I worked in a place similar to this 1976-1979, Norwest Electronics in
Livonia, Michigan. My old boss, Thaddeous Opalinsky just died recently,
aged 88 or so.

Wish I had some inside shots of it now. We had the best stock of parts
anywhere... full line of GC belts, idlers, etc, Sprague caps of all kinds,
Sylvania and International Servicemaster tubes (and some "old stock" stuff
too!), ECG transistors, Thordarson power, audio and TV transformers,
Centralab pots and switches. We also bought from a Chicago surplus house
called "Mid-America" that packaged stuff under the "Electronic Bargains"
brand, it was all kinds of production over-runs like Olson Electronics used
to sell. That was during the CB craze, also during the "Channel 20"
decoder craze in the Detroit area, where CH 20 was playing new and racy
movies but you had to have a decoder. I forget what that system was, but
guys would come in from the local factories where the decoder schematics
circulated like Super Bowl bidder cards. They were always so afraid to
reveal what they were building... that was funny. All us counter guys knew
of course.

I was already 4 years into restoring radios then... I had anything I needed
right at hand. Like today... after buying up over 15 repair shops!

Between me and Gary Schneider (www.oldradioparts.com ) pretty much
anything you need now for radio restoration (except unique cosmetic parts
like bezels) is still available, at mostly lower prices than it was in the
70's or earlier, if you refigure for inflation.

Mark Oppat
www.oldradioparts.net


"NotMe" wrote in message
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"NotMe" wrote in message
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What I meant by "Those were the days" was how great that must have been
"back then" when you could walk into a store and have radio parts and pieces
to look through, radios on display and books to browse. No cell phones or
satellite TV to see. Radio was the latest and greatest. Not like now.
It's all about high definition TV, satellite and surround sound, and cell
phones.

From an radio hobbyist point of view, those were the days. I don't know
about spies and government regulations.