It's really quite simple. Sustainable means
keep something alive.
Vintage HiFi is sustainable, it always has been. Ever since the very first after school job I got, I have been repairing, restoring, rebuilding and keeping alive electronics. I remember walking in and asking the owner of a large local pawnbroker "who fixes your broken things?" He told me his technician was old, expensive, slow and was about to retire.
I told him I could fix anything. He gave me a car load of stuff to 'test' me and my mum dutifully took it all home. That was around 1981/2 and I was a 15yo (still 3 years left of school). He set me up with my own service bench, whatever test gear and parts I needed. He paid me well, in either cash or broken audio gear or some combination of both. He also was an amazing business man and I learnt a lot from that humble pawnbroker.
I remember a pile of HiFi sitting out the back of his store about 10ft tall which had been 'written off' by the previous tech. I fixed every piece- all without schematics. He eventually gave me a lovely Luxman L-81 integrated amplifier (dead of course) as a bonus with my pay. It took me a long time and a lot of tears (I was young) to solve its frustrating intermittent fault. Apparently my Dad said it nearly broke me. It turned out to be what is now a famous fault in amplifiers (not back then, they were new), what we call STVs or in this case 'blob diodes' or 'spider eggs'. A 5 cent fix. A lesson I never forgot.
Luxman L-81:
Now, that actual L-81 amplifier is still functioning perfectly. It was the start of my Dad considering the possibility of ever having a 2nd hand piece of HiFi in his house. Everything prior was bought in a factory sealed box (he was a Doctor- everything had to be perfect). In this country the Lux was expensive and exclusive at AU$780 and only about 4+ years old at the time. I fixed it, gave it to him
and he still has it. With hindsight, it was the start of the really serious HiFi collecting by both of us. (prior to that he only had perhaps 20 pieces of HiFi and I, perhaps a dozen)
Now, nearly 40 years later, I have many hundreds of HiFi components. Two offsite storerooms, and I have spent decades restoring and moving-on gear, often at simply incredible profits. It's always been there, whether as a hobby, a business, a livelihood or a passion. It put me through uni, paid for a house, bought me a wife and son and provided endless years of enjoyment and ongoing challenges. It has always been there, even years later, when I was selling property or working in the finance industry.
Modern HiFi is not sustainable. It cannot be economically repaired. It doesn't last very long. Even old-skool technicians with decades of skills and parts are stonewalled by companies with their lack of available bespoke spare parts and other roadblocks like SMD and PbFree. And that can be regardless of retail price. In short, it is a bad investment for the purchaser and the planet.
I see these silly little pieces of Chinese crap people are lapping up like lemmings and it makes my stomach turn. They will all be in landfill soon enough with their overheated and failed SMD parts, their burnt-out SMPSs and more dry joints than a weed seller at a music festival.
