A Gift for Music Lovers Who Have It All: A Personal Utility Pole

[ChrisSmolinski]

TOKYO— Takeo Morita wanted absolutely the best fidelity possible from his audio system, so he bought a utility pole.

The 82-year-old lawyer already had a $60,000 American-made amplifier, 1960s German loudspeakers that once belonged to a theater, Japanese audio cables threaded with gold and silver, and other pricey equipment.

Normal electricity just wouldn’t do anymore. To tap into what Mr. Morita calls “pure” power, he paid $10,000 to plant a 40-foot-tall concrete pole in his front yard. On it perches his own personal transformer—that thing shaped like a cylindrical metal garbage can—which feeds power more directly from the grid.

“Electricity is like blood. If it is tainted, the whole body will get sick,” says Mr. Morita. “No matter how expensive the audio equipment is, it will be no good if the blood is bad.”

Full article: http://www.wsj.com/article_email/a-gift-for-music-lovers-who-have-it-all-a-personal-utility-pole-1471189463-lMyQjAxMTE2MzE4NjExMjY1Wj

[Pigmeat]

I once fired a slug from a 12 gauge shotgun as a young teen into what I thought was a dead transformer on an abandoned farm. I don't hear a hum but but my ears have rang since that faithful day. At the moment it's a nice middle "C".

It was fortunate it had been raining the previous couple of days, the way the fire went ripping down that old power line through the woods would have caused a major forest fire if all the dead pines below it and leaning on the line had been dry. Literally a mile and half from nowhere and no way to get a fire truck near the place on those washed out roads. BTW, many Radio Pigmeat International broadcasts emanated from that ridge a few decades later.

If you ever go transformer hunting, try 40 plus yards and wear earplugs. 25 yards is too close for hunting pole pigs. And wear shades, that flash will get you. The incident ruined my rabbit dog, made him gun shy. After that he would run and hide when we had a hard rain.

[Josh]

I bought a pole located on 63rd street in Des Moines, with a 72 ss camaro. And sometime later, via a check to the utility co.

[Pigmeat]

LOL!

There was kid about 15 years ago who came flying off the ridge in a Mustang, blew the stop sign and launched the thing head on into a phone pole about 8 feet up it. The impact woke me up, and I recall thinking, "It's just thunder." Then it hit me it was the middle of January. I looked out the window, saw the pole smashed and the car in the street. The front was caved in. I said to myself, "That poor dumb dead son of bitch" I called 911, and went out to see if anything could be done. There he was, sitting on the wall at the end of my walk, bloody, reeking of whisky, wanting to know if I could call a tow truck? I said I'd already called 911. He goes, "Sh!t! Why did you do that? Now the cops are going to show." The dumbass tried to get up to run but he was pretty woozy and in shock. I got him to lay down and it was seconds later that the cops and the rescue wagon showed up.

The cop tries to talk to the kid, but he's not making much sense. The cop asked me what happened I told him my guess is he blew the stop sign and went airborne into the pole. The cop flashes his light up the hill and agrees, as there's no other place he could have launched from.He asks me about finding him, I told him and he asked the question I'd been wondering since I found the guy, "How did that SOB make it out alive?" We walked over to the car and the answer was behind the steering wheel, the car had an air bag. If he'd have hit that pole in a Mustang a couple of years older, that kid would have been dead on the spot.

[Fansome]

My brother was a paramedic at a small-town fire department in California. He got a lot of calls to auto accidents, and he used to say that of all the safety features of a modern automobile, he felt that the airbag was the most effective.

[Pigmeat]

I'd have to agree with him, Al. That kid, by all rights, should have died that night. I expected to find his body either pinned in the car or laying nearby hurled through the windshield.

I've seen a number of accidents since that have made me a big believer in air bags.

[Josh]

There was water on the street from the carwash nearby so I thought I'd get squirrely. As the car was yawing a bit it suddenly got traction and launched, as I tried to counter steer it back I noticed I was headed right for about 3 full garbage cans on the poor guys lawn, hit the curb so hard it split one of the front wheels around the rim, garbage cans and contents flying, note the pole and see the hood start to crumple as it contacts same, felt my ass leave the seat, and closed my eyes right before I hit the windshield. The doors were shoved back into the body of the car so you couldn't open them much less roll up the windows. Ah youth.