[sdiy] Major Score in the Dumpster at work!

[Dave Trenkel]

>  > Where I live, the local university auctions old equipment to the 
>public. The
>>  local state government does the same. Why don't companies, and more
>  > universities, do this sort of thing?
>
The University I went to does the auction thing, a couple times each 
quarter. There's a whole culture of folks who go to these things 
religiously.

Here's a sad story of a major score I missed. In the mid-80's, when I 
was first at school, one of the music professors got some funding to 
create an electronic music studio. I worked there for a couple of 
years. We started with a badly-built  PAIA/home-made modular that we 
inherited from a grad student, maybe half done (my intro to synth 
DIY). The studio got funding to buy a brand new (then) Prophet 5, 
with the sequencer, and a couple of Tascam 4-track reel-to-reels. 
After a couple of years of basically no interst from any students 
besides me and the other guy that worked there, the studio got 
converted to office space for an assistant choir director. The 
Prophet went into storage in the prof's office. I kept in touch with 
him, and let him know that if the Prophet ever went to auction. After 
about a decade in storage, it did go to auction, and I didn't know 
about it. It sold for $75 to a guy I know. He traded it to another 
local musician for a home-keyboard, sampled piano thing. The musician 
sold it to Wine Country, and bought a brand new Oberheim OBMX with 
the profits, wanting the "state of the art" analog synth. The OBMX 
turned out to be a total piece of crap, and he sold it for a fraction 
of what he paid for it.

The Prophet was basically unused for almost all the time it was here. 
I only hope it went to a good home from Wine Country.
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Dave Trenkel                                New and Improv Music
http://www.newandimprov.com         improv at peak.org
                 Now Available: Minus: Dark Lit
"This is music all-consuming in its beauty and power"
                                -Jake TenPas OSU Daily Barometer
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