So what the hell was I doing? Well, for starters I finally got a turntable here in Warsaw, so I’m back on the old vinyl collecting band wagon (yay!). One can also say that I did a lot of audio research, for instance I’ve found out a great recipe for an inexpensive, but very effective vinyl record cleaning fluid. Also, the turntable that I bought had an old cartridge on it so I bought a new one and replaced it (for the first time on my own). I’ve also had to re-adjust the table, so now I’m on the fresh with how it should be done (and not just recalling it how I did it several months ago back home). This is just a taste of the material that I’ll be showcasing here on the blog real soon.

So, tomorrow I’ll be leaving Warsaw for Easter and I plan to be back here on Wednesday. The thing is that I’m not going straight home to Lebork, but to Wrzesnia, a little town in central-western Poland (the so called “Greater Poland” region), because I’ll be spending the holiday at my grandparents’ place this year. That’s why don’t expect any input from me till next week.

In other news, it would sure be great to own a digital camera… I’ve skimmed through all the posts that I wrote here and they surely look bleak without photos… (well one of the Vinyl Collecting 101 posts has some, but they didn’t come from me). I don’t want anything fancy, just something with which I could do some snapshots of my HiFi gear, records and anything which I’d deem useful to show you guys. Problem is that I don’t know much about digital cameras, so I’m open for tips and recommendations regarding this matter.

Well, I still have some packing to do, my train leaves at 10 a.m. so I can’t stay up late either. Happy Easter to all of you!

PS: The title for today’s post comes from a Steppenwolf song :)

Every turntable consists of a base, a motor, a platter with a spindle, signal cables, a tonearm and a cartridge with a needle. They can also be full of additional useful mechanisms and control functions. There are also different methods of operating a turntable. The components of a turntable also require maintenance and sometimes even replacement. The goal behind this guide series is to showcase and explain all the different aspects of owning, using and keeping our turntable (and at the same time our vinyl records) in best shape.

In this part I’ll focus on explaining all the different types of turntables and turntable drives…

1. Basic types of turntables

The type of the turntable is determined by the way in which it can be operated by the user.

a) Manual

In a manual turntable, all functions must be done manually by the user. In most cases, you will find only the most important switches on your manual turntable, that is the cue button/lever (you use it to put the arm/cartridge over or onto the record or the so called “armrest”) and the playing speed control. Most manual turntables operate as follows:

In order to start playing a record, you have to put the tonearm in cue, manually move the tonearm so that the needle is above the desired point on the record from which you’d like to start playing it and then lowering it onto the record by disengaging the cue. The turntable’s motor should engage in the moment the arm’s over the turntable platter.

If you wish to stop playing, you have to put the arm in cue again and move it back to the armrest and then disengage the cue. The motor will disengage the moment the arm leaves the space over the platter.

Also, when the record side that you’re playing comes to an end, you’ll have to manually stop it as described above. If not then the motor will keep running and the needle will stay on the record’s inner empty grooves.

Some older manual turntables also have start/stop buttons which are used to start or stop the turntable motor. Such turntables won’t automatically engage or disengage the motor depending on the arm’s position.

Most modern and expensive “audiophile” turntables are manual ones.

b) Semi-automatic

Semi-automatic turntables operate similarly to the manual ones, except for one difference. Such turntables have a built-in automatic mechanism that enables them to do one of the following tasks when the played record side comes to an end:

- disengage the motor,
- put the arm in cue over the end of the record, then disengage the motor,
- put the arm in cue, move it automatically back to the arm rest, disengage the cue and then disengage the motor.

You can find the first two automatic shutdown function variants mostly in older (60’s and prior) semi-automatic turntables. Most of the newer ones employ the last, full-cycle shutdown function, also known as the auto-return.

Some semi-automatic also have a stop button, which enables us to engage the auto-return function at any time while the record’s playing.

Most turntables that you may find will be semi-automatic.

c) Automatic

Automatic turntables work like semi-automatic ones with the auto-return function, but they can also automatically start playing the record.

