Second-hand items for sale
— central Exeter, UK —

Please note that all items are for personal collection only, with CASH payment only — central Exeter, Devon, UK (South-West England).
Please note also that the prices are non-negotiable except where expressly indicated that offers are accepted.

Please also note that I have had some replies that were clearly from money-laundering scammers.
I do recognise scammers very quickly, and they're wasting their time with me. I'm thus very much on-guard for possible defrauding attempts.

COVID-19 PRECAUTION

Regardless of what Uncle Boris or other Government ministers say, as long as infection rates remain high, anyone wishing to enter my abode to inspect items would need to wear suitable face covering, and I'd do likewise, with windows open at least to some extent according to conditions.

Otherwise it would be necessary for inspection / buying to be carried out outside my block of flats, or some other agreed outdoor place nearby, such as Cathedral Green or (particularly if raining) under an open shelter down at the Quay by the River Exe.

For Sale

'Great Outdoors' Clothing and Gear

These are left-overs from my crazy but understandable (in the particular circumstances) squirrelling of outdoor and hiking gear, particularly from the mid 1980s and through the 1990s. I still have the odd items that are surplus to requirements, and even after selling those off I'll still be unlikely to have cause to buy further warm or windproof tops again in this lifetime, even if I'm still hiking in my 100s!

Berghaus thick fleece jacket, modified

A blueish mid-grey VERY warm jacket, 42 chest — I don't remember the style name, as I bought it sometime in the 1990s. This is simply TOO warm for me to be really useful, as I generate a lot of heat when I'm active (as I tend to be). This is particularly so because when I got it I thought it was rather loose around my waist, so that the 'chimney' effect would tend to reduce its heat retention efficiency. So I got to work with my ancient hand-operated Singer sewing machine (already ancient as a cheap second-hand purchase in 1969, and it's still going strong!), and drew in the waste on either side. Having no means to finish cut edges to prevent them from fraying, I left the 'wings' of the drawn-in fleece intact, not cutting them off. I don't feel those as an annoyance (i.e., sticking into me), but they do contribute to the jacket feeling incredibly snug and cosy.

Very rarely worn, and too warm for me to be walking about in, although for many years it travelled in the bottom compartment of my rucksack when going on hikes (hitch-hiking out and back) in the winter half-year as a safeguard in the event of a very long hitch-hiking wait in cold conditions. I use much lighter-weight and less bulky insulated jackets now for my outings. This fleece has been washed to ensure 'as new' freshness for new owner.

Because of the modification it's suitable only for people with reasonably slim waist!

Price: £15 .
Please note that this item is for personal collection only (Exeter, UK), with up-front full CASH payment. If seriously interested, please contact me via my Contact page in the first instance, and then, as appropriate, I'd give the necessary contact details.

Audio Accessories

Audioengine DS2 Wedge stands for bookshelf-size speakers

These DS2 sound-absorbing wedge stands are officially for the Audioengine A5+ speakers and any others of similar size. My experience with them, indeed with A5+ speakers, was that they did their job very well indeed, both in greatly reducing sound transmission to the surface on which the speakers were sitting and in having them pointing obliquely upwards at about 15°, so that I could hear them to good advantage from rather low speaker stands, and the sound quality that I heard wasn't too heavily impacted by my listening while moving around in the room doing things. I only regret that my new B&W 685 S2 speakers are too large for those wedges, so that I had to buy custom-made wooden wedge stands, at a considerable price. Anyway, my change to those speakers means that my DS2 wedge stands are redundant.

Indeed, I have TWO redundant pairs of these wedge stands, because I bought a second pair when I tried Aktimate Blue speakers, which fitted quite reasonably on two of those wedges each, although being a bit big to sit on just one. But then I rejected the Aktimates because of a stupid usability issue, and so, unexpectedly, have two redundant pairs of these wedges!

