Category: Music

And Now For Something Completely Accidental

More than five years ago, I read this excellent book about the history of George Harrison’s Handmade Films.

https://www.amazon.com/Very-Naughty-Boys-Amazing-HandMade/dp/1781167087/

Not only did I learn a lot about Handmade Films, I learned something I hadn’t known about Amazon. An author has the ability to give an Amazon customer free access to a Kindle edition of their book(s). Which Robert Sellers did for me, in thanks for putting him in touch with Prue. Robert’s e-mail account must have been hacked, because a few years later I began receiving occasional messages from the account that are obvious phishing attempts. Which concerns me, because I would like to contact Sellers again to talk about something.

Anyway, I’ve read Robert’s book about Handmade Films, but I have yet to see this movie. I will be doing that very soon.

https://youtu.be/0mkSn28WBbw

1978’s Model

There’s no need to hold hot coals to my bare feet and force me to confess the album that I have played more than anything in my entire life. I freely admit that, by a wide margin, it’s the American edition of Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model, with “Costello” on the label instead of “Columbia.”

I was working long hours at a radio station with a soft Adult Contemporary format. The U.S. Costello album concludes with the superb “Radio, Radio,” that isn’t on the UK edition. This is the stateside album cover.

Buzz Off!

Turn volume down before playing. Unpleasant test tone.

This is the text I posted on YouTube to accompany the video:

Audiorpheus (https://www.youtube.com/c/Audiorpheus…) posted a lot of interesting and fun videos related to affordable record playing. He used the Hi-Fi News Test LP to perform some tracking tests, with the Nagaoka MP-110 coming out on top.

For this short video I used my copy of the Hi-Fi News test disc to compare a Grado Green cartridge with an Audio-Technica AT92E. I bought the Grado for $100 a couple of years ago, and the Audio-Technica was purchased new in 2013 for only $20 (the price was increased later to $30). The cartridges are mounted and aligned in identical head shells, and installed on a vintage Pioneer PL-112D turntable.

The Grado Green buzzes just as badly as the Grado Black did for Audiorpheus. The AT92E, however, performs just as well on the difficult inner-groove tracking test as the Nagaoka did for Audiorpheus.

The replacement for the AT92E is the AT85EP, for $40. If the AT85EP performs as well as the older model, it’s today’s #1 tracking bargain, costing a fraction the price of a Nagaoka MP-110.