test gear. One sells tools... Japanese or Taiwanese made (remember when "Made in Taiwan" used to mean cheap and nasty?) Got a really nice screw-removing plier -- has a variety of teeth in various places to remove stripped screws. It's called a Neji-saurus. Neji being a screw in Japanese.
And then the audio shops.
Let's start with the music shops. One store just selling used and new brass instruments. One of many.
Instruments ranged from a couple of thousand rand to R250,000 or more.
Guitar shops -- just used guitars. Three floors of them. And there were about 20 of these shops, some with specialisation in types, some with customisation specialisation
One had a floor at the top with a workshop where you could get repairs and upgrades, or total custom work (they had a variety of woods to choose from).
Need spares to sort out your cheery axe? No problem, off the shelf Gibson, Ibanez, ESP etc etc
And then the audiophile gear. Shop after shop, new or used.
The used shops were like funny old junk shops, with all sorts of gear laid out on the floor, piled on shelves, all the way to the ceiling. Amps. Speakers. DACs. Turntables. Cables. You name it.
And not cheap stuff ... these were anything from a few thousand bucks to fifty or hundred fifty thousand.
The ulta-high end shops were something. Didn't get many pics as they're a bit twitchy about people taking pics. But huge rooms, one on top of the other with gear.
One place had four floors, the top three floor were dedicated to one guy. On his floor, there were two seating spots, with four or five combinations or ultra-high end gear (we're talking in the hundreds of thousands). That's all that guy did -- that was his expertise, and his choice of stuff. If you wanted something different, go somewhere else.
There was more gear in just one shop in Akihabara than probably SA's entire annual turnover of mid- and high-end gear.
Was good fun cruising round, me clutching my pitiful bag of new crossover components and new set of ultra-fine screwdrivers.
We then found a sake bar and got drunk :dop:
