Radio Shack to close 1,100 stores

Radio Shack is no longer for the hobbyist. I used to love to go there as a teen...I guess you could've then call it nerdville at the time. Now the store should have have changed their name to Toy and Cell Phone Shack.
 
I still use this on a regular basis.

It's about 27 years old. And probably only on its third set of batteries.

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Carrying electronic components can't be a sideline for any business. You either do it or you don't.
When someone needs a 2,000pf capacitor, a choice between 1,000pf or 500pf is fairly useless.
And the world has enough cell phone stores.

They screwed the pooch like most business in trying to be all things to all people.
 
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if i win the lottery im gonna open up a radioshack 1955 store. source all NOS parts and sell them at 1955 prices. People would freak out. walk-in only though because id get raped by all you internet people and my inventory would be gone in like 2 minutes lol.
 
smurfco said:
Now who will ask me for my phone number when I'm buying AA batteries?
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I worked for them back in the early 90s. I absolutely hated asking customers for this info, especially if they were just buying batteries. I'd type "Joe Smith, 100 Elm Street, Anytown, USA" or whatever.

And Tig is correct, when RS stopped selling the stuff that actually put them on the map they sealed their fate. Who buys big ticket items at Radio Shack?

RS was named "Radio Shack" because, way back, a radio shack was an amateur radio station. It was a small outbuilding that a amateur radio operator set up his stuff and built antennas etc. RS was the place to buy your stuff, your cables, adapters, discreet electronic components, kit boxes, and the like.

I have a radio shack, it's about 12'x12'. Here's a pic of the inside
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angry tele said:
here is a good boner inducing one from 1955
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1955/
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Awesome! My grandfather (Franklin, of course) always had a Radio Shack catalog in the pile of Popular Science magazines.

He and my uncle used to design and build radio systems for police departments on the side, plus repair TV's. His garage always looked like a mad scientist's lab to us kids! He retired as a captain/head of the Houston PD communications department.
 
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Tig said:
Awesome! My grandfather (Franklin, of course) always has a Radio Shack catalog in the pile of Popular Science magazines.

He and my uncle used to design and build radio systems for police departments on the side, plus repair TV's. His garage always looked like a mad scientist's lab to us kids! He retired as a captain/head of the Houston PD communications department.
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If you look in the center of my "shack" pic, you'll see two old identical looking radios. They're made by Collins, the most highly collectible HF radios ever made. These two came from the Jefferson Parish, LA Civil Defense and were used in the 1960s.
 
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i still go to mine to buy solder, flux, and de-solder braid. Its good for that. they have tone caps too but the tolerance on their green meanies is like 20%. caps with tighter tolerance (5%) are just as cheap online if you order them with something else (or get raped on shipping $8 on a $2 order) from Mouser et al

btw dont ever order a mouser catalogue its literally the size of a phonebook.
 
I go in a few times a year to get components for some noise project I'm working on. I'll miss it if it's gone, but I'm definitely not keeping them afloat.

And the MG-1 is a killer analog mono synth (with poly organ capability). I bought one for ~$300, and recently sold it for $50 for parts--something went bad on it and it went completely nuts sound wise anytime I plugged it in. But I did some gigging and a bunch of recording with it while I had it, and would definitely buy another.
 
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I remember as a teen taking my cell phone into my local Radio Shack to get fixed. The owner/repair man couldn't for the life of him figure out what bit he needed to use to get it open. He kept going off about stupid foreign bits this stupid foreign bits that. Later on I go to find out it was just a small torque bit that he could of purchased at any Canadian Tire store. :facepalm:
 
Tig said:
I also got one of these for Christmas as a kid. It was a blast even though I didn't know what the hell was really going on.
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That was one of my favorite Christmas gifts ever.....next to the chemistry set that I used to create an explosive mixture that resulted in a huge green stain on the celling of my room that my Dad was never able to cover and wound up having to cut the drywall out and replace a big patch.

.....That's on them for thinking it was ok to leave me with a chemistry set un-supervised.
 
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