Hello all,
Lee (the big boss) has been a satisfied StereoManuals customer and a never-met-personally friend for a few years. He and I have exchanged some emails recently and he asked me to join this forum, so here I am. I'm not joining to troll the internet for possible sales. I will try to share a bit about myself and my probable level of participation here.
I have been aware of this forum for quite awhile and have occasionally read message threads here. I haven't participated basically due to the fact that I do not have the time to follow this or any forum on any kind of a regular basis. I was one of the first 100 or so registered members when AudioKarma first formed. I was very very very busy for a few years (about a decade ago) struggling to get the manuals business up and running efficiently, and had basically no time for audio forums. Occasionally I would run across some AK thread where someone was begging for a manual for which they had been looking for perhaps years. A couple times I posted a short reply saying I had it and to contact me directly via email if interested. Well I got my ass jumped on and the bottom line was that I couldn't reply like that unless I paid AK $50 or $100 per month for the right to do so. Same type thing happened on a few Yahoo audio discussion groups (minus the request for payments). So since my main purpose was to help the members asking for help with something I was able to help with, and not wanting to be perceived as some money-grubbing troll, I stopped most participation in most discussion sites and groups.
I also started a Yahoo group called 70'sAudioMindset back in 2003 (I think it was).
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/70sAudioMindset/
which is an all-things-audio general discussion group focused toward (but not limited to) vintage audio. Free flowing conversations where allowed from the beginning without excessive moderator (me) interventions, which also means reasonably restrained off-topic messages are allowed. The group currently has a bit over 1500 members. It was fairly busy for several years, but like most Yahoo audio groups, average message traffic has fallen as folks naturally moved to website based discussion forums such as this one. Some folks don't like the "mailing list" type format of the Yahoo groups.
Like many my age, I was not able to afford much of the great audio gear in the 70's although I did have a pretty decent system. Time passes... I began seeing and buying on eBay (about the turn of the century) the stuff I formerly only lusted after. And I bought a lot. Not like some, but a lot for me. One picture in particular on my site basically shows the stuff that interested me most.
http://www.stereomanuals.com/about/cool-pictures/index.htm
and I have a bunch of other stuff not shown there. In 2001 I begin (almost by accident) to sell a few manuals copies on eBay. What started as less than a part-time hobby thing quickly morphed into more and more and soon I was arguably one of the most successful (at that time) manuals seller on eBay. Beginning in early 2002 I began to put up a woefully horrible web site and not long after that stopped selling on eBay. In some ways the site is still woefully horrible
If anybody here is interested, you can read about the why's, the how's, and the tribulations of starting StereoManuals on this About Us page....
http://www.stereomanuals.com/about/how-started/index.htm
where you will also find some information about the Pioneer THE RACK (Lee has one), and about the most highly Arbitron rated FM station in American history which was run by a friend of mine who lives about 5 miles from me.
Lastly, about this manuals stuff... at a huge outlay of $$$ and untold thousands of hours of time, I have acquired probably one of the largest collections in the world of original printed (mostly audio) literature that is available for reprint directly from those originals (instead of printing scans), plus around half a million PDF and other electronic format manuals, schematics, brochures, etc.
As I told Lee the other day, the printed manuals business is like being a buggy whip maker in the age of automobiles. The proliferation of free pdf download sites plus the "I want it free" mentality has been gradually (and now increasingly) destroying what I thought was going to be a great business to operate from home property over the remaining 1/3 of my working life. Funny thing is that the free stuff works against many who would really like to find a high quality printed manual because they never find us and are led to believe that the only thing available is what can be found for download off of some site... readable or not. What a shame.
So my plans are that if I can implement some long term plans to drastically increase web traffic to our site and some I plan to build, then perhaps advertising revenue will suffice to keep me in the manuals business for years to come. If not, then at some point in the near to medium term, we may shut it down.
I hope nobody here thinks I am bitching about how things are or am being "sour grapes", etc. What it is, is what it is. So part of telling you the above is to also explain why I probably won't be a regular reader/contributor here (but that could change), because I am busy trying to keep my financial head above water and preparing to sell off a bunch of stuff as quickly as possible before our worldwide debt-based financial system collapses as it appears to be doing.
If I can help anyone here, I would be happy to do so. I'm really a very nice guy who is often willing to spend a lot of time to help someone even though I know there will be little to no $$ compensation. But the truth is.... I'm not likely to be reading here on a regular daily basis. I set my profile for the system to send me an email if someone uses this site's private message function.
Here's to all your good health and good listening.
