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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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You got it going on K!!!
I like your story...
So you're still listening to vinyl?
Is your platter something ultra suave,
like an Oracle Alexandria,
or perhaps slumming with Thorens or some such?
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TradIsGood
Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
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I think there is a story here that should be preserved.
On DVD?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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RokJox = American Hero.
We don't need no stinking badges...
Let's sort this out right here, right now, & on our own!
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marty(r)
climber
beneath the valley of ultravegans
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2008 - 11:36pm PT
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Any thoughts on 180 gram "virgin" vinyl and 45 rpm remastering? Ever hook up a quadrophonic arrangement based on the Eno diagrams on the old "Ambient" records?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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hey marty...
maybe I asked you this once before;
are you in fact Chris Persig?
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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45 rpm mastering is fine as long as you can live with a maximum of 14 minutes per side of music (over 14 minutes or so you have to reduce the level/volume about 3db/minute which works against your signal to noise ratio.) A lot of dance and club discs for DJ's are cut as 12" 45.
When I was in it 180 gm vinyl was largely a Euro and Japan thing. Pressing plants here didn't want to deal with it.
Tar, I had an Oracle. More trouble than it was worth. Now I have a Yamaha pf800 with a Stanton cartridge. The phono preamp is a key and often underappreciated element. I use a Hafler. Sounds sweet. And you would be amazed how much almost any turntables performance will improve if you just place it on a slab of granite. Kills the rumble and feedback.
We like granite...
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mrtropy
Trad climber
Nor Cal
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I sold about five of my old punk rock 45 to a collecter wholesale and it paid a couple of tickets to Portugal from San Francisco. I am thinking a selling a few more for a couple of tickets for Europe this summer. Too bad I gave about about 20 to a friend a few years ago even at that time they were woth 10- 50 bucks a pop.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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KSolem:
Nice feedback on the Oracle and turntable-tech in general.
Yamaha is direct drive no?
Although short on play, I do like the fidelity of those bigwheel 45s:
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Tar - the yamaha is belt drive. imo direct drive is good for scratching and dj work, but often has a lot of rumble. I had a technics 1200 for a while. Gave it away...
(Oh, I lied. Mine is on marble. Granite would be nicer.)
Tool fans, eat your hearts out!
Each album was cut as four sides, 3 tracks on a side. These were a limited run for a few lucky people. They sound incredible. If you like Tool...
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marty(r)
climber
beneath the valley of ultravegans
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 5, 2008 - 09:46pm PT
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Roy,
Nope, not the MiniCheese, though we briefly overlapped. Chris is, though, teaching at Bishop High where I worked for a real short while. He does have great taste in movies, music, and graphic design. You and I actually met once when Mussy was out of town and you came by the Paradise house. I probably seemed like I was 12--been nowhere, done nothing nonsense.
Kris,
I asked about the 45s because a lot of "classic" metal and some hardcore has been reissued in that format. The rationale was to get a louder sound than was possible on the 33 releases, but most folks aren't using pre-amps, high quality needles, or even stable surfaces for their turntables.
SuperTypo Nation Challenge: name the records--artist and title--and if possible, post up a story. (Who climbs around here anyway?)
Okay, and a few live shots to keep it grounded in real time and space. (No fair looking at the photobucket titles.)
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Aladdin Sane story:
An old girlfriend was a diehard Bowie fan. When he came to Philly she managed to find out what hotel he was staying in, what floor of suites he had booked, and how to get to the service elevator. Later that night, after the show, she rode up to the floor, got out of the elevator, looked left, looked right, and there He was, Ziggy himself, just turning the corner and coming down the hall.
Alone.
He stopped, looked at her, then turned and ran, ducking into his room and slamming the door.
Not too long after that he released "I'm Afraid of Americans."
She took credit for that one.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Marty(r):
yes yes yes.....
The MiniCheese™
I should have remembered there would had to have been a more identifiable handle.
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nutjob
Stoked OW climber
San Jose, CA
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Fishfinder and survival, we gotta get a little collusion going on those Moog records to keep the price high... say $900 minimum offering price?
Tarbster: I got yer 78s... Mussorgy's Pictures at an Exhibition.
I might have to start a separate thread on my turntable... see I've gone my own way here, departing from conventional wisdom.
I bought it for maybe twenty bucks at a garage sale 20 years ago, and it was ancient when I bought it. It was from the early proud digital era where "29 transistors and 24 diodes" carried a certain marketing cachet, and it was worthy of boasting in bold letters across the top of the unit. "Model No 6000" from Sunny Vox.
I've got an unreasonable emotional attachment to this unit, which perhaps far exceeds its actual merits. But I think not. Not only does it come with AM and FM radio, but it also has shortwave one and two (SW1 and SW2) radio bands!
When I used the built-in audio-cassette player to jam along with Dire Straights in the early 90s, I had to tune my guitar down a half step to be in pitch. It can record audio-cassette tapes, with built-in dual microphones for stereo effect. And it has external microphone plugs if you have more demanding audio requirements. Of course, you need to play back the recordings on the same box if you want to hear it at the original pitch.
The turn-table is special. It can play at 33 1/3, 45, and 78. I've used them all. My son likes to listen to Joe Satriani Surfing with the Alien on 78. Or put it in manual spin mode and do a little super-spin and scratching. I indulge him with that record, it's already scratched.
