To elaborate a bit more on what Bell was talking about the other day, we indulged in some over the top geekery.

See, we had a week off.  We needed it, for real, because the past few months have been rough.  We needed a week off, with the kids in school, where we didn’t have crap to do.

Not a damn thing.

See, thats a great idea.  The problem with that idea is that Bell and I are not really sit around people. Especially when we have unexpected surpluses in our financial situation.

Now, to be fair, that Monday we essentially slept all day.  We cleaned up the house that Tuesday, and then slept.

But by the time Friday rolled around we were getting big ol’ ideas.  We had already talked to a dude about paving our driveway, which will be king hell awesome, but we needed to do something a bit more immediate, as the driveway thing is going to take a month or two due to scheduling, and hell, a driveway doesn’t have flashy lights.

Now, anybody that knows how I roll knows I roll toward flashy lights.  I like em.  If you’ve got little chromed out buttons and (ooo) knobs, thats even better.

So, Bell and I, after watching the supreme awesomeness that was The Watchmen (and yes, I’m a longtime fan of the book, and yes, the movie ruled), got us some tasty lunch and a tasty beverage and strolled out to the electronics store.

Now, I’m married to a wonderful woman who manages to somehow geek out over this kinda crap as much as I do.  I know.  You can’t believe it, but Jack, believe it, so after about 5 hours of hemming and hawing Bell and I managed to leave a variety of stores with a new turntable, a new receiver, a new set of speakers, and a much lighter wallet.

So, the next morning we set to the task of removing my 7 or 8 year old Kenwood speakers from the corners of the living room and replacing them with the new badass Polk ones, while trying to figure out where we were going to put these things, and our mind drifted simultaneously to the RCA VLT29-L.

Remember VLT29-L?

Yeah, I had high hopes for that guy.   I had dreams of getting it fixed up, and spent some hours on it (despite the internet’s indifference to it), but ended up troubleshooting everything down to a jack

ed up balance potentiometer and then giving up on it.  I was playing with the idea of running speaker wires out to it from the main receiver in the den, and just using the speakers for the living room sound, but was never really crazy about that idea.

We had a new idea now.  An idea that was near blasphemy to the Jack Palancy badassness of VLT29-L, but yet, an idea that would revitalize it.  An idea that would personalize it.  An idea that would invigorate it, and quite possibly change the world.

We were going to put all of our new crap in it.

And so, Saturday,  on the eve’s eve of our mighty vacation ending, my wife and I had found… a project.

Hell yes we had.

So, we started by pulling all of the guts out of the inside.  All of that sweet, solid state, radioey goodness, gone, gone, gone.

But damn, thats how you do progress.  And it didn’t work anyway, so…

Next step was figuring how how to fit the new stuff in the cabinet.  We wanted to maybe craft a door to keep the front paneling intact, but that meant we couldn’t use remote controls without going through some trouble, and lets face it, we’re 30 something Americans, we’ve been using remote controls all of our lives.  Hell, I don’t know that the kids are aware that these things function without remote controls.

We decided to remove the front and proceed with the rest of the project, but then we discovered that the front of the thing is really just a big ass piece of plastic anyway.

Hmm.

So,  we went ahead and cut the whole front of it off so all the new coolness is visible from the front.

That done, we had to figure out the shelves, and what to do with them.

After a trip to the hardware store to buy a jigsaw and purchase some molding that would cover the rough edges of the front (and ended up failing miserably at that), we cut out the sections we needed.  By now, good ol’ James had stopped by to join the fun and sleep on our couch, and provide general moral support while trying not to drink our beer.

The assembly process began, and after a few jigsawian adjustments, we had the stuff in there.

Bell did an awesome job of upholstering the thing with some nice velvet bought at Joannes, and I also picked up the mixer seen at bottom right because, ahem, I forgot that a record player is going to need some sort of a pre-amp, and since we weren’t buying something a little more quality minded that the Audio Technica I had before, it ain’t gonna be built in.

We also had a delicious meal and fine, fine beer at Smokey Mountain Brewery (where, it has been decided, the inaugural keg of the mighty Bennu kegerator will be purchased, at a time to be determined).

Came back home, and went to town setting everything up.  I’m not going to go into the sordid details of how I plugged things in wrong and spent hours trying to troubleshoot it, or how I had to run back out to get different wires or jury rig some crap solution to a problem I should have forseen, because that kind of stuff isn’t important.

No.

This is whats important.

That this monster looks freakin awesome, and sounds even better.

Our stereo can totally beat up your stereo.