Monday, February 22, 2010

Music Maker of the Month - Mats Gunnars...

I think it is time to introduce a new repeating post to the Blog - MMM - Music Maker of the Month. The goal is not to show who had the best, we have already moved well past that. The goal is to present systems that meet that magic threshold of getting out of the way. With these systems, you hear music, not the system. Do they have issues? Sure. Do they make music? Absolutely.



So enter Mats. Mats is one of my heroes. The man has two walls of vinyl. And a seriously thick section of those orange and black 1960's Impulse artists that I like. Those Impulse pressings are the perfect example of not being the ultimate recordings, but very full of music. Mats has two turntables up and running... a five way system... four of the five are horns... he is quad amplifying with line level crossovers.... Mats even has true 20Hz horn bass with an old tapped horn of mine from years back... keep in mind that all of this is in a city apartment!




Mats is also my healer. How he knows what he knows, I hope to one day understand. He has somehow moved past what most of us think (worry?) about on a daily basis and moved to sensing the pulse of the universe. From more than 500 miles away, the man can correct my ailments from inflections in my voice. Fix my diet even though he has no idea what I am actually eating. and then there is this:



He cannot know that for years now my favorite reply when Lisa gets onto me about not sleeping enough is "I'll get plenty of sleep when I am dead."... And yet this is what shows up in my inbox from Mats. I often tell people I subsist on solder and coffee... and speaking of, on this Monday morning that the heat in Bessie (my old volvo wagon) decided not to work, I am ending this post and headed to the kitchen for second coffee... then to solder...

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for Coffee! - my new desktop :-)

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  2. Last winter I spent a few cold Chicago mornings curled up in front of Mats's fine system going through a big pile of Neil Young vinyl. It was one of the sonic highlights of my life.

    Scott Calhoun

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