- Joined
- Oct 20, 2013
- Messages
- 296
This is for humorous stories of the extremes we go to for our gear. I'll start with "gear preservation" but you may have a great story about the same or maybe gear acquisition, lust, envy, etc. Feel free to share your stories of gear extremism!
Beginning about 2016, we moved from Denver, CO to to the Portland, OR area, and to reward me for my general amazingness, my spouse gave the green light to some Bowers and Wilkins CM10-S2 speakers. 4 of them and a matching center channel. Of course a new receiver was needed as well, and a new large screen flat panel TV for movies. Setting up my new man cave also involved getting plastic cable routers to hide the cable because it isn't only my man cave after all. In addition I custom made sound panels which involved some light woodworking as well as (yikes!) a trip to the fabric store where I found some cool Dr. Who and Star Trek themed fabric for the exterior of the panels. Because we weren't planning on moving for 5 or more years, I couldn't see keeping the boxes the speakers came in, so threw them out. Big mistake, as we were moving a year later to our new final destination, California, to escape the months and months of rain in Portland. We were drenched refugees by the time we arrived in the Bay Area.
To protect each speaker for the long distance move required a meticulous application of custom cut (by me) cardboard pieces and finally wrapping the whole speaker in wrapping plastic (like Saran Wrap) and then lovingly placing each speaker in a wardrobe box stuffed with about 10 bags of peanuts. It takes almost two hours per speaker to achieve this. A kiss for good luck and off we go! Unpacking them is a recycling nightmare. Peanuts and cardboard everywhere.
As it turns out California wasn't the final move either, and about a year and a half later we needed to make an interim move into two separate apartments to transition to our new final home, this time on the dry side of Oregon, near Bend. Same process with each move. But it turns out this last move wasn't the last either and our new final home is pretty close to where we started - in Colorado. However this time I have had enough, and bought new speaker boxes with the styrofoam inserts from Bowers and Wilkins which themselves cost about $700 including delivery. Yes, $700 for boxes I should never have thrown away to begin with. But now instead of 1.5-2 hours per speaker, it will take about 15 minutes. And they will be safer. We will make this move in about a month. Because I have invested in the convenient boxes, we will likely never move again. Fingers crossed - I am sick of moving.
Beginning about 2016, we moved from Denver, CO to to the Portland, OR area, and to reward me for my general amazingness, my spouse gave the green light to some Bowers and Wilkins CM10-S2 speakers. 4 of them and a matching center channel. Of course a new receiver was needed as well, and a new large screen flat panel TV for movies. Setting up my new man cave also involved getting plastic cable routers to hide the cable because it isn't only my man cave after all. In addition I custom made sound panels which involved some light woodworking as well as (yikes!) a trip to the fabric store where I found some cool Dr. Who and Star Trek themed fabric for the exterior of the panels. Because we weren't planning on moving for 5 or more years, I couldn't see keeping the boxes the speakers came in, so threw them out. Big mistake, as we were moving a year later to our new final destination, California, to escape the months and months of rain in Portland. We were drenched refugees by the time we arrived in the Bay Area.
To protect each speaker for the long distance move required a meticulous application of custom cut (by me) cardboard pieces and finally wrapping the whole speaker in wrapping plastic (like Saran Wrap) and then lovingly placing each speaker in a wardrobe box stuffed with about 10 bags of peanuts. It takes almost two hours per speaker to achieve this. A kiss for good luck and off we go! Unpacking them is a recycling nightmare. Peanuts and cardboard everywhere.
As it turns out California wasn't the final move either, and about a year and a half later we needed to make an interim move into two separate apartments to transition to our new final home, this time on the dry side of Oregon, near Bend. Same process with each move. But it turns out this last move wasn't the last either and our new final home is pretty close to where we started - in Colorado. However this time I have had enough, and bought new speaker boxes with the styrofoam inserts from Bowers and Wilkins which themselves cost about $700 including delivery. Yes, $700 for boxes I should never have thrown away to begin with. But now instead of 1.5-2 hours per speaker, it will take about 15 minutes. And they will be safer. We will make this move in about a month. Because I have invested in the convenient boxes, we will likely never move again. Fingers crossed - I am sick of moving.