Radio Shark and Laff-At-It (was Calling Features and LATAs) [Telecom]

It seems like Radio Shack has always been the Rodney Dangerfield of electronics shops. No respect !!

Radio Shark, Radio Shaft, Radio Schlock ... ad infinitum.

To tell the truth, it's not all undeserved. It's about the only store I know where the average customer knows far more about the products than the average employee !!

My only real gripe with RS, and I admit that this is picky, was ca. 1970s when they INSISTED on a mailing address on the ticket for each and every purchase. The clerks had all kinds of excuses for it - LOL. I would often scribble in 'Richard Nixon, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue' and eventually the manager at one shop started saying 'Hello Mr. Nixon' when I walked in. ;-)

However (comma) if you needed a 4.7k resistor on a Sunday evening, you could always find it there ... (Where was Fry's back then ??)

And then there was the Battery A Month Club !!

How many battery cards in how many names did you have ?? ;-)

I don't think I ever bought a battery at retail during that promotion.

Lifetime guarantee tubes ?? Do they still honor that ?? ;-)

There used to be a chain out of Long Island, Lafayette Radio. I >believe they're gone.

They had their main store out in Syosset, IIRC, and branches scattered about. The one I remember best was the one in midtown Manhattan, roughly 45th. and 6th. IIRC. They had most of the Lafayette house line, a fairly well stocked component counter, and all kinds of specials and surplus things on tables out front.

RS didn't have the monopoly on disrespect. Lafayette was well known as 'Laff-At-it'. ;-)

And then there was Olson ... and yes, Allied.

Anybody else remember Burstein-Applebee ??

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Reply to
jsw
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The root of that, of course, is that most towns do not have any real electronics experts who will work for retail-store wages. So you take what you can get.

I appreciate Radio Shack for making electronics known, and available, to a much wider range of people than would otherwise be possible. In the pre-Radio-Shack era, we could only get parts from the local TV repair parts jobber, which was much less experimenter-friendly.

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Reply to
MC

Of course, that's simple economics... Few electronics experts are willing to work at retail-store wages. The expert salesmen work at the big industrial electronics wholesalers where their expertise translates into big sales. At Radio Shack, you take what you get -- and it's a lot better than not having convenient stores in every town!

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Reply to
MC

I remember it as Burnstein-Applebee; and then there were dozens of surplus outfits like (spelling) Herbach-Rademann, Fair Radio, and J.J.Glass, the well-known L.A.-based surplus house that had lots of military radar stuff. In 1975 or so I visited that store and found that it was being run by the widow who was trying to close out remaining inventory prior to closure. Of course all around So. Cal. there were dozens of surplus yards full of military, aerospace and computer surplus of the highest order selling for very small prices.

FWIW, there was a tube collector and trader by the name of Sy Spector in the L.A. area who had anything containing a vacuum for a long time.

Michael

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Reply to
Michael Grigoni

I don't think you've ever been to Fry's!

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Reply to
AES

send them to

change anything.

Two of my favorites, not yet mentioned here, but still very much in business, are *Viking* (for all things telephony) and *Digi-Key* (for pretty much everything else that RS, Lafayette, Hatry's, Olson, Allied, et al., used to supply so famously).

Cheers, -- tlvp

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Reply to
tlvp

Ah yes, out of Kansas City, I think. My folks got (at my direction) a B-A tuner (probably some other discontinued line, rebranded) to go with their Allied amp. They didn't have as broad a stock (in their catalog, anyhow) as Allied and Lafayette, though.

I've still got a Lafayette Vectorlog slide rule that I acquired for college. Had scales for vector arithmetic, reactance, and the like in addition to the more normal scales.

Which one was it that used to issue refunds (for overpayment) with wads of checks, essentially their own negotiable currency? A $1.37 overpayment got you bearer checks for $1, $0.25, $0.10, and two for $0.01. I can remember taking a wad of them to the bank to cash.

Dave

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Reply to
Dave Garland

So true. I recall they were even asking for name and phone number well into the 90's. I made it a point when they'd ask my name to say "That's C-A-S-H, Cash". They had a generic customer they could use and that was the keyword.

I remember that. Having friends that worked at RS meant I got discounts too. That was nice.

The Lafayette store in Providence, RI was on North Main St near the Pawtucket, RI line. It disappeared by 1981.

Reply to
T

It is really hard to find small parts at RS now, first most that work there have no idea and many are in packets of 5 or more. I do go there for somethings, the company that I work with doing contract work is a primary contractor for Sprint and have a Sprint contractor ID which is go for a pretty good discount, which bring the cost of some over priced products down to normal, plus we have a store here that sells items that RS no longer will carry and the prices are marked down to 90% off what the first sold for, got a nice Motorola T306 Bluetooth hands-free speaker for my cell for $15.00, it sold for around $150.00 at one time.

Reply to
Steven Lichter

>To tell the truth, it's not all undeserved. It's about the only

>>store I know where the average customer knows far more about the >>products than the average employee !! >I don't think you've ever been to Fry's!

Oh yes, I've been to Fry's. ;-) And I know exactly what you're talking about. The couple who first took me to a Fry's (Bay Area) several years ago showed me a 'game' they played along the line of how many Fry's employees does it take to get a simple answer. ;-)

They did make up for it with another Fry's game. If they picked up something substantial off the shelf, instead of taking it to the check-out, they would always approach an employee and ask 'can you use the commission on this?'