On such turntables there’s always a start and stop button. The stop button works like the one we may find on a semi-automatic turntable. The start button on the other hand engages the automatic start mechanism, which works in such a way that it starts the motor, puts the tonearm in cue, moves it automatically over the beginning of the record and then disengages the cue, after which the record starts playing.

Early automatic turntables had the auto-start mechanism coupled with the playing speed control. It was done so, because back then 12” LPs were played only with the 33 rpm speed setting, while 7” singles had to be played under 45 rpm. Because the playing speed was directly in relation with the record’s size, the auto-start mechanism was set so that, depending on the set playing speed, it would move the tonearm onto the appropriate beginning of a single or LP.

Later, record companies began to publish so called “Maxi singles” (which had the size of an LP, but played under the 45 rpm speed), EPs (10” records) and 7” singles that played under 33 rpm.

It became obvious to turntable companies that coupling the auto-start mechanism with the speed control wouldn’t make much sense from now on, so they started to put record size controls next to the speed controls, with which you could set the size of the played record, so that the auto-start mechanism would know where the actual beginning of the record is.

On most automatic turntables, the start button can be also used to automatically stop playing and start playing the record side from the beginning.

Automatic turntables can also have an auto-repeat function. It works in such a way that after the auto-return mechanism kicks in, the auto-start function starts, so the record side can be played continuously. In such a case, even pushing the stop button or even trying to manually stop the record won’t help. You need to turn the repeat function off in order to shutdown the turntable. Some turntable brands like Technics have used more sophisticated auto-repeat mechanisms in some of their automatic turntables, in which you could define the number of repetitions (in most cases up to 5 or 6) or set it to a continuous playing loop.

2. Other turntable types

There are also several other, more exotic types of turntables. Those worth mentioning are:

a) Tangential/Linear turntables

Such turntables are automatic and in most cases controlled by a microprocessor. The tonearm in such a turntable is not placed under an angle like in regular turntables. It’s a straight arm with a moving base located in the rear of the turntable, which has it’s own separate motor. It works in such a way that the tonearm and it’s base moves across the record in a linear fashion, just like the record’s master disc has been cut in the manufacturing plant (some people say that they sound better just because of that).

Tangential turntables operate just like automatic turntables, except that you can’t manually move the tonearm. It is done by special buttons which control the position of the tonearm (you use them to move the arm left or right over the record).

b) Programmable turntables

These are very rare and expensive 80’s machines. They employed a special tonearm and cartridge which had a small laser on it. The laser was used by the turntable to see how many tracks are on the record’s side and where are the track gaps located.

Thanks to that, one could use such a turntable like a CD player, by selecting the track from which it should start playing or even program the order of tracks in which the record should be played.

c) Record changers

Those were turntables which worked similarly to a jukebox. They were special automatic units which had a special long spindle on which you could stack up to 4, 5 or 6 records. The turntable would then play them one at a time (only the sides that were pointed upwards, of course) and shut itself down.

Most record changers could also be used like normal, single-record turntables.

3. Turntable drive systems

There are 3 common types of turntable drive. All of them use some kind of speed regulating mechanism (in order to keep the playing speed as constant as possible) about which I’ll write in one of the next parts of this guide series.

a) Belt-Drive

The most basic turntable drive. It uses a low-speed motor with a pulley on it. A rubber belt goes around the motor pulley and the outer or inner rim of the lower portion of the platter. Thanks to that the motor’s torque is transferred to the platter.

The advantage of such a drive is that it’s quiet and the motor doesn’t have any acoustic impact on the turntable’s audio output signal.

The weakness main is that the rubber belt deteriorates over time or from heavy-duty use and needs to be replaced.

Most modern “audiophile” turntables are belt-driven.

b) Idler wheel-drive

This turntable drive system can be usually found in record changers. It uses a high-speed motor with a stepped pulley on it. A so called idler wheel moves on the inner rim of the platter and the motor pulley, thus putting the platter into motion.

c) Direct-drive

The most sophisticated type of drive, invented by Technics. It uses an electronically controlled motor, which sits directly under the platter and moves the spindle on which the platter resides.

