Very interesting story here...

Some of the regulars to this thread may recall about 50 pages back I told the story about the Tulane Law student that I helped out by loaning him some of the extra audio gear I had laying around the house. I do this to help young audiophiles get started and introduce them to the other guys that are into audio gear and music.

Long story short, the guy ignored my calls for about three months (I wasn't calling him for the gear, but just to stay in touch), and then left the city and headed back to the northeast with all of my gear (about $1500 worth of stuff). One of the pieces that he took Was a Pioneer PL-41 turntable that my uncle had brought back from the Vietnam War, so it had a little bit of a sentimental value. I had also just had the bearing rebuilt and put a new Sumiko Blue Point Evo III cartridge on it ($500).

I was more pissed off at the fact that I was helping him out getting started in audio, and he screwed me by taking off. I located him about six months later and called him at his new place of work (A judge clerk in Delaware--thanks Google!). He fed me a bunch of bullshite, and then would just hang up on me.

After about a year, I just let it go...this was 2010.

Here is the interesting part...

Two weeks ago, I received an email from this guy. I did a double take when I saw his name in the inbox. His email started out extremely apologetic and then proceeded to explain that he was an addict and has now been clean for two years. I suppose he was making amends for his five or so years of screwing people. He told me he had all of the gear and would ship it back to me.

I emailed him back, gave him my address, and wished him well in his recovery. He responded back to me again thanking me for the opportunity to do this.

So today the box arrived---but as I sort of expected, it wasn't perfect. I knew what awaited inside the box when I saw the condition of the outside of the box.

The guy actually did not beat up the table at all, but he packaged it like a kindergartner would have. The turntable got pretty beat up in transit. The tonearm was bent, the platter is chipped, the plinth is chipped up, the thick plastic dust cover is broken into 3 separate pieces, and all the small parts had been knocked off or bent.

This guy graduated from Tulane Law!!--and can't properly box a 40 lb. table for transit!

Fortunately, there are a couple of new dust covers and donor turntables on eBay. It will probably cost me around $300 to get it back where it should be.

Below are pics of what he sent me...notice the bend in the tonearm, headshell, all the chips on the plinth, and destroyed dust cover. This table was MINT when I lent it to him.

I guess I am aggregated in the fact that it was still mint a few days ago--his shitty bubble wrap and single, thin cardboard box packaging is what destroyed it!...the platter popped out during shipping and bounced around like a pin-ball all over the rest of the table--with enough force to bend the frigging armtube and gouge the steel plinth. There were small pieces all over the inside of the box.

Here is the Pro-Ject phono stage and cables...

The Sumiko cartridge is missing as well as the Clearaudio record clamp ($650 for both)--I wrote those off.

But hey!!...I got the old table back and will now work on getting it back to spec!