Choose your nib (thin, thick), body finish (gun metal, plastic — clear, blue, red, yellow) and colour of ink. Because only five-year-olds write love notes in pencil.

Price: Rs 500 (MRP: Rs 750)
Where: Manoj Pen Mart, Fountain

If you’re the kind that believes Bose is the shit and spent some coin on it recently, don’t bother reading this: It will make you feel very very stupid.
Voted by some as the ‘Amp of the century’, the NAD 3020 series set the standard in low-cost, high-quality amplifiers back in ’78 when it first came out.
A 20w RMS rating is laughable in this day of hundreds of watts of room-shaking HT setups, but a few clean watts is all you need to drive a decent set of speakers to make sweet, sweet music.

Despite being a circa ’81 model, the amp is in surprisingly good shape. All the inputs and terminals are rust-free, the power cord is original and the switches and knobs work smoothly as they should.
A comparable amp from NAD today in the C3xx series would cost over Rs 15,000. Note that this is NOT a refurb. It was opened and inspected, and every component is as it was 25 years ago. (They say it’s sprinkled with fairy dust)

Why buy?
20 watts of Class A goodness per channel
Pre-amp out for tethering to even more expensive equipment
Soft-clipping, a.k.a “Party Mode”
Small size, good, purposeful looks
Snobbery by obscurity

Price: Rs 4,700
Where: Chor Bazaar, Mohammed Ali Road

Posted by Tushar Burman

I was looking for a tripod that would help me click pictures for this site, and there! It’s swasta ani masta since it has a hardy metal body and all the features not expected for the price, say people who should know. Goes up to 5.5 feet.
Irony or serendipity, pick your figure of speech.

Price: Rs 1,300
Where: Photography lane at D N Road, Mumbai