Robert P. Jones
Second Unit
- Joined
- Jun 18, 1999
- Messages
- 289
A Nitty Gritty is not absolutely necessary.
As media specialist for the University of Oregon in Eugene many years ago, one of my projects was to clean a collection of oversized 33 1/3 rpm non-LP records that had gathered tons of dust in an attic. My job was to transfer them to cassette.
They were about half again the size of regular LPs, and were recorded strictly for radio play. They were inspirational stories in nature, with lots of that good old organ music.
I scratched my head as to how to handle all that dust.
A friend had clued me in on the answer already, tho, and I knew he was right. They had to be washed.
I took them all to the bathroom and created some warm, very diluted soapy water to use. Very thin in its soapiness, but soapy nonetheless.
First I washed my hands with soap, of any finger grease, and rinsed thoroughly.
I then ran lukewarm water over the records first, both sides. Then I poured the diluted water over the surface and gently rubbed it around in circles on the grooves, rinsing as I went, so nothing would have a chance to dry out. I was very meticulous to hit every part of the record thoroughly, with this wash/rinse protocol.
Then I rinsed that side off and turned the record over and did the other side.
Then while it was still very wet, I spun the record, to get the excess water off. Tossed it in the air a few times, spinning like it was in an Aldspin - a high-speed wringer that some of the Eugene laundromats had, that would spin your clothes so hard you needed very little drying of them in their dryers.
When I was satisfied that I had gotton all the water possible off that way, I then took a terrycloth towel and dried the rest of the water off, eventually buffing it.
When I played the records on the oversized turntable at the U of O Media Center, it was radio play quality again. The tapes came out fantastic. I never found out what happened to the originals I had cleaned.
I had a chance to calibrate a 34" Sony HDready DV for Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, several years ago. The call came in from Red Rose Music, whose gents were installing a system for him, upstairs in his SF place, one of many he evidently has around the country.
I had never heard of Red Rose Music.
But halfway thru the job I heard a live band 2 flights up, playing Girl From Ipanema. At least it sounded live from 2 flights down.
But as I climbed the stairs, it became even more live sounding.
I hit the top of the stairs and was brought back to the reality that this was the sound system in action. I couldn't believe it because I was distinctly hearing both halves of the tophat cymbal, separately and independently of each other.
It was vinyl.
I came to find out that Red Rose Music was Mark Levinson equipment. I got to meet Mr. Levinson 2 days later, in person. There was some noise coming thru with the RPTV I was working on coupled to the sound system in that room, and that was the first time I saw the triple grounding selectivity of his equipment. It was a rush, being asked to listen to something that was confounding Mark Levinson!
My Radford equipment was purchased before CDs came to being, and the reason was that I had heard you could hear the various violins in the string system separately, distinctly and individually, even when tons of them were playing at the same time. They were right.
But the level of my equipment never attained what I heard that day, nor the other times I have had a chance to listen to Mark Levinson equipment.
The phono preamp is the key, tho. I listened to the Radford's phono preamp from my high-output moving coil cartridge - meaning no pre-preamp was necessary on that one - stomp all over a Marantz phono preamp of the same era, neither one a separate unit from the rest of the amp, but part of it. I hear the Thompson was a very good one of its time, as far as the preamp separates went.
Haven't done a lot of a/b testing, but I know the sound of a Mark Levinson reproduction is that of feeling as if the instruments are floating in front of you, in mid-air, in 3D. Completely transparent. No amps, no turntables, no speakers. Just the instruments and their musical operators, floating in midair, fingers often zithering along the strings on their way to where their fingers will lie for that particluar note...
Invisible, yet transparent.
Is that even possible?
Mr Bob
As media specialist for the University of Oregon in Eugene many years ago, one of my projects was to clean a collection of oversized 33 1/3 rpm non-LP records that had gathered tons of dust in an attic. My job was to transfer them to cassette.
They were about half again the size of regular LPs, and were recorded strictly for radio play. They were inspirational stories in nature, with lots of that good old organ music.
I scratched my head as to how to handle all that dust.
A friend had clued me in on the answer already, tho, and I knew he was right. They had to be washed.
I took them all to the bathroom and created some warm, very diluted soapy water to use. Very thin in its soapiness, but soapy nonetheless.
First I washed my hands with soap, of any finger grease, and rinsed thoroughly.
I then ran lukewarm water over the records first, both sides. Then I poured the diluted water over the surface and gently rubbed it around in circles on the grooves, rinsing as I went, so nothing would have a chance to dry out. I was very meticulous to hit every part of the record thoroughly, with this wash/rinse protocol.
Then I rinsed that side off and turned the record over and did the other side.
Then while it was still very wet, I spun the record, to get the excess water off. Tossed it in the air a few times, spinning like it was in an Aldspin - a high-speed wringer that some of the Eugene laundromats had, that would spin your clothes so hard you needed very little drying of them in their dryers.
When I was satisfied that I had gotton all the water possible off that way, I then took a terrycloth towel and dried the rest of the water off, eventually buffing it.
When I played the records on the oversized turntable at the U of O Media Center, it was radio play quality again. The tapes came out fantastic. I never found out what happened to the originals I had cleaned.
I had a chance to calibrate a 34" Sony HDready DV for Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, several years ago. The call came in from Red Rose Music, whose gents were installing a system for him, upstairs in his SF place, one of many he evidently has around the country.
I had never heard of Red Rose Music.
But halfway thru the job I heard a live band 2 flights up, playing Girl From Ipanema. At least it sounded live from 2 flights down.
But as I climbed the stairs, it became even more live sounding.
I hit the top of the stairs and was brought back to the reality that this was the sound system in action. I couldn't believe it because I was distinctly hearing both halves of the tophat cymbal, separately and independently of each other.
It was vinyl.
I came to find out that Red Rose Music was Mark Levinson equipment. I got to meet Mr. Levinson 2 days later, in person. There was some noise coming thru with the RPTV I was working on coupled to the sound system in that room, and that was the first time I saw the triple grounding selectivity of his equipment. It was a rush, being asked to listen to something that was confounding Mark Levinson!
My Radford equipment was purchased before CDs came to being, and the reason was that I had heard you could hear the various violins in the string system separately, distinctly and individually, even when tons of them were playing at the same time. They were right.
But the level of my equipment never attained what I heard that day, nor the other times I have had a chance to listen to Mark Levinson equipment.
The phono preamp is the key, tho. I listened to the Radford's phono preamp from my high-output moving coil cartridge - meaning no pre-preamp was necessary on that one - stomp all over a Marantz phono preamp of the same era, neither one a separate unit from the rest of the amp, but part of it. I hear the Thompson was a very good one of its time, as far as the preamp separates went.
Haven't done a lot of a/b testing, but I know the sound of a Mark Levinson reproduction is that of feeling as if the instruments are floating in front of you, in mid-air, in 3D. Completely transparent. No amps, no turntables, no speakers. Just the instruments and their musical operators, floating in midair, fingers often zithering along the strings on their way to where their fingers will lie for that particluar note...
Invisible, yet transparent.
Is that even possible?
Mr Bob
