By George Petersen

THERE’S SOMETHING COOL, HIP AND INHERENTLY GREEN about recycling and every now and then I go by this very cool (and very Berkeley) place called Urban Ore, which is just a couple blocks away from the Mix offices. This is a locale where people bring old furniture, leftover building materials and obsolete technology stuff to be resold, reused and otherwise redistributed to people in the know. It’s essentially a huge old warehouse and outdoor sales area brimming full of STUFF of every sort (and well sorted), ranging from consumer electronics, plumbing/electrical supplies, picture frames, desks, sinks, tubs, windows, doors, slightly overused–meaning really beat up–musical instruments and occasionally (but alas, not too frequently) even PRO AUDIO.

But today in the electronics section–among the piles of Kodak Ektagraphic slide projectors, 1970s-era slide programmers/dissolve units (in case anybody is old enough to remember olde-style multimedia/multimage), Mac 8600s, vintage PCs, turntables, cassette decks and piles of Jaz/Zip/Bernoulli drives–was a more unusual item.

A Neve/Necam 96 power supply.

Unfortunately, no other Neve gear was lurking about, but at a mere $50 buckaroos, you could have this monster of monsters: About six rack spaces high, it must have weighed about 100 pounds–they just don’t make ‘em like this anymore. What awesome construction!!! I was even tempted to bring it home and adopt it myself for resale or some future project, but this was like the big one you toss back into the pond, hoping that it will make someone else’s day.

But the real mystery in the back of my mind was what tales this thing could tell. Where did it come from? What great projects did it once supply (pun intended) the juice for? Some things I may never know, so if anyone DOES know, let me know and help me finish this Unsolved Mystery for the rest of the world…

I hate telling you this, because, for one, I don’t want anyone to be misled and think that among the porcelain toilet tanks, printing presses and dictaphones that haunt this place, there are boxes of dusty Neumanns in every corner–which there aren’t, although today, they had a 15-inch Peavey Black Widow woofer (untested and missing its aluminum dust cap) for $12, a solid-looking single-15 cab in faux wood finish–empty, but sporting road handles and dual front ports for $25 and an empty (but extremely heavy) dual-12 cab–it was a generic roadcase-looking box (no handles)–for $20 or so. Yet at the same time, they were trying to sell some heavy black/chrome older steel Atlas speaker stands (NOT MIC STANDS) priced about $260–I’m not sure who came up with THAT price!

So you never know what to expect. Besides this week’s Neve PS, they also had a Sony SDDS 35mm projector soundhead for $25–not bad if you need one–and an Ampex 35mm mag stripe stereo reader (the “penthouse” style) also for $25, but it will be a while before that one moves… Oh, and if you happen to need to need some 35mm exhibition reels, they have both 6,000 and 13,000 foot versions in stock this week.

Just another day in Berkeley…

Click here to visit them online: URBAN ORE.

When not working on Mix stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Click here www.jenpet.com/ariel.html and check ‘em out.
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