John Spahr

Hey, folks! Over the last few years, iPod modding has grown to be incredibly popular. There are tons of cool aftermarket parts and a thriving community of enthusiasts who keep these music players alive. The problem? Prices have gone up exponentially! The later iPod Classics have become extremely desirable, and now it's hard to get one at a compelling price. As a result, I have compiled this list of three iPod options that are often overlooked and offer excellent value. Refurbished iPod Nanos It's no secret that restoring iPod Nanos is nothing short of a nightmare. These devices are so compact that they require expert repair skills to even swap out the battery. Thankfully, people with these skills exist! Many people put new batteries in iPod Nanos and sell them on eBay for as low as $25. Quality varies, so you'll want to verify that the seller has good feedback. Do your homework, and you can get an excellent deal. Aside from the risk associated with buying someone else's...

     I have Spotify Premium. I like it; it's fast, its catalog is huge, and it's a great place to discover new music. However, in today's digital world, there has been a resurgence in the tangible, physical media that came before Spotify and Apple Music. Nowadays, you can find vinyl records, tapes, and CDs for sale at all sorts of places. To me, CDs stand out especially due to their easily archivable nature (e.g. throwing them on an iPod Classic) but also their impressive audio fidelity. They sound great!     I have a shelf of CDs that I use in my Technics 5 disc changer (SL-PD887) and my 2009 Honda Accord. They're very compact compared to vinyl, while also making a lot more practical sense than tapes. Granted, each of these formats is unique and deserves a place in your tower of power. However, if you too are tight on money, CDs have one final trick up their sleeve: They're cheap. Seldom will you buy a new CD for more than $20, excluding box sets and rare relea...

Hey, everyone. I like to think I'm pretty up-to-date in the world of tech, but there are some cases where older devices simply do some things better. So, I thought I'd show off that my older gadgets are still going strong. Let's begin! Pebble Watches I own a lot of Pebble smartwatches. Despite being off the market for years, it's no secret that I adore these geeky little gadgets. Excellent battery life, super-readable displays, and fun software are what make Pebble watches irreplaceable for me. In fact, I wrote a whole post about them last summer. iPods I've also written about iPods before on this blog, and one of my most popular posts was about modding an iPod . Not only do these nifty music players sync flawlessly with my Mac, but they also are really intuitive and have tons of sentimental value for me. After all, I quite literally grew up using these things. As a result, I plan to keep using iPods for many years to come. Palm PDAs More recently, I've also go...

Hi, everyone. This summer, I have primarily been focusing on two of my hobbies: experimenting with Pebble watches and collecting vinyl records. The latter came about after I upgraded from my extremely mediocre Victrola turntable, now known as “The Troll,” and was also encouraged to by a friend. So, with that in mind, I decided to finally share my modest audio setup on this blog. So, let’s begin! Speakers/Micro System: Philips BTM630 At the heart of my setup is a Philips BTM630 micro hi-fi system. It features some pretty decent speakers, a CD reader, an iPod dock, AUX input, and USB and SD card ports. It’s over a decade old, but it’s still an excellent system that’s quite compact. Given its aforementioned good sound quality and wide variety of features, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it is one my favorite parts of my setup. MP3 Player: iPod 5th Gen Moving on, I recently got another 5th generation iPod for free, and it’s become my primary portable music player for my setup. It stil...

I made a custom iPod. Should you? The goal of this post is to share my experience modding this retro audio player and help you decide if you should attempt this project, too. While this isn't the sort of thing I usually write about on this blog, my hope is that this post will be helpful to those interested in building a custom iPod. So, without further ado, let's begin! The Backstory With the rise of DankPods , modding iPods has quickly become quite popular among retro tech enthusiasts. As someone who had been using iPods for several years prior to their resurgence in popularity, I was intrigued by the idea of making my own custom iPod. This was especially true since I had a broken iPod Video that I could easily mod. Then, something completely unexpected happened: the pandemic. I quickly realized that this would be a great project to work on during the lockdown. As a result, within days of everything shutting down, I had ordered all my replacement parts and prepared...