Music challenges

[rebeccmeister]

After my old Sansa Clipp started to run out of juice every single time I used it, I got a new one, figuring I was familiar with how they function. I also really liked the fact that I could just clip it onto my shoulder while erging and easily change songs. I can't do that with my smart-o-phone, plus the smart-o-phone is too cumbersome. Well, the new one died some form of inexplicable electronic death after only a couple months of use.

Some time ago, I got to reading about CD players, and worked up the motivation to clean the lens on the boombox I've had since college. That revived the thing, up until a week or two ago. Now it's gone back to failure, even after re-cleaning the lens with rubbing alcohol.

So I dug out the portable CD player that I got for "free" with some crappy BOSE headphones* a while back, to try running CDs off of it, using the boombox as speakers. But I'd forgotten that at some point a small plastic latch mechanism broke on it, so it refuses to play CDs because it thinks the lid is always open.

Oh, also, this doesn't relate to music, but the other day the $10 humidifier stopped spitting out humid air and started spitting out "electrical burning smell" air. So hmm.

The thing that I hate even more than the thought of having to toss or otherwise dispose of all these things is trying to figure out what to do instead. I still hate having to futz with playlists, for instance, and don't like playing music off my computer when I'm at home.


*Those supposedly fancy noise-canceling headphones ALWAYS have plastic failures at a crucial joint, and the company has no plans to change the design.

Comments

[randomdreams]

If you have access to the optics mechanism on the boombox, you might try a drop of oil or graphite: it's possible the optics mechanism isn't able to slide smoothly enough to track, because the lubricant has dried.

[scrottie]

> small plastic latch mechanism broke on it,

Sugru

> *Those supposedly fancy noise-canceling headphones ALWAYS have plastic failures at a crucial joint, and the company has no plans to change the design.

Ahem. *coughSugru*

Rolleyes

[rebeccmeister]

Let's see if you can remember about the portable CD player the next time you want to Sugru a bunch of stuff. I managed to re-wedge it with a tiny piece of paper for now, and figured out some other thing that was causing it to not play.

AND - I stopped using Bose headphones years ago because of the design failure problem. I tried re-gluing them, and Sugru might work for a while, but then it would fail again. The portion that's plastic shouldn't be made of plastic. I eventually sent a pair back to Bose with a note, complaining about the design flaw, and they responded by sending back a brand-new set of the same headphones. So I sighed and gave them to my brother, who used them for a while until they, too, failed in the same place.

My Audio-Technica headphones have been fine for the past multiple years because they're designed and constructed better.


Grump grump. :^P

Re: Rolleyes

[scrottie]

I remember the Bose headphones story. That's part of why I gawk at everyone and their dog wearing the now fashionable Beats by Dre headphones. This has only bolstered my headphones snobbery. But wearing headphones made entirely of Sugru, wire, and voicecoil would be acceptable as a fashion statement, in my opinion. Kinda like the Toaster Project, it's interesting to me how much of the aesthetic of plastic is lost when the carefully honed industrial engineering is thrown away and replaced with a blobular mass.

I hope Mr. Dre stops making headphones and instead opens a restaurant, following Alice Cooper's lead. Hopefully Eats by Dre won't be plastic.

Your fix for the little CD player is a good one. Way back when I was making mix CDs, I'd do that so I could take colored markers to the labels and make pretty patterns while they played.

Re: Rolleyes

[rebeccmeister]

Now I am going to make some new headphones out of porcelain clay. You do have a point, there, though. Plastic be JUNK! And that's really at the heart of all of these recent woes, when it gets down to it.

It's too bad the build-your-own CD player kit is like 3000 Euros. I might still call up the audio repair place to see if they can do a proper job of fixing the boombox.