Show off your empegs!

Over the years, I've seen some pretty cool empegs shown on this board. I think someone here has one of the early Mk.1's, there might be a "test mule" Mk2 that looks like a Mk1 (or is it the other way around?), Paul has the largest capacity (or at least had it first), some people have a million lenses, some people have really cool docking stations, hacked on LEDs, facias (wasn't there a wood one?), custom fans, etc etc. Maybe someone has the most stickers on a player? Maybe someone is still running empeg ver. 1.1?

Well, let's show off the unique empeg Mk1, Mk2 and RioCars!

My contribution, I think I might have the most tracks (20,895) on a player. No new tracks have been added for 5 or 6 months, and I havn't been around the BBS in that time, so I might be out of the running by now. But I still have a few 1000 on my PC if I need to get back in the race! And yes, a database rebuild takes more time than watching the movie Gone With The Wind.

Okay... You woke me up... 25,343 tracks, about 140GB used.



Yes, there were wooden fascia a while back. I had one (very fragile and easily broken, as I found out). I still have one boxed for future use.

To be honest, my favorite player is a more stealth approach. Smoke lens with smoke buttons. It just fades into the dash. Even when on and illuminated, it is nicely understated, and matches the rest of the dash.

Wow, you've got me beaten by far! Congrats! Are you running hijack on that still?

Yup. Hijack 340 at the moment. A little backdated, but it works. I find that the only time I have trouble is when I need to fsck the drives. It takes forever (well, 90 minutes at least), and cannot be done through emplode because of the disk / memory size.

I think someone here has one of the early Mk.1's

I used to have number 5, the empeg mk1 from the A-class demonstration car. I gave it back, and it's now sitting in the display cabinet in empeg Towers.

wow, i never thought of that, ,,,,how long does it REALLY take to rebuild the database? I just upgraded to 120 gig of space, and i'm using only about 30 now (becuase that's all i had at the time) but i plan to bring it up to about 90. (Do you notice anything else that take a while that that much music on it? Do the menus seem more sluggish?)

I have a shameful admission to make. I am probably the earliest owner of an Empeg never to install it in a car

I had number 47 of the Mk1, that never made it into a car (since sold, hopefully now in a car). I then bought a Mk2a, which still isn't in a car. Later I bought a backup Mk2a, which, you guessed it has never been installed.

I have had all sorts of excuses along the way as to why I was waiting to install an Empeg. My latest is that both my Mk2a units are suffering from IDE header failure.

I really must dig out the soldering iron, fix the IDE headers and get one installed. But then I need to; locate some tools to remove my OEM head unit, find somewhere in my MX5 to hide the amp, buy an amp, install it...

...and then I would discover that RDS bugs would drive me mad, as I listen to BBC Radio 4 80% of the time I am in the car (and this won't change when I have an empeg installed). Oh well.

P.S. despite never installing them in a car I have had massive usage out of them. They have been used via tape adapters in car and I sat on my desk at work everyday providing music for the whole office. My Mk1 was used to provide the music during my wedding ceremony as well.

CHiP, there is a noticable delay for songs to start up when I skip to another song or a song is inserted. I think there is just less RAM for cache because it's being used for the database. Also (maybe more of a factor), the player has to search both drives for the song.

Other than that, there is no slowing of the visuals or menus.

Andy, that is deserving of something!

Which empeg has been in the MOST cars?

I sat on my desk at work everyday providing music for the whole office

So what do you sing?

Which empeg has been in the MOST cars?

Can't remember if Loren's had empegs stolen along with his cars...if not then surely it's got to be a contender.

My vote for most abused empeg to ever survive has to be the one stolen from strangeloop (Jason Clark). Unfortunately, the photo links are broken now, but this is the empeg that was stolen, but recovered having been run over / stomped on by the thieves (frustrated that they could not put a CD in it), and later repaired by the folks in Cambridge.

Yeah, I was thnking him too.. Loren?

Paul, it looks like you have a lot of duplicate tracks. We might have to send a verification commitee to your LAN.

Mmm.. MOST cars, eh..

Well, a leading candidate just has to be the unit on the Amersfoort 2003 Worst Install trophy, which I believe had been installed in 2-3 vehicles before becoming a trophy..

??

Well, heck, there are people with more cars than that. I mean, I have 2 and my unit has been in rmitz's car.

IIRC rmitz's original MK1 was 56, and he never installed it.

Hrmm... Number of times your Empeg has been inserted in someone else's car?

Once. At the NJ meet where somebody asked to borrow my empeg to see how a smoke lense would look in his car. I was like, "Yeah, fine", completely forgetting that I keep my volume locked at -3dB because I feed it though another HU.

There was some panic as the whole car virtually jumped off of the ground, followed by more panic when the volume knob didn't appear to be working. I can't remember who it was though...

I think i've had the most STOLEN... heh. 1.75. A complete install including tuner, then just the sled when my Si was stolen.

Paul, it looks like you have a lot of duplicate tracks

I can attest that Paul has few if any duplicate tracks. I have his entire playlist structure in an Excel file (don't ask!) and probably have a better idea of what he has in his player than he does!

The last time I updated that file, there were in excess of 25,000 unique tracks in it.

tanstaafl.

Well, let's show off the unique empeg Mk1, Mk2 and RioCars!


I'm pretty sure I'm the only one with an empeg installed in his bicycle

tanstaafl.

Greetings!

True. The duplications you see in the photo are based on live performances of Broadside Electric, an electric-folk-rock-celtic-world-prog band that Joe D'Andrea (jdandrea) is the drummer for. I can email you a copy of the most recent playlist or database export (csv) if you like...

I too have a pair of MK2a players that have yet to see the inside of a car.

I only realized last week how much use they both get when I made an attempt to open our CD cabinet, the outside was clean but the cds inside were covered in a thick layer of dust

I should sit down some time and roughly calculate how many miles has done as i bet it is way more than anyone elses

It has been away on 4 trips away at aout 4 months per trip and averaging about 300 miles a day and two months on a container ship doing 600 miles a day equals 174000 nautical miles not including car miles and planes miles

I nominate Mark Lord as probably having the empeg with the most kernel flash erasures

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one with an empeg installed in his bicycle

Sweeeet! I'll definately have to look into that if/when I do any touring.

I think you might find a Karma a bit easier to deal with.

Hrmm... Number of times your Empeg has been inserted in someone else's car?

That sounds dirty.

No, I don't want to do a driving tour, I want to do a biking tour.