Three Wise Men From Vinyltown

It’s not even Christmas/Hanukkah yet and already I’ve received three very thoughtful and interesting gifts.

They say you shouldn’t take an LSD trip without guides; the vinyl collecting hobby being little different from the use of psychedelic drugs, I decided I needed a couple of guides for my return to “records” that are actually records. After all, it had been a long time since I’d put the proverbial needle on the proverbial record. I was an early and enthusiastic adopter of the compact disc, having my first console player by mid-1987 and my first portable player in early 1988. Prior to that, however, I was a bit of a vinyl devotee. The “factory” cassette tapes of that era were absolutely abysmal, so I always bought the record and copied it onto a Maxell or TDK tape. If you are ever in a situation where you need to know the difference between the Maxell UD, XLI-S, and MX, feel free to call me.

Incidentally, I just found this page which has photos of all the old tapes in their original factory packaging. Whoa. Back to the story. Even with my extremely modest Sony quasi-component system, the resulting tapes were better-sounding and longer-lasting than the milky-white cartridges sold by the record labels. It’s amazing just how poor those old tapes were. Not only did they sound terrible from the moment you unwrapped them, they had a tendency to break or become twisted in use, particularly when used in a boombox or car.

Luckily for all of us, the brutal reign of the Philips Compact Cassette in popular music was mercifully brief. I’d say that the first cassettes to contain “bonus tracks” and other content that couldn’t be had on the vinyl version appeared around 1982 or so. By 1990, the CD was firmly in control.

The compact disc enshrined the profitability of the record company for a halcyon twenty years. It cost very little to produce and could be sold for more than the cassette or vinyl. It also offered a chance to sell the back catalog again; how many of us bought the classic rock albums on vinyl then again on CD, assuming we didn’t also buy them as cassettes in the Eighties? The problem was that the industry became addicted to that sweet double toke of selling the old music along with the new and made it part of their business model, but the high didn’t last forever. There exists a fixed number of people who are willing to buy Boston on CD, you know.

In an attempt to make the same magic happen again around the turn of the century, the industry advanced a couple of new formats. Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio both had much to recommend them to the audiophile crowd, but you couldn’t hear the difference between a CD and SACD as easily as you could distinguish a cassette from the CD. Furthermore, the pricing was outrageous. As a consequence, the next change in format was a flight from quality, to the MP3 and AAC digital distribution formats.

Not to fear, though; just when it looked like there was no expensive way to sell music, the 180-gram vinyl record appeared to cater to the growing market of vinyl purists, and it sells for more than a CD — $18.99 or more, sometimes much more. As fate would have it, I have a sort of family connection to the idea of high-dollar vinyl; my great-grandfather was an engineer at RCA Victor and worked on the “Red Seal” format that probably represented the first attempt to mass-produce a high-fidelity record.

Insofar as he’s no longer around, however, I chose to rely on my friends John and Chuck to give me advice on what turntable to buy and what kinds of records to put on it.

John recommended the Music Hall 5.1SE. Well, he actually recommended the 2.2LE but I asked for additional pimp appeal and he reluctantly agreed. Chuck then sent me a few of his best vinyl records, including a utterly brilliant LP of The Sidewinder. I’ve been setting my Amex on fire buying records everywhere I go, including the above-pictured “Modern Vampires Of The City”, included free by the Austin Guitar Center with Wednesday’s Taylor 714ce purchase. My third friend, Chris, is really the guy who got me started on all this when he played the first Led Zeppelin special edition LP on his turntable up in Toronto, and he’s been a source of valuable advice as well.

When I came home from Austin I had a few neat gifts waiting for me. From Chris, the clear vinyl version of Sunken Condos. The records are too pretty to play — but I’m going to play them anyway. From Chuck, an original ECM pressing of “Bright Size Life” and a Roy Buchanan album.

I’ve been absolutely thrilled with the Music Hall turntable, which I’ve teamed with a Parasound preamp, a Parasound power amp, and a set of Magnepans. I’m not sure that the vinyl records sound any better than the SACDs or even the CDs that I play through my Sony NS9100ES. But there’s something to be said for the airy, slightly noisy nature of vinyl records. More than that, there’s a genuine ceremony to taking the vinyl out of its slipcover, placing it on the turntable, and dropping the needle oh-so-gently. To my immense amusement, the Music Hall offers no automatic features whatsoever; it doesn’t even have a 33/45rpm switch. You switch it by moving the drive belt to a different pulley. Compared to the multifunction, laser-guided turntables that I remember from the Eighties, this wood-veneered unit is simplicity itself. Maybe that’s why I love it.

I’ve already noted one benefit from playing vinyl records while I work; every twenty minutes I have to stand up and walk over to the turntable. Gives me a chance to stretch my hands and my legs and my ears, too. This weekend I’ll dig deep into that old Metheny vinyl and truly enjoy myself, probably while writing a few things for Road&Track. I’m grateful that I have a life where I can do things like that, and I’m grateful for the friends who make it possible.