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Bicycle innertubes to float turntables and CD players.

The Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 5 loudspeaker.

The skin flute.

There has been a cornucopia of strange items, lo these past 35 years. One of the most strange is the cable elevator. About as useful as the pet rock.

Plasmatronic speaker from the '70s. The speaker actually burned natural gas. A blue flame was lit in the middle of this sizable box. They said it perfected the highs and mids.

Little foil swatches from Peter Belt that you put on your batteries,in your walkman. Damned if they didn't work! Much lower noise floor.

I recently read a thread from an audiophile who hired someone to tweak his system. This was accomplished in part by strategically placing crystals and other objects on or near his equipment. I'm pretty open-minded (having recently learned first-hand that cable really does make a difference), but I'd have to hear this one for myself.

I remember that some company named Bows or something like that, had this idea to stick a whole bunch of identical drivers (9) into a box, and had most of them (8) direct the sound away from the listener rather than toward him. Weird. Even weirder, a lot of people bought these things.

A JVC, I believe, cassette machine that played both sides of the cassette by turning it over at the end of the side. I was working a repair shop when this little beast came in, and it was having a problem with the turnover mechanism. Quite the piece of Japanese weird technology. Saw it in around 1975.

A thing called a CD player. Some people think that a small silver disc can actually play music!

The little stands to get cables off the floor. Even if they do work—which I doubt—I would be too embarrassed to use them.

The iPod. It looks like a 1960s transistor radio, and it sounds as harsh and tinny as one too. Yet people will pay hundreds of dollars for one! Although I really don't consider this to be an "audiophile" product, apparently some so-called audiophile magazines have reviewed it as such!

The Magic Clock. Anyone remember that whole thing?

Quarters; that's right. Quarters. Placing quarters under each foot of a turntable. For a buck, I thought my rig sounded better—for awhile.

Some of the early writers for TAS. They were fun to read, although what they wrote had nothing to do with music beyond their imagination.

See the Electron Luv amps at this site: http://www.enjoythemusic.com/vsac2003/glackin/part3.htm

Mpingo discs.

Electrocompaniet ECI-4 integrated amp. An oddball to look at and the sound is strange and annoying.