I enjoy looking at various turntable forums, in particular those about vintage Thorens models. I bought my TD-166 MKII 37 years ago. A frequent topic of discussion on the forums is how to polish a tarnished Thorens platter rim. A lot of devotees want a mirror-like shine, which requires a grinding wheel. I don’t care for that look myself, and I’m happy with the results I get using fine steel wool.
I can imagine boys of a certain age joking, “Pee… cock. Get it?” I was once a boy of a certain age, so there you go. But for whatever reason, somebody at NBC/Universal decided to call their new streaming service Peacock TV. Not being a Comcast customer I couldn’t watch Peacock until today, and I’m doing that now only because access is free with commercials.
The two properties that interest me are the classic Universal monster movies…
… and the Alfred Hitchcock films and TV series.
Peacock is being rolled out without support for Roku or Amazon streaming devices, which greatly limits its coverage, but I have a Chromecast puck on the porch TV. Well, I’d better get back to my viewing!
One of my favorite comic books as a kid was Dennis the Menace. I had a favorite Dennis artist, but I didn’t know his name was Al Wiseman until I was an adult. With the exception of a couple knobs for dials, this is an accurate drawing by Wiseman of a 1924 RCA Radiola AR-812.
The AR-812 is significant, because it was the first set available commercially to include the invention that made radio broadcasting a practical medium — Edwin Armstrong’s Superheterodyne circuit.
With the passing of Dame Vera Lynn at 103, World War II slips a little bit further away from living memory. Thanks to magnetic tape recording — an invention perfected in Nazi Germany — this 1950’s re-recording of Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” sounds as though it could have been made yesterday.
I should see if Vera Lynn ever commented on this use of her signature song.
A question in the comments about a microphone coincides with a video chat I watched yesterday. Noted recording engineer, musician, and author Brian Kehew discusses his work in the studio, and how the Beatles worked in the studio. Somewhat ironically, Kevin is apparently using the mic in his laptop computer.
A very nerdy thing I’ve enjoyed doing is listening to the many different combinations of inexpensive phono preamps and cartridges presented on YouTube. Here is how the setup in my home office sounds. Listen quick, in case YouTube decides to yank it, despite many other unofficial copies of the song already being there.
The cartridge is a Grado Black ($75), the preamp a Behringer PP400 ($25), and the turntable is a Technics SL-BD20D. The Technics was the last of the P-Mount (T4P) models, and it was purchased new for $99 from J&R Music World, an outstanding retailer and mail-order service that is gone, but not forgotten.