Fry's is, however, incredibly well stocked. In 2005 when I was doing a DS3 installation I needed some cables so I went to the nearest Graybar. They were out, and suggested Fry's, who had them in stock.

I remember it as Burnstein-Applebee;

It was most definitely BURstein-Applebee, no 'burn', as I remember being corrected when I mispronounced the name to one of their sales people on the phone once. 'No burn' was the expression he used.

surplus outfits like (spelling) Herbach-Rademann, Fair Radio, and >J.J.Glass, the well-known L.A.-based surplus house that >had lots of military radar stuff. In 1975 or so I visited that store

The only one I recognize there is Fair Radio from Ohio.

I'm too young to really remember Radio Row, but for surplus I used to comb the shops along Canal Street in Manhattan. You could find ANYTHING there, if you looked hard enough. The storekeepers would often deal with you too. Make them an offer on something that was slow-moving. ;-)

Reply to
jsw

As late as 1989, the Lafayette affiliate in Gainesville, Florida, was still operating, although I think Lafayette itself was no longer a going concern.

Reply to
MC

Steven Lichter wrote in news:17Sck.17377 $ snipped-for-privacy@flpi146.ffdc.sbc.com:

I tried to buy a few F connectors several years back at the local RS. This seemed like a simple request. They had discontinued them along with most of the small parts. I tried several other RS stores--no luck. I was told that only the larger stores carry parts. I found them in the mega mall RS 10 miles away, but even their selection was poor.

It's a shame the world has changed so much, but clearly the public isn't interested in buy parts any more. I can't get instant gratification by buying parts locally. The answer to everything these days is, "Internet". This is the way of the future...sigh.

------------- Rick Goddard WA3VTF

Delete any nonsense for email replies

Reply to
Rick Goddard

Olson and Allied were right across the street from each other.

- Ron (Chicago guy, and radio ham since age 13)

Reply to
Ron Kritzman

Anyone here assemble Heathkits?

Didn't they start out as ham radio kits?

I recall in 1967 a friend in Kansas City assembled a color television set.

***** Moderator's Note *****

I remember those sets: they were head-and-shoulders above anything else I'd ever seen. Of course, that was back when TV's were point-to-point wired, by hand, so Heathkit could use high-end components and still come in at a great discount.

I assembled an AR-15 receiver as a birthday gift for my mother, which was, at the time, the best receiver that Consumer Reports had ever tested. My father told me later that when I opened the boxes and laid out the parts, he wrote off the money. I did, however, get it done: I still have it and it still works.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never see your post! Thanks!

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Reply to
Sam Spade

was in High School, I build a Shortwave receiver for a class project, also Heath Kit. It is still around in my brothers garage, I always like my Hellacrafters SW better, though it gets harder to get tubes for it, several of the tubes have solid state replacements which I can still get, I have 10 of each tube for it.

Reply to
Steven Lichter

Regarding Heathkit, I built a DX-60 transmitter when in high school and used it for RTTY (model 15 printers) on 40 and 80 meters. There's a site devoted to Heathkit at

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. Similar historic links are at
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Harold

Reply to
harold

My vague impression is that the move away from parts was the work of Radio Shack's previous CEO, who was less than a success, and has now been reversed somewhat. At least, parts seem to be coming back in some area Radio Shacks that had almost dropped them.

Maybe they'll see the value of occupying an ecological niche. The previous CEO tried to turn them into a cell phone kiosk -- but there are several cell phone kiosks in every mall.

Reply to
MC

Anyone here assemble Heathkits?

Yes, my first Real Computer was a Heath H8, 8080 version. I still have a working sample of the H8, with a working H47 8" floppy unit. Some of the disks of that vintage, have, unfortunately, become unreadable. :-(

I know Bill had one similar to this as well.

I'm also currently serving as Vice-President of Omahug, Omaha Heath (Zenith) User Group, the area's sole surviving user group. It's no longer brand-specific, but more of a general-interest user group. Our current President is a Mac fanatic! ;-)

Lately it's become more of a technological historical interest group, as a couple of our later presentations were on such things as electromechanical switching systems and Project Vanguard, the oldest artificial object still in orbit. (50 years!) Videos of rockets blowing up were quite the hit! ;-)

I recall in 1967 a friend in Kansas City assembled a color >television set.

When I was back in St. Louis, back in another life, I helped a friend assemble a Heathkit color set. This one was a partly assembled otherwise-RCA unit where the user had to assemble all of the noncritical sections and, of course, go through the then-very-tedious purity, convergence, etc. alignment.

What I remember most about this one was that it had a NE2 neon lamp relaxation oscillator, crudely driven by the sync section, which acted as a primative dot generator to facilitate the convergence adjustments.

The TV project came out rather well, actually. ;-)

Reply to
jsw

It was most definitely BURstein-Applebee, no 'burn', as I

> remember being corrected when I mispronounced the name to > one of their sales people on the phone once. 'No burn' was > the expression he used.

Burstein-Applebee, in Kansas City, Mo., had a somewhat interesting catalog.

Does anyone remember Olsen (or maybe it was Olsen) Electronics, somewhere in Ohio, I believe.

Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

Reply to
Wes Leatherock

Good grief. I built many kits over the years, still have my digital clock running (although the Sperry tubes are getting feeble).

- FM tuner

- Mohican SW receiver

- VTVM

- Color TV

- Digital clock

No audio or ham stuff.

Reply to
Julian Thomas

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