Rick
Lee (the big boss) has been a satisfied StereoManuals customer and a never-met-personally friend for a few years. He and I have exchanged some emails recently and he asked me to join this forum, so here I am. I'm not joining to troll the internet for possible sales. I will try to share a bit about myself and my probable level of participation here.
I have been aware of this forum for quite awhile and have occasionally read message threads here. I haven't participated basically due to the fact that I do not have the time to follow this or any forum on any kind of a regular basis. I was one of the first 100 or so registered members when AudioKarma first formed. I was very very very busy for a few years (about a decade ago) struggling to get the manuals business up and running efficiently, and had basically no time for audio forums. Occasionally I would run across some AK thread where someone was begging for a manual for which they had been looking for perhaps years. A couple times I posted a short reply saying I had it and to contact me directly via email if interested. Well I got my ass jumped on and the bottom line was that I couldn't reply like that unless I paid AK $50 or $100 per month for the right to do so. Same type thing happened on a few Yahoo audio discussion groups (minus the request for payments). So since my main purpose was to help the members asking for help with something I was able to help with, and not wanting to be perceived as some money-grubbing troll, I stopped most participation in most discussion sites and groups.
I also started a Yahoo group called 70'sAudioMindset back in 2003 (I think it was).
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/70sAudioMindset/
which is an all-things-audio general discussion group focused toward (but not limited to) vintage audio. Free flowing conversations where allowed from the beginning without excessive moderator (me) interventions, which also means reasonably restrained off-topic messages are allowed. The group currently has a bit over 1500 members. It was fairly busy for several years, but like most Yahoo audio groups, average message traffic has fallen as folks naturally moved to website based discussion forums such as this one. Some folks don't like the "mailing list" type format of the Yahoo groups.
Like many my age, I was not able to afford much of the great audio gear in the 70's although I did have a pretty decent system. Time passes... I began seeing and buying on eBay (about the turn of the century) the stuff I formerly only lusted after. And I bought a lot. Not like some, but a lot for me. One picture in particular on my site basically shows the stuff that interested me most.
http://www.stereomanuals.com/about/cool-pictures/index.htm
and I have a bunch of other stuff not shown there. In 2001 I begin (almost by accident) to sell a few manuals copies on eBay. What started as less than a part-time hobby thing quickly morphed into more and more and soon I was arguably one of the most successful (at that time) manuals seller on eBay. Beginning in early 2002 I began to put up a woefully horrible web site and not long after that stopped selling on eBay. In some ways the site is still woefully horrible
If anybody here is interested, you can read about the why's, the how's, and the tribulations of starting StereoManuals on this About Us page....
http://www.stereomanuals.com/about/how-started/index.htm
where you will also find some information about the Pioneer THE RACK (Lee has one), and about the most highly Arbitron rated FM station in American history which was run by a friend of mine who lives about 5 miles from me.
Lastly, about this manuals stuff... at a huge outlay of $$$ and untold thousands of hours of time, I have acquired probably one of the largest collections in the world of original printed (mostly audio) literature that is available for reprint directly from those originals (instead of printing scans), plus around half a million PDF and other electronic format manuals, schematics, brochures, etc.
As I told Lee the other day, the printed manuals business is like being a buggy whip maker in the age of automobiles. The proliferation of free pdf download sites plus the "I want it free" mentality has been gradually (and now increasingly) destroying what I thought was going to be a great business to operate from home property over the remaining 1/3 of my working life. Funny thing is that the free stuff works against many who would really like to find a high quality printed manual because they never find us and are led to believe that the only thing available is what can be found for download off of some site... readable or not. What a shame.
So my plans are that if I can implement some long term plans to drastically increase web traffic to our site and some I plan to build, then perhaps advertising revenue will suffice to keep me in the manuals business for years to come. If not, then at some point in the near to medium term, we may shut it down.
I hope nobody here thinks I am bitching about how things are or am being "sour grapes", etc. What it is, is what it is. So part of telling you the above is to also explain why I probably won't be a regular reader/contributor here (but that could change), because I am busy trying to keep my financial head above water and preparing to sell off a bunch of stuff as quickly as possible before our worldwide debt-based financial system collapses as it appears to be doing.
If I can help anyone here, I would be happy to do so. I'm really a very nice guy who is often willing to spend a lot of time to help someone even though I know there will be little to no $$ compensation. But the truth is.... I'm not likely to be reading here on a regular daily basis. I set my profile for the system to send me an email if someone uses this site's private message function.
Here's to all your good health and good listening.
Rick
