Record Store Day 2012 - hits and misses...

so I sneaked away from the soldering bench and the family on Saturday morning for a few hours.. it is always nice to flip through vinyl on a Saturday morning.. especially in the Spring...

I will be completely honest and say that I am bummed that I did not find the first ever vinyl release of Junta.. I think Phish did a really cool thing by releasing this very early and really interesting album on three pieces of 180 gram vinyl for only $40... on the $60 version, they included a signed screenprint by the original artist... very cool... but they went quickly.. by noon there were 500 copies on eBay.. I suppose the band cannot do anything about scalpers, just like tickets for all those years... but I will say that I have been extremely lucky and never, ever shut out of a show.. even some super duper way sold out events.. so I guess my karma is pretty good...

enough of that.. you guys would not support scalpers.. so on to the scores... and the rest of a very beautiful morning in which I hit *three* record stores...

so first up is my only RSD special.. the Black Angels... I guess I was feeling a little bit angry as this made me feel much better.. it is two early EP's put together and a few tracks from an early album, one of which, Manipulation, is especially dark and powerful... not for the faint of heart, but....

next is my only genuinely all Soul album of the day... but it is James Carr... if you have not ever heard "At the Dark End of the Street" you are missing out...

Roy Buchanan is a guitar wizard... check him out on You Tube.. he seems a humble guy who just says everything with a guitar..

Stanley Clarke "School Days" is one that I just needed a better copy of.. the track "Desert Song" with McLaughlin is great... besides, I want those pants... and it was a buck... WTF, it's only a buck! (which you Deadheads will recall as the slogan wookies used to sell grilled cheese sandwiches on tour)

do I have to say something about the guitar work of Jimmie Vaughan?  maybe I do.. he has that strut.. not the normal Texas blues that is so in your face... I love his playing...

and this one. whoah... this is Muddy Waters and Otis Spann... the best of all those attempts to combine new school hippie blues players with the greats from teh 40's and 50's... this one works.. not a sonic marvel, but amazing music.. close your eyes and wish you were there... (and it was $5 for two lp's!)

same with this one... a classic... I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never own the original.. so a later mint reissue is just fine.. the Wolf... a mighty man... as a bonus, my kids seem to get what he was about.. an original..

oh, look at that!.. an album that is not all guitar.. I did not notice until I got home, but I guess my two year affair with the saxophone must be over.. from this stack, it looks like I never left the blues section.. hmm... so I obviously bought this for Memphis Slim, who I like very much.. maybe I belong in this backwards 1950's conservative town after all... I just need to learn how to wail away on my porch..

uh, oh... another guitar god... Ulmer.. wow... if you like this music, you already know him..

and, gasp, a CD!  yeah, but how cool is this?.. this guy was playing live in the record store.. Muddy Waters and Junior Kimbrough covers.. solo.. guitar, bass drum and hi-hat.. and talking about how he had been up all night.. they had a party last night.. but he was loving the fact that a small group of us knew all the tunes he was playing.. so I bought his CD.. Eric Hughes.. he said he had two singles that were top ten on the blues charts.. so I happily handed him $10... 

and for Richie.. yet another use for transformers.. to hold up vinyl when you take snapshots..

so I will leave you with some short video of Eric Hughes playing on no sleep at one of the record stores.. tough, lonely gig.. but you gotta get by...

Peace,
Me

the day after.

At some point we need to get back to the basic way to cheat the man yet honor the first order beliefs of family.

The other day I had to chop into a filament transformer to gain access to the leads.  The whole purpose of this endeavor was to pay respect to the filament of a 50.

It just so happened that the toroid that I had on site wasn't up to the job and lets say the filaments were a bit 'droopy' so I took the liberty of cutting it open and adding some wire.

Once the wire is added it just becomes a case of testing it in a bogey circuit and I'll accept that for a 50... even a mesh one.

Trust me kids... you can do this yourself and never have to wait 3 days for a new delivery.  The amazing thing is the power you feel the first time you actually solve the problem yourself.