Price: £10 per pair; I paid £30 per pair, and they're effectively as new apart from having no original wrappings now.
Please note that this item is for personal collection only (Exeter, UK), with up-front full CASH payment. If seriously interested, please contact me via my Contact page in the first instance, and then, as appropriate, I'd give the necessary contact details.

Redundant sound recorders and accessories

Sony PCM-M10 Sound Recorder

This was my first sound recorder, purchased back in June 2012. I used two of these, but the other had an occasional malfunction, which started getting more frequent (it was out of warranty then), so I discarded it. I'd not used this recorder since early 2016, but then brought it back into use as an extra in early 2019, having found that I could dramatically enhance its relatively poor stereo imaging by use of a VST plugin called A1StereoControl.

However, I subsequently found that that particular stereo enhancement worked properly only for some of my recordings. They all sounded fantastically life-like through headphones, but recordings whose main focus was generalized types of sound like the sea, more or less close waterfalls, or most wind recordings, had their stereo imaging really mangled when listened to through speakers, with various phase cancellation effects. On the other hand the enhancement of recordings where a lot of small, directional, sound sources were the prime focus (such as bird ensembles) still worked fine through speakers as well as headphones.

For this reason I decided on balance to let this particular recorder go, despite its various useful potentialities, for, after all, I do have three PCM-D100s, and it would be extremely rare that I'd really have cause to take four recorders with me (together with the tripods, too heavy to take out on normal outings). Anyway, my using it again in a few long sessions demonstrated that it was still working fine.

This model has three little practical design flaws that I've noticed, which need to be kept in mind to ensure successful sessions:

The Power / Hold switch quickly loses its springiness, so with any well-used example you have to manually return the little switch to the central, neutral position (Power toggle is back and Hold toggle is forward). If the switch is left in the power-toggle direction, very occasionally you might experience a recording suddenly stopping for no obvious reason. This occasionally happened for me, but didn't happen any more for either recorder once I made a point of returning that switch to the central position.
The mic sensitivity switch is so positioned that it very readily gets moved to the Low sensitivity setting when you put a furry windshield on. When you've done the latter it's essential to carefully pull back the relevant part of the windshield elastic to check that the switch is on the right setting, and reset it if necessary.
There's a setting to choose whether to use the small internal memory or the inserted memory card. There's a catch, however. If you have it set to use the memory card, as presumably you would, there is a circumstance in which that gets quietly reset to the internal default memory. This can easily happen when you have the recorder connected to your computer and its memory card showing as a drive, with listed contents, so you can easily transfer files to your computer. Actually you see two external drives listed for the recorder, because its internal memory is also displayed as a drive. Now, if you happen to open the drive representing the internal memory, immediately the recorder reverts its 'memory' setting to use of the internal memory. Exiting from that 'drive' and opening the one representing the memory card does NOT change the setting back to what it ought to be.

So, after opening either memory of the recorder in a computer or other device it's important to look at the recorder's basic recording interface on its display, and see how many hours' recording you have available, and, if necessary, to re-set the recorder to use the memory card.

This model is nowadays still a particularly highly regarded one for its one-time price range, and second-hand examples are routinely being offered for eye-wateringly high prices online, and in most case still selling pretty quickly despite that.

All my sound recordings on my Chronological list of recordings, Part 1 page have been made with this and the additional PCM-M10 — though I've recently had a purge of those recordings, so the only ones retained on CD (and therefore with excerpts you can listen to) are those whose stereo-enhanced versions do work well through speakers. Please note also my tips regarding recording with the PCM-M10, in Recording Natural Soundscapes — Some Experience-Based Tips.

What you get:

Recorder, with 16GB micro-SD memory card installed
Remote control (via short cable) (never used it)
USB connector cable (short)
Tamrac neoprene pouch (very protective)
Mains adaptor, UK 3-pin — but not the additional adaptor shown in photo
Manual (English)
Rode DeadKitten furry windshield — the current (black) version (x2)
A small narrow emery board — useful for cleaning the damaged spring battery contact (see note below)

Important — attention please!