Sometime in the late 80s, the needle broke. I couldn't find a replacement cartridge for this thing, and I looked a bit. So I decided to construct my own needle. It was not an elaborate plan or any fancy engineering project... necessity is the mother of invention, and I was impatient. So I used a sharp knife to cut a sliver off of some medium-hard piece of plastic, and whittled down this sliver and mechanically attached it to the existing cartridge. The effect was magic: sound restored.
Now I know you audiophiles out there may be cringing at the thought of marring your records with a hand-carved piece of plastic in place of a proper needle. But I am a pragmatist. And with the limited resources of a high school student, I'd say I made the right choice. Twenty years later, the home-made needle still gets the job done.
I do have a few folded pieces of paper to elevate the records from the turn-table, because some of the records from thrift-stores are warped and rub at the edge of the unit, introducing a little flutter of lower pitched sound every revolution. The paper fixed that. And some records needed to have a coin placed on top of the cartridge head to keep from skipping. I don't have to do that any more. I guess I got rid of the offending records.
I replaced the wiring to the portable speakers that attach to the unit. Oh, I forgot to mention that! The whole unit is portable! The speakers fold down on top of the unit and close up like a briefcase. And they can be detached. Of course, when I close the lid now, I have to unplug the speaker connectors because the ones I bought at Radio Shack way back when the speaker wires went bad, well those new connectors were too tall to stay plugged in while the speaker lid is closed. A small price to pay to get the thing working again.
At the end of high school I encountered the rumor that Led Zeppelin encoded some secret messages in their records, something satanic when you played Stairway to Heaven backwards. I had the right tool for the job. Spinning the record backwards in manual mode of the turntable, we could make out the utterly eerie and crackly sounds of Robert Plant chanting in tongues, and we could swear we heard something there. But it was tough to get the speed right and consistent while manually spinning it backwards. So I took apart my Model No 6000 from Sunny Vox and I reversed the leads on the motor of the turn-table. Now I could play records at standard speed but backwards. And the ghostly voice came resounding crystal clear: "It's my sweet Satan, the one the little child, for the glory of satan..." and a few moments later we thought we heard "six six six" but this may have been the reverse reverb effect of the drums.
Needless to say we were stunned. I quickly returned the wiring to the standard connection method and haven't revisited this modification.
There's a battery compartment which I have yet to use. Someday soon I will need to determine how long I can power the unit on 6 "D" batteries. My dream from the first time I heard about wall climbing has been to take this baby up something and blast tunes from my vinyl records across the vast granite expanse of El Capitan. Someday, it will be.
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marty(r)
climber
beneath the valley of ultravegans
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 6, 2008 - 04:13pm PT
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Nutjob,
Hiking yourself up El Cap with vinyl in-tow would certainly be a proud first. A few years back Leo Houlding had his own private rave going on at Lay Lady Ledge with these speakers that could be worn around the neck, and others have hauled huge blasters up the Big Stone, but no vinyl. Maybe you could re-create the Dolt Cart and...well, it'd be epic.
DJ Shadow/Josh Davis talked about having an old Sears or Realistics turntable when he first started (1200s came much later) and he found a sweet-spot between 'play' and 'off' where he could have a record going up top, a tape in the lower A-drive, and a second tape on 'record' in the B-drive. It was like a mini mixer all built within one unit and if he was careful and patient, he could lay down one track in A, scratch on the record up top, and get it recorded in B. Pretty cool for a pre-teen soon-to-be great DJ/producer. I think he did all his early recordings (the Zimbabwe Legit remix, "In/Flux", "Entropy") with pause-button edits and a super simple four track. Sounds like you had quite a time of your own! "Six, six, six!"
I've had up to 12 crates but have given away, traded in, or outright sold everything but a select batch of gems that I just can't part with. Some trades I now regret, others just made sense at the time. Mostly I've come to hate moving the tonnage up and down three flights of stairs. But there is something really special about spending the time to flip a record, pour over inserts and lyric sheets, and hold the wide gate-folds, especially the old Impulse releases from the 60s. That orange and black spine just looks so cool lined up in the cue.
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JOEY.F
Social climber
sebastopol
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Fun reading here, though a lot of it is over my head.
I was thrifting a few years ago and bought for a few bucks
the complete Beethoven Symphonies
Dutche Grammephone, Karl Bohm.
Not that I was that interested, but,
Absolute mint condition,
question,
Was Dutche Grammephone not the "gold standard" for classics?
And what about Angel?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Ksolem - does Steve Hall climb? Is he still up in Hood River?
Any of you guys into it enough to pop for a laser turntable...?
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TYeary
Mountain climber
Calif.
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Hey Kris,
I've got a box set of original Beatles half speed masters put out by Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs. Numbered sets; mine is #2570 of a run of 5000.( And a UHQR 1/2 speed master of Sargent Pepper's..) Would those things sound better on your rig? I'm mean like being there?
Tony
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asioux
Trad climber
Rancho Cucamonga
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Well I have many many records ranging from rock n roll, punk rock, heavy metal, jazz. I have some rare records. I even have the Beatles band record the butcher(cover only). My favorite records to collect were LED ZEPPELIN live records. I search many stores and swap meets to find them. I use to go to stores like Neals records, poobahs,the rock shop in hollywood the pasadena swap meet was a good place. I have alot of rock n roll records that I bought when i was a kid at licorice pizza, music plus and this hole in the wall store in El Sereno in east l.a. eastern record shop. When I was a teenagerI use to tape trade with pen pals from around the united states and even in europe. I have many tape of bands like Metallica, Sabbath Slayer all live shows. I still have them, would like to preserve them on disc before they fall apart. Long Live Vinyl... Armando Fimbrez
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