Before records became a popular music medium again, good used turntables were cheap. This durable Pioneer PL-112D, for example, was an impulse purchase I made a long time ago.
Zombies under Stones
Because it’s endlessly fun to futz with audio gear, I bought a new belt for the PL-112D and pulled it out of storage.
Grado Green with Grado Black stylus
This latest exercise in retirement time wasting was done to see if increasing the tracking force of a Grado cartridge from the fixed P-mount setting of 1.25 grams to ~1.70 improves tracking.
Well, whaddaya know? It works. The distinctly annoying sibilance in George’s vocal on “Within You, Without You” is gone from my 1970’s British Parlophone pressing of Sgt. Pepper.
It’s been almost 13 years since I bought my Series II Bose Wave Music System, after I had the porch remodeled for year-round use. As I wrote at the time the CD player in the first unit had a problem. At least the problem appeared right away, unlike one of you out there, whose Bose Wave CD player failed after years of use.
Fortunately, my CD player continues to behave, and the older I get the more I appreciate the Wave. It’s what I’d keep if forced into extreme downsizing, because I was moving into — AIEE! — a retirement home.
That’s Lockjaw, from the Fantastic Four, sitting on Half-Face, from Iron Man.
From its introduction, the Bose Wave has been called overpriced, but the $500 price hasn’t budged for many years. The fact is nothing else does what the Wave does for its size, regardless of price.
The product name was taken from a speaker design term, quarter-wave, referring to using a cabinet baffle to extend the bass output of a speaker. Typically a full-range driver with no woofer/tweeter combination, and no crossover circuit. The waveguide design, combined with an active loudness control and a heavy-duty power supply, make the Wave’s bass response very satisfying.
The notorious CD player problems aside, Bose is confronting the reality that few people in their teens to 40 are listening to FM or CD’s. Rather than squeeze a Bluetooth receiver into the Wave, Bose offers a more expensive wireless edition with a base that attaches to its proprietary expansion port. The good news is the regular Wave is currently on sale for only $300, and for another $20 a Bluetooth receiver can be plugged into the auxiliary jack.
Denro, true to his historian education, has always said that new insights into old records can come from listening to them in the context of the time when they were new. That means playing them as they were originally heard on the radio, by referencing station playlists.
The more playlists the better, to reveal many fascinating regional variations. Some songs would be a hit in one market, but do poorly in another. Occasionally, a regional favorite like “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians (from Michigan), would become a breakout hit and top the charts nationally.
88 Rewound, a very fun show on M.I.T.’s radio station, WMBR, takes the same smart approach that Dennis favors. It’s from M.I.T., so it has to be smart! Each program follows a radio station playlist from long ago. Last Saturday’s show was from a Florida station, during one of the most musically varied years ever, 1968. I can’t embed the player, but that link should be good until the 28th.
My former techie cohort Scott Murawski is a Grateful Dead fan. Like the Dead, recordings of his band, Max Creek, are available on Archive.org. This concert was 31 years ago today, February 14, 1990.
Scott often teams up with Phish’s Mike Gordon. Mike and Scott were on tour a year ago, before we all had to stay hunkered down at home.
I’m not a Dead Head, but those who are should check the Grateful Dead archive of live recordings. Here’s one that goes all the way back to February, 1970, the same month the band recorded “Workingman’s Dead.”
This afternoon I was waking up from a nap and hit the “random Pandora playlist” button that’s set on my Logitech Internet radio. Pandora played this, from “Where Have I Known You Before,” my favorite Return to Forever album.
While listening, I picked up my new smartphone and the AP News headlines said, “JAZZ MUSICIAN CHICK COREA, DEAD AT 79.” Either Pandora (now owned by SiriusXM) has some super smart software, or it was a message from beyond the 7th galaxy.