In February 2021 I lost a potential sale because the day before arranged collection a final check on the recorder showed that one of its pair of Duracell batteries had started slightly leaking (the first time in my life I've had a Duracell battery leak!) and had corroded the surface of the top turn of the coiled spring that forms the contact for the battery bottom. I was determined to play fair and so told the prospective buyer about the new situation — which of course meant no sale after all.

Although I was able to gain apparently proper battery contact again by use of a little emery board, I could see that contact would be unreliable at least in the long-term because of the loss of plating on that top turn of the spring. However, the plating appears to be fully intact on the rest of the spring.

I took a chance on this and ordered a reasonably heavy-duty small wire cutter that's supposed to be okay for cutting steel wire, so that I could have a go at nipping off the top turn of that spring.

Unfortunately that didn't work out, for the wire cutter was ruined by my attempts to nip off that top turn, and the latter is still as solidly present as before — but now is bent at a silly angle, which I seem unable to revert. At least, with just a little care to tuck-in that turn of the spring I was able to insert the battery there without a struggle, and at least for the time being the battery is getting good contact, with the recorder coming on when the Power switch is operated.

For this reason, I've now further reduced the price to £100, and am not going to make further attempts to remove that bit of the spring. I'll include a small narrow emery board that you can use on that damaged area once in a while to ensure continuing good contact. The new price would be still lower except for the 'rarity value' of this model.

Price: ~~£130~~ ~~£110~~ £100 (Price reductions because of issue noted above). Please note that this recorder is for personal collection only (Exeter, UK), with up-front full CASH payment. If seriously interested, please contact me via my Contact page in the first instance, and then, as appropriate, I'd give the necessary contact details.

Rycote Mini Windjammer (furry windshield)

The design for the Sony PCM-D100. I found that this also fits the Zoom H5 / H6. Widely sold as THE furry windshield to use for those recorders — especially the Sony, but in my experience remarkably ineffective despite its rather impressive appearance and foam lining. See this model on Amazon.

Price: £8. If seriously interested, please contact me via my Contact page in the first instance, and then, as appropriate, I'd give the necessary contact details.

Zoom recorder accessories

XYH-6 microphone module

Both times I bought a Zoom H5 recorder, I shelved its 'native' microphone pair, which fortunately could be unplugged and replaced by one of the much superior Zoom H6 microphone modules. The XYH-5 is totally unsuitable for my work, with its fixed 90° angle, which gives a narrow soundstage that's a nonsense to try to use for natural soundscapes. Its self-noise is also too high for quiet soundscapes. So, having bought two H5 recorders (now sold), I bought two of the XYH-6 modules. For selling the H5 recorders I restored their original mic modules, and so put both the XYH-6 modules on sale separately, one of which is already sold.

Price of this mic module: £35
Please note that these items are for personal collection only (Exeter, UK), with up-front full CASH payment. If seriously interested, please contact me via my Contact page in the first instance, and then, as appropriate, I'd give the necessary contact details. In this particular case I'm inviting offers for any or all of these mic modules, rather than stating a price.

MSH-6 microphone module

Used for MS (mid-side) mode of stereo recording. Recording in this mode and decoding later with a custom degree of stereo spread sounds a great idea, but so far I've found the results to sound unnatural, albeit impressive with the right balance of the mid and side components. Also, this is a relatively low-grade mic, with relatively high self-noise and a frequency range going only up to 12K before a steep roll-off, and its sound lacks the fine detail and three-dimensionality that I require — so it was an expensive experiment for me and, after a single test recording using it, it's now redundant. It fits both the Zoom H5 and H6 and a few other Zoom models.

Price of this mic module: £45
Please note that these items are for personal collection only (Exeter, UK), with up-front full CASH payment. If seriously interested, please contact me via my Contact page in the first instance, and then, as appropriate, I'd give the necessary contact details. In this particular case I'm inviting offers for any or all of these mic modules, rather than stating a price.