Back to the 50... the toroid is hidden below with a pair of permalloy filament chokes.  Up top you see a damper bridge and two nickel choke input supplies followed by a buried TSHA feeding another nickel PS choke.  Last cap as always is an oil and music follows.

dave

In honor of 4/20, the unofficial national hippie holiday....

in honor of the holiday, check out the patina that has formed on the field coil motors for the electrodynamic 650 compression drivers! on any other day I would be tempted to steel wool and make it a little more socially acceptable... but today? I might just spin the "Morning Dew" from the Strand Lyceum, Europe '72 tour.... and leave these babies alone....

Peace,
Me

giant steps

Doh! I forgot the video...

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this actually part of teh process... it is nothing more than water (although I apply the finish in the same manner).. the water raises the wood grain and prepares it for the final sanding pass. Cool, huh?





I will add it in to the post below next week, but I just really liked teh video, so...


Me

DIY'ers save lives, part II...

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my small lathe was losing tolerances.. moving.. wimpy... and scary when it would bite into a nice piece of wood...

luckily, my friend RLL is moving and jumped at the chance to let me "house" his lathe while they move... of course, he also brings all sorts of other things over for me as well.. (look for some free power transformers in the near future under the title "free junk"...)...

so practice time... I need to deliver a few EM Electrodynamic 650 compression drivers... time to learn a new lathe... it went well... some pictures below...

not bad!


close up:


some ballast (now rather dusty):


the original:



more soon!

Peace,
Me

free stuff.

here is something donated that everybody will want to flip on ebay and others will covet.

chime in if you want the pin and it is yours.  If more than one gets it and can explain it, you are at the mercy of random.org.

broken 101D going to a better place.

What a Rush!

Being an admitted audio junkie, I need to head to the 'bay for my occasional fix.  Boy was I surprised and excited when this showed up in a plain manila envelope containing the two things I bought at $5 each. (+$3 shipping).

Upon opening my score, I was pained to see a mono pill rather than a stereo pair and to make things worse, it was a generic!  I'll also assure you if I follow the prescribed dosage, I will feel severe pain in 6-8 hours hence needing a refill of a controlled substance.

Here the single dosage is sitting next to the ailment it is designed to cure and in all honesty I'm happy with the generic even at the single dose price since it will help out some mono freak in the future.

Finally an image for those Junkies out there who want to see the difference between the original and the generic. 

Now for a funny story that isn't audio related.  Back in the early days of digital when I needed extension tubes for my canon lenses, I asked a digital tech friend what to get and he said  'get the kenco'.  He also mentioned when you go in to buy it you will get a fight from the salesman at B&H.  He insisted they will shun the generic and suggest that the genuine Canon extension tubes at 3X the price are far superior.  He also told me of his response to the salesman which was...

 'I have read that the air that cannon uses is much higher quality than the air that kenco uses.  If i buy the canon tubes, can you also supply me with the needed air?'

They happily sold him the generic tubes.

dave

LSAF. The little show that can?

Two years ago JJ and I had some fun in Dallas at the Lone Star Audio Fest .  This show is different since there is no promoter and it simply puts a bunch of audio junkies in the same place at the same time with out the constraints of having to host, organize or charge for an event.

We had fun and met new friends like innerurban who did this blog post  that was the source of the opening picture.   Flash forward nearly two years and I'm headed back.  Unfortunately Munich is happening on the same weekend so JJ and I will cross paths in the air in an attempt to spread the junkie gospel.

Since I will be 150 pounds light of the 300 pound workforce that is emia, we are taking it old skool and showing something very similar to what JJ and JVH took to VSAC 2008.

As I travel to dallas and JJ travels to Munich, we will have each other in spirit in the form of 150 pounds of emia gear.  In addition to the Lowther field coils, Dallas will have the phono, some 50 amps, sut's, attenuators, a LR crossover, strain gauge phono and 100% vinyl as a source.  Acting as the emia missionary to convert amsterdam, JJ has me in spirit if not in mass.

Ionovac Tweeter - Omahaul pt I...

