Dave Osenbaugh recalls that his interest in audio equipment and electronics started when he was 3 years of age, watching the record player on his folks’ console stereo drop the albums to the platter to be played.

“I was amazed by this turntable spinning those records,” he said.

Soon after, he got his very own record player.

Be that as it may, his uncle truly established his love for electronic gear with indicating him the first true high fidelity (Hi-Fi) stereo system Osenbaugh had ever observed.

His uncle purchased a piece of gear in 1976 that was just produced using 1976 to 1977, and the 6-or 7-year-old Osenbaugh wanted it since it looked so cool.

Osenbaugh’s uncle quit utilizing the piece in around 1990, Osenbaugh said. He totally revamped it six years back.

He revamps a great deal of electronic equipment these days out of his home in Galveston, both for himself and for other people. He additionally has a recording studio, Mixit Recording, that he runs when not working his standard occupation installing sound systems over the eastern part of the United States.

“I started refurbishing things in the ‘80s,” he said.

He filled in as a repair technician at H. H. Gregg and now he’s on his own, discovering equipment in thrift stores or on eBay or gaining stuff that has been given to him to add to his collection.

“I now own all the stuff I wanted as a kid,” he said.

Furthermore, he additionally repairs others’ gear, mostly working on classic equipment from the approach of transistors to the mid-1980s.

Is the older stuff better? “In my humble opinion, yes,” he said. “It was better built, better standards. They put a lot more time and effort into it,” he clarified.

He’s restored pretty much everything he has, regardless of whether it’s as simple as supplanting belts on turntables or supplanting capacitors or as complicated as dismantling everything and revamping or re-soldering parts.

He has three reel-to-reel tape decks he uses to show signs of improvement, hotter sound for albums he records that will be put on vinyl. A companion of his who was a sound engineer at WMDH 102.5 FM revealed to him they were getting rid of equipment, and he caught the 16-track reel-to-reel. “This is the tape deck I listened to on the radio as a kid,” he said.

It’s not simply the gear that has stories.

One of the things confined on his wall is his first check from Lucasfilms.

THX sound was the standard for a period — a procedure that would guarantee that all THX films would sound precisely the equivalent in any theater. Somebody expected to tune the sound systems after they were installed.

“I was lucky enough to be one of the techs that went around Indiana making sure they all sound the same,” Osenbaugh said. “So in a sense, I got paid to go watch movies.”

Osenbaugh began doing studio recordings and media moves around 2002.

“I didn’t intend to do the studio to record anybody,” he said. “And I intended to use it to turn all my albums and tapes to digital and eventually get rid of my stereo equipment,” he said.

“It got really old carrying drum kits down the stairs [to the basement studio],” he said.

He ended up doing around 500 projects in the basement before reconstructing the old garage on his lot in 2008. It took a half year for him to assemble it to his standards, he said. That implied disposing of termites, at that point placing in walls, floors, and ceilings with additional insulation (for sound purposes and energy productivity). What’s more, fastidiously running a large number of feet of wiring in explicit ways to keep electrical runs from including any potential hum or buzz to the sound.

Since moving into the new space, he’s done around 2,100 projects, including transforming videos into digital files for individuals and doing other media moves and finishing the recording of at least six full-length albums, most by local artists.

Then, his love for dismantling and reestablishing older Hi-Fi components proceeds. He can work on more current machines, yet he will, in general, send those to his companion, Dennis McCollum at Electronix in Carmel. McCullom, thus, sends Osenbaugh older gadgets to restore.

Replacement parts for this older equipment can be rare in the U.S. “You have to go to Russia to buy tubes. For belts for turntables, you have to go to Bulgaria,” he said.

Transistors are precarious elements for substitution, and some simply aren’t built anymore. “Those are built with very specific parts,” he said. If they’re not the same, it changes the “voice” of the machine.

The knobs for the old machines are additionally difficult to discover in the event that they need supplanting.

Osenbaugh favors not to scavenge gear for parts to repair others, essentially joining two broken pieces to make one.

“I feel like these things have a soul to them. I feel everything should have a chance to live again,” he said. “I do what I can to have everything get a new life for it.”

Be that as it may, he has done it when it was important and one could never again be spared, he said.

Osenbaugh doesn’t see himself doing this for an amazing remainder.

“It’s more of a hobby than anything,” he said. “I know enough things in enough areas that I can make a living.”

Osenbaugh sells a portion of the equipment he purchases and revamps, and a portion of the gear he’s renovated is going to his 11-year-old child, Jonah.

Jonah is likewise transforming into an audiophile, he said.

Jonah has a receiver now, yet Osenbaugh has put away a high-end turntable for when his child turns 16. “It’s something for him to look forward to,” he said.

Osenbaugh can become through his studio, Mixit Recording, at 765-274-2380. He additionally subcontracts work through the Record Farm next to the State Theater in downtown Logansport.

“Since the Record Farm opened, I’ve been doing a lot of restoration and repair jobs for folks who drop off items there,” he said. “Some then turn around and put them up for sale at the Farm. It’s pretty neat to see this great old gear fully restored and on a sales display in a local shop.”