PLAY THINGS

It’s not surprising that Apex Electronics looks like something out of “RoboCop.” Special-effects crews, prop masters and set designers swarm to the 30-year-old high-tech junkyard in Sun Valley to put together the bells and lasers for movies such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “RoboCop 3” and “Terminator 2.”

Its 40,000-square-foot warehouse and yard stock just about everything electronic, from the tiny--more than 154 types of resistors--to the monolithic--anybody need a 4-foot, 350-pound, 28-volt, 200-amp power supply? In between are oscilloscopes, microscopes, microphones, microprocessors, motors, lenses, knobs, buttons, switches, dish antennae and enough miles of cable to wrap the Earth like a ball of twine.

“Ten million pieces, conservatively speaking,” says Bill Slater, 72, Apex founder and proprietor. “We take things that have become excess and make them useful.”

Browsing through Apex is like being a kid in a vast electric candy shop; some items are used, but many are overstock or discontinued lines that could have come from the Pentagon or Pentax. All are guaranteed.

“Apex changed my life,” says artist Max Jurek. A few years ago, he came to the store with a concept: to project his drawings and photography on a massive scale. He wound up with a $75,000 instrument assembled from Apex pieces. His awesome projections helped open last month’s Los Angeles Olympic Festival and have graced the face of the French Alps. “My whole life I dreamed,” Jurek says, “then I discovered Apex. It’s a miracle place.”