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hello friends... well, I finally got my old school theatre gear score.. alas, it was second hand from the guy who actually removed it from the theatre thirty years ago.. but it was an old-school deal none the less... the guy did not want to eBay it.. he wanted it to go to a loving home... he is an electronics and audio guy himself, and had all sorts of things he was cleaning out of his basement..

as I had to drive to Omaha, Nebraska to get this stuff.. and as the gear that I will show you in later segments came from a theatre in Omaha, I have to call this the Omahaul of a lifetime..

first up is the Ionovac tweeter.. I was super stoked he gave this to me as dave and I have had these half cooked plans for a plasma tweeter for a long time.. I really dig the plasma tweeter sound.. the way it just makes the room size grow when you turn it on.. effortless and big.. it made me understand that audiophile term "air"...

even though large flames can play down low.. (use an Eimac transmitting tube and make it play down to 500Hz? madness!)... it seems to not quite have the impact of the best tweeters.. but the best tweeters (big Goto and ALE, original WE tweeters, and those amazing GIP gold tweeters!) do not do what the plasma does.. so I am thinking to roll the plasma in above the classic WE tweeters... best of both worlds will be the goal.. we will find out...

Another key reason to play with these is to finally have a tweeter that is the efficiency of these powerful midrange horns.. it is not easy.. the laws of physics catch up by the treble.. and as these are self-powered, you can say goodbye to those damaging attenuators on your midrange horns.. let them run free!..

If you are interested in a plasma tweeter to keep up with your horns, please drop me a note offline.. I need to gauge how much interest there is in this project... I want one, but I have been accused of valuing music as high as religion...

objet d'art

I never thought of a dead mesh 50 as art.

I see the remote LR crossover from Chapman as art.

Some like the hudson as art.

Western Electric 16a and 16b - verifying the model with the measurements...

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so if you take measurements two different ways... and actually make paper templates using heavy stock.. and they all match up to within 1/16", you celebrate with a beer (or whatever floats your own personal boat)...

The Treehouse...

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OK... I had a third request for the treehouse... so here she is!

I had the kids draw and come up with ideas. After removing some great ideas (like a zipline from the roof of our house to the treehouse) that I knew would never pass the "Mom veto", we were left with a rather plain affair for now. It does serve its purpose very well, however. It is great to get twelve feet off the ground. It feels totally different up there... we did manage to sneak in the trap door and the rope ladder... oh, and the rope and bucket for getting "stuff" up and down...






the halfpipe from above:


My little woodshop and open work area:


the trap door:



I will update you as the kids add and modify... it does make me very happy that they will stay up there for hours at a time... especially as I found out I am a bit afraid of heights... laying the first long and heavy cross beams while balancing on a single 2" beam was a bit more distressing than I had imagined...

Peace,
Me

the river.

I remember the early stories of the NY triode Mafia and how once herb mentioned something like circuits and sound should flow like a M-effin river.   Back in those days I was known as clippy for some unknown reason and recently things came home to me when an early 'drug through the hudson' strain gauge supply came back to me with a new owner.

To rip off herb, the blood and guts of the sound was well chosen quality parts.  The only trick thing on this unit was the inclusion of an early set of the Chapman remote autoformers.   In any event we fired it up last weekend for some listening and it was really nice to have an old reference back home for comparison to where things have gone.

The current equivalent to that circuit that I listen to daily sure makes the 'drug through the hudson look appealing to the end consumer so i guess i still have a lot of latent "clippy" hiding in my soul.

Everyone loves the 437A and I have to be honest that back in the day, $50 was a lot for a tube when I could get a 5842 or a 6c45 for 1/10th the price.  On Saturday we blasted through a bunch of alternatives in the "clippy rig" and it was very comforting that while each tube had its tone,  the sound was all great.

another thing to be addressed is the inherent inaccuracy of the historical strain gauge cartridges and how to adhere to that pesky riaa accuracy demanded by some of the all-knowing.  The clippy filter pictured above takes a device that has about a 5dB variation from an arbitrary zero to a 2dB variation.

the good news is... the filter just seems to change the presentation a bit and doesn't seem to have an impact on the emotion (tone) of the music.