yet another boring one trick pony turntable build

[Cressy Snr]

On the other hand, I don't think I would have done myself any favours keeping hold of those LPs given the crappy record player I had in my bedroom - pretty sure it had a plough instead of a stylus!

The irony is, that the records I kept, eg ‘Crime of the Century’ Supertramp, Pinups David Bowie, which were played on a BSR deck with ceramic cartridge, sound fine, albeit a bit noisy in the quiet bits, whilst those from the 80s/early 90s, that were played on an Akito/K18/LP12 are all, without exception, royally fooked.

[IslandPink]

I had to double check there, I thought that was Mark posting for a mo

Chortle !
No LP purchases this month .. ( don't ask about cameras and lenses )

[Cressy Snr]

Our Ant was record shopping this morning and turned me up a very good copy of Rick Wakeman’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, with the original gatefold sleeve and multi-page book insert of weird psychedelic photo montages. So that’s one more off the list.

The centre spread of narrator David Hemmings sitting in a forest of multi coloured mushrooms and the lizard and the terrapin fighting in a beer glass in front of the conductor made me laugh, as did the cringy lyrics. I listened to the first song sequence and it all came back.

The orchestra and choir turn in a superb performance and they could have done even better without Rick’s wheezy synths interrupting the overture. But it’s fun and I can now appreciate the tongue in cheekiness of the thing as well as Rick’s talent as an arranger.

It must have been quite a hoot to have been in the audience at the recording. I read somewhere that Rick hired the Royal Festival Hall and did ‘Journey’ as a live album over two nights, with a paying audience because it would almost certainly have bankrupted him to have attempted to record it in a big studio and pay the musicians and studio fees out of his own pocket.

Of course King Arthur on ice very nearly did bankrupt him. I remember seeing it on the telly at the time, and feeling sorely disappointed and severely short-changed because Rick wasn’t himself, whizzing around the ice whilst tinkling his minimoogs. He was atop a castle structure in the middle, and wearing a cape and wizard’s hat, whilst a bunch of pro skaters provided the action on the rink. What a spoilsport!

[Cressy Snr]

Got a few of my old records cleaned at Simon’s place last night.
Interesting couple of hours spent listening to various LPs. This was sparked by listening to my original 1974 copy of Supertramp’s Crime of the Century, after it had been cleaned. We could certainly tell which had been my favourite track because of the wear on ‘Dreamer’ but it was the wide dynamic range of the original cut that was notable. It was quite a good illustration of the creeping compression that has been happening over the past few decades.

Oh and thanks Simon, for cleaning the records and providing some new inner sleeves to replace the tatty monstrosities the originals had become. I owe you a pint at Owston.

[Dave the bass]

....whizzing around the ice whilst tinkling his minimoogs.

[Cressy Snr]

OOOH Matron! I missed that one

[Ant]

What was the cleaning machine?
I keep debating on getting a project vc-e machine at 300 quid which is at least relatively attainable. Wether it is better than the knosti I've had for the last ten years is the question. Is it really worth spending 3 and a half times the money on one, when my record collection is relatively small at give or take 600 lps

[simon]

VPI something or other. Had it years but only just recently used it. Having tried wet cleaning in the past with disappointing results I like the vacuum as at least there isn't any crackle left from air drying.

The dynamic range on the Supertramp album was quite an ear opener. We tried a few other albums and nothing came close, everything sounded compressed in comparison. We even tried a NZ pressing of Breakfast In America which sounded horrid in comparison.

Don't know why we bother with this hi fi lark!

[pre65]

Don't know why we bother with this hi fi lark

It's an addiction.

[simon]

It is. But lessons like last night are good reminders to keep things in perspective!

Interestingly I've just tried Logical Song and Dreamer on the Squeezebox from a ripped greatest hit cd. Logical Song is way better than the LP version I have. Way way better. Dreamer is on a par with Logical Song, maybe just has an edge, but I don't think it's as good as Steve's version last night.

Whenever I play Pictures At An Exhibition by the Chigaco Philharmonic conducted by Reiner, from 1956 I think, I wonder where it all went wrong.

[Cressy Snr]

The cleaned up albums have been on today and they are sounding pretty good for their age. Noise is reduced a lot which was the original aim of the cleaning process. Additionally I had a few more records on today, in what turned out to be an 8 hour marathon session, taking in the three Nick Drake albums in order, followed by Jan Lündgren’s ‘Potsdamer Platz”, Matthew Halsall’s ‘Into Forever’ and ending on Ben Webster With Strings ‘Sophisticated Lady.’ ....Niiiice.

[Cressy Snr]

Found another one in my collection with good dynamic range; not quite the range of Crime Of The Century, but not bad at all. The album is the original vinyl of Simple Minds New Gold Dream. I didn’t appreciate at the time, quite what a great album this is; love the bass playing, and it’s a whole lot more more subtle album than the overblown, overproduced pomp of Once Upon A Time.

[Ant]

Put on a steely Dan album for no dynamic range whatsoever
(ducks for cover)

[Cressy Snr]

Have done quite a lot of work on my NVA Phono1 over this last week.

Basically it has been turned into a two box Phono, with a large power supply fed by a 300VA toroidal transformer in one box, leaving just the phono board and the regulator board in the black box.

The mains switch, mains transformer, mains cable, rectifier and caps were removed from the black box and a big transformer, and rectifier, feeding 13600uF of smoothing per rail was installed in a Maplins plastic clamshell enclosure. The 45V, 0 -45V DC power left the clamshell box via an XLR socket, and connected to the NVA box via an XLR at the other end. Results were really rather good, so that I’ve been playing vinyl all week, with digital notable by its absence.

Final mod this evening was to fit a mono switch, to sum the channels at the Phono1 input sockets, when playing old 1950s/1960s mono records, of which I have quite a few. The difference with mono records played with summed channels vs mono played with stereo channels was well worth the five minutes spent fitting and wiring in the switch.

It made this sort of difference:

Mono-ing the first two Beatles albums on the 2009 digital remaster LPs resulted in a far more natural presentation than the hard left/right music in one channel, voices in the other ‘stereo’ of the originals. OK, so even when mono’ed these might not be the proper mono mixes, but it is still, for me infinitely preferable to the silly left/right presentation on the Please Please Me and With The Beatles LPs.

So a good week with analogue.

[Cressy Snr]

Had to get rid of the drawer in the hi-fi table, in order to accommodate the phono power supply unit (bottom left compartment)
Phono stage itself is at the opposite end of the bottom shelf.

Was enjoying a mono Ella & Louis when I took this pic. Am currently enjoying a Decca Ace of Clubs, mono recording of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No 4 (Italian).
Thing with mono is you can sit where the hell you like.

Anyway, enough about fecking mono; it’s of interest only to historical record collectors and to collectors of historical records