What happened To All The Kits To Build Your Own Stereo?

Growing up there were a dozen or so companies that offered do it yourself kits to build everything from TV’s to Stereo Equipment or even crystal radios. Hands on, learning experience, eye hand coordination, following directions and instructions, using tools, etc. What happened? No more kits or DIY projects. I’m sure there are a few still out there but for the most part they’re gone. Names such as Heathkit, Dynakit, Harman Kardon, Eico, Lafayette, Radio Shack, Scott and others are all history. Water under the bridge.  At one time quality audio equipment was built on the family kitchen table or at Grandpa’s house. No kidding, Dynaco with their simple design worked and sounded as good if not better then top shelf equipment. It still sounds good to this day and could easily compete with equipment 10X its cost. I believe there are a few reasons for the demise of DIY kits. #1 The parts used today are two small. Surface mount components are not much larger then a spec of dust. You need superman eyes, and dedicated tools to work with small dots. #2 Liability, everyone cries accountability when something goes wrong. Growing up when I poked myself with a soldering pencil it was my fault not the manufacturer or kit builder, lol. Today, you spill hot chocolate on your genitals and it’s the beverage maker, the seller, the cup maker, even the chair your sitting in. It’s every ones fault except yours. There are ambulance chasers on every corner now. #3 There really isn’t anything to build today. The whole world revolves around the smart phone. #4 Children are not taught about tools, making things, accomplishment with their own two hands today. All that matters is that $500.00 – $1000.00 smart phone in their pocket and of course how much your poorly designed sneakers are worth(which most are not even developed for sports anymore.) Only the top students do their own science fair projects these days(yes family members help) but the kids actually learn something and work with their hands. That only goes on in the top schools in the top classes. You know, the schools with young geniuses or the schools that cost more then most of us make in a year.  Most high school kids can’t even use a screwdriver and forget about pliers. How can knowing how to use hand tools be a bad thing? Even if you only use them on occasion? NO, all that matters is the cell phone. DIY anything is basically forbidden by the powers that be in our new world. I don’t think they even make chemistry sets or erector sets anymore. When I was a kid, rich or poor, smart or not so smart everyone had a chemistry set and an erector set. Gilbert the company that made American Flyer trains was the main company making these experimental, learning kits / sets for children back in the day.  Mean while if you read the books of the conspiracy theorists from the 1960’s and early 1970’s they predicted much of what is going on today. A couple of smarty pants predicted chips or microprocessors would be implanted under our skin so we can be watched or monitored or even controlled.  We’re not that far yet but isn’t a cell phone basically a tracking device. They told us people would be stuck in their homes most of the time, and houses would be similar to Army barracks(town houses). People work from their homes, they watch current movies on their TV’s instead of going out to theaters, food is delivered to their doors, The multi-family complex with dozens to hundreds of families in condo communities are taught to spy on one another and report anything strange. Funny 30-50 years ago, you didn’t have to be rich to own your own home with a little property. For the most part that’s all there was here on Staten Island. Even two family homes were frowned upon. Now in 2018 the house is just a place to sleep, eat, watch the new reality brainwashing news networks and nothing else. No hobbies, no interests, no room, dodo bird city with our little cell phone.  No one goes out and shops anymore since Amazon, etc. People said the conspiracy writers were nuts, were they???? People view beautiful places on web where they don’t even have to visit to see the actual environment, some screwballs even use their TV’s for sex.  Even cars have computers that provide more info then we would like to give especially with the easy or sun passes. Many places do to traffic you can’t even escape certain times of the day.  Without going too far off on a tangent there is no need for DIY anything anymore. Half the country doesn’t even work, and 50%-75% of those unemployed don’t even want to work. They make more money staying home and partying with Jerry Springer and friends all day. Do they want to build anything? The DIY companies mentioned above are all gone in 2018. Radio Shack was the last of the holdouts and they were basically a low budget cell phone store the past five or so years. Technology is great, but it’s taken the life out of life. It’s not like when we traded in horses for cars or outhouses for bathrooms. Doing everything on a cell phone in a make believe cyber world is totally pathetic. We text our friends instead of playing a game of pool or sitting in a restaurant. No need for dates anymore, we can trade naked pictures and videos of each other over face time, lol. Reading this blog you would get the impression I am angry as in mad. No not at all, I am glad I grew up when I did. I built a dozen or so DIY kits, built a fort in the woods with my neighborhood friends, I played basket ball, rode a Orange Crate Shwinn Stingray bike, had a mini-bike and a Daisy air rifle, a gross of cherry bombs every July, went out on real dates, had cars with real back seats, drive in movies. I had a big Colinear CB antenna on my roof and a Navaho 23 channel CB radio. I could talk to people all day and night, where I made literally hundreds of friends. I used to routinely talk to probably the most famous CB’er of all time named Artie Windjammer. The list goes on, life was good and you didn’t need a million bucks. It wasn’t about showing off as a kid like today, it was about having fun.  Basically a full life from picking fruit on a farm to driving my car as fast as I wanted on a back road somewhere. Blowing up old toys with M-80’s and rip roaring around on an Indian mini-bike. I would be called a monster today, hell I never would hurt a living thing. Never a tough guy, but I liked having a good time. It was called clean fun back then, today your a criminal or mentally unstable and your parents are enablers, bad people, lol. Come to think of it your mom and dad are not even allowed to smack you in the head when they catch you smoking a cigarette, etc. That’s child abuse…I call it new age insanity. We used corded phones where you could actually hear what the person was saying and dropping a call was rare. We didn’t need cell phones to tell our girlfriends or wives we love them every ten minutes. They weren’t on all kinds of anti-depressants and mind bending drugs back then, hahahhaha. And NO I am not a country bumpkin, I live 20 minutes from Manhattan and 7 minutes from Brooklyn. I guess I rambled on, but it’s all related. Why do we need DIY kits today? There is nothing to build…you can’t build a smart phone.