Philip Perkins

I agree, although many sorts of older or obscure gear are not wanted by the consignment folks, and newer brand name stuff you can sell yourself and save the fee. If you don't live in a major market there might not many folks interested in the sort of gear we use, and places like Trew have an international clientele and will sell big items pretty fast if the price is good. EBay has become even more of a hassle lately, but I found that it was the fastest way to sell by far--they have the biggest reach of all. For me the order has been 1: local soundies, 2: Trew consignment, 3: JW/Gearspace classified, 4: Reverb or Ebay. But a lot of stuff is never going to sell at all, is the big problem...

In years of observing "quitting business" sales here @ JW and on the BBS that was its antecedent I would say that the chances of selling a full "package", ie emptying your shop in a single sale are next to zero UNLESS you have a young ambitious assistant or two who want to take it all on. There was a tradition of this kind of thing in Hollywood at one time, but that was when there was a lot less gear involved and what there was tended to last soundies for nearly their whole careers (the "Pax Nagra" so to speak). Now, as Mr. T says, you need to be ready to do some real work marketing, selling and shipping the "good stuff" (which will go fast if the price is right), much harder than that with the "less good" (ie older) stuff while taking more or less what anyone will pay for it, and resign yourself to the futility of selling cables, snakes, custom widgets and non-brand-name gear more or less at all: count yourself lucky if someone will let you give it to them. I'm girding myself for another try at partly clearing out my shop, (partly because I'm still working on select jobs vs totally walking away), and in this round I intend to move as much of that old stuff as I can however I can, including taking stuff to E-Waste as well as CL Free.

Doing your own testing with your own gear is the only good way to understand how it works, and will give you the confidence that it DOES work.

Heya Dave-- so 1 translator live-translating everything at once?? If verite they'd have to stay pretty far off from you to not be heard on the talent mics? You could certainly wire the translator, send them a submix of of the talent mics on whatever wireless system you use for client monitoring (Comtek) and drop their wireless on an unused channel that isn't in the submix going out to them.

NY is beautiful this time of year!

Not around here! We tend to go with real science?

Well, my buddy Jim F found a used one locally here in the SF area, and at one point many years ago I had 2 and sold one to a lucky newbie AC, so it does happen sometimes! But if you can spend the $ for new a new one then you can get all the bells and whistles you want at the same time. An extra recommendation: for location-sound-level weight gear you really don't need the pneumatic rear tires: the thinner plastic-core "hard" wheels work just as well and make the cart MUCH lighter. I've had them on my magliner for nearly 20 years now and they allow my decrepit 71-year-old-self to still be able to lift the folded-up cart into my hatchback. Jim: the pink carpet is cool, and you will always be able to find your cart in a big cart-scrum!

Most of the retired movie crew folks I know who had Magliners kept them even if they sold the rest of their gear. They are just so damned convenient and last forever. Mine has survived all sorts of weather, dirt, dunkings, hyper aggressive airline baggage apes (who decided to take it apart and deliver it to the carousel in a big plastic bag just to show me), absurd overloading and nowadays looks like one of those destroyed tanks in Ukraine. But it keeps rolling on...

Logic-free.

I'm at the other end of the scale from your no-vax, no-mask friend. If I think that a producer is not taking care of Covid business then I pass on their gig. Their choice, and mine.

Some Sound Devices gear (old and new) will do this, and good on them for it I say. It makes assembling systems for larger jobs much easier.

Here in SF many shows still request masking (indoors), the compliance is anywhere from 80% to close to zero depending on the venue . There are many variations, and I often see that on the convention/theatrical side of things that the crew (and wait staff) are masked but none of the audience or customers are, indoors or out. Some venues want to see your vax card, some want a rapid test before starting work, some do nothing at all, including masking. As an oldster I'm not likely to give up masking when indoors with people I don't know any time soon, even if I'm the only one there wearing a mask. Winter and new variants are on the way, folks.

Thanks, Mr. Bond, for all your posts, pix and references. I know that talk about a 1/4" tape machine that has been out of common pro use for decades now may seem pretty beside the point to many younger professionals working today, but us oldsters appreciate all you've done here. For soundies of a certain age, getting a Nagra of one's own was a major barrier to entry into the production sound field, and finally having one was a big achievement for many of us. That machine then became our #1 tool and boon companion on the adventures production sound work took us on, in my case all over the world. We don't give that up easily, even though we may only look at our Nagras these days and don't record on them any more.

The cam dept folks always want to be holding them in the crew pix....

I like TC slates, as a visual ref for everyone on set and in post of where we are for that shot TC wise. But if your clients don't care, then you can save your $ for other gear that they do want?

Is Sound Devices still selling CF cards under their own name?

How much range do you need? I've done doco audio for decades with 4 411 RX in a bag on their own whips, so 8 whips total. I'm not doing reality TV etc etc but in general use it works fine if I've been careful about freq coordination. Think carefully before adding a complex system to a run-gun setup. For longer distances, as in cart-recording for drama etc, shared (big) directional antennas with RF distro are the bomb.

Mr. OP: sorry you had a bad day at the office. As you know, it happens to the best of us. Be glad your issue has a workable solution and doesn't involve having to send one of your units back to the factory for a fix--that IS lucky. And let's chill the dissing of backwards compato. A major selling point for Lectro since the beginning, one that helps justify the price of their gear, is that it nearly always can have "life after" in secondary and onward markets, since it is still usable with current equipment to some degree.

All the audiologists usually care about (and get paid by insurance for) is measuring freqs in what we would call the "voice range". In other words, can you understand what is being said to you. They could generally care less about your perception and enjoyment of music and non-speech audio. A few have been willing to discuss this with me over the years, but their equipment and approved procedures are locked into the speech band, period. For several years I had an (elderly) ENT doc whose very analog (hand drawn) charts gave me useful info outside the speech range, but he warned me not to take the accuracy of that info too seriously, re: their test procedures and gear (pretty lo-fi headphones...). The younger docs are all digital.

Being "allowed" to scout locations for recording, whether on my own or with the production entourage, has become a litmus test for me re: whether I want to do that job. For small corporate style "record the air-conditioning" type gigs, or verite doc shoots where the situation is a bit sensitive, I can live without visiting the location. Anything bigger or longer, anymore if I can't get a look ahead of time then I'm not your guy, thanks.

It isn't just a money thing, sorry. A message is being sent: no complaints from you, it is what it is, you have no voice in any of the selections and anyway the audio fixes in post are not the UPM or AD's problem. This sort of attitude and an explicit exclusion from the pre-pro info flow are one of the reasons I scaled back work in this field. In the music and live-show worlds there are plenty of issues (and less money) but none of this no-meeting-invite and no-scout crap.

Um...no.

It has for me, although the results are more clearly audible with conventional music.

Like I said--the downmix should work well if the 5.1 mix was good. If the mix doesn't work in stereo then it probably didn't work in 5.1 either.

I have not heard bad auto downmixes lately--if the 5.1 mix works then the stereo downmix works too. The Nolan thing has been endlessly debated, and we know that those mixes are not the result of mistakes.