The main advantage of such a drive system is that it rarely needs any maintenance and the doesn’t have any parts which you’d need to eventually replace over time. It also guarantees precise and stable platter rotation.

The biggest disadvantage of a using such a drive is that if poorly engineered, the motor can become a source of acoustic feedback on the turntable’s audio output signal.

In the 80’s, the market became flooded with cheap Japanese direct-drive models, which used poor components and were of poor design. Because of that, most people (even today) tagged the direct-drives as being always of lower quality than belt and idle wheel drives. That’s not entirely true, because a properly designed quality direct-drive (for example a Dual 701/721 or a top-of-the-line Technics, like the famed 1200/1210 series) can surpass in quality most other turntables.

Every DJ turntable uses a direct-drive.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for the next installment of the “Turntable 101″ post series. I also plan to make a “Glossary” page in which you will find definitions of the most common technical terms used while talking about audio components.

I promised that I’ll write a few words about my new speakers so here it goes:

The JBL L-100T’s hooked up with the Sansui 9090DB sound great, especially if you’re into rock and other genres that feed on raw power and dynamics. But that doesn’t mean that they’re your straight and simple, off the block “ALL-BASS/NO-CLASS” heavy loudspeakers that techno music enthusiasts praise so much these days. The high and midrange are also top-notch, especially the titanium tweeter (that’s what the T stands for in the name). They also seem to have a lot of detail in them. I say that they “seem” to have it, because as for the sound resolution and detail, I can only estimate as of now, because my only source of sound is my computer’s soundcard (an old SoundBlaster Live! Platinum), connected with a not-so-expensive 10 meter long cable… and this really can’t qualify as a quality music source, at least not in my opinion. So I decided that until I get my hands on a decent CD player or turntable hooked up with the system, I’ll leave my review as it is now and come back to it later. I simply feel that my speaker-receiver combo gives as much as it can, but it still can’t spread out it’s wings, because of the source.

On a side note: Actually, some people (especially Hi-Fi newcomers) make the mistake of putting most of their money in the amplifier and speaker sections of their system and leave the rest of the money pile for the source-devices. It kinda should be the other way around, because even the greatest loudspeakers and amps will sound like crap if they’re fed with sound coming from a crappy source. So my word of advice is: the source device should be at least on par with the other components of your Hi-Fi system, quality wise.

Another advice: If you plan to use your SoundBlaster Live! or Audigy series soundcard as a music source and connect it to your amplifier, use the rear-speaker channel output, because it’s of higher quality than the front-speaker one. I know it sounds weird, but the signal really has much less noise in it. If I remember right, it all goes down to the cards having a separate DAC for the front and rear speaker outputs, and Creative (the makers of the SB cards) paired a higher quality one with the rear output. If you don’t believe me, try for yourself. The difference is quite perceivable and you don’t need any high class equipment to hear it.

As for the other part of this post’s title, I’ve got a slight spending dilemma on my hands. I can’t decide on what should I save up money for now. I’ve got 2 ideas: a CD player or photo camera. The CD player would go as the new main source of music in my system, as mentioned above. The photo camera would mostly be for the benefit of the blog, because I (and probably you too) seriously think that my website is really in need of some photos, especially my guide posts. I’ve often written that this lack of “visual attachments” really starts to limit me and the post content’s quality in general.

Luckily, one of my roommates also had a similar problem. He started thinking about either investing in a camera or in new speakers for his computer. You could say that I slightly “poked him” in the right direction, by saying that now he already has a pair of speakers, but he doesn’t have anything to take photos with, so he decided for the camera. He spent a few days on the net and reading photography magazines, while being on the hunt for a good camera that would be available within his budget. He settled on a Samsung (I don’t know the model) and ordered it from the net (ironically enough, the seller is located in my home town). My plan is that when he gets it, I’ll try it out and then if I’ll like it, I’ll buy the same model. I really don’t want to start learning loads of stuff about photography as I’ve learned about audio stuff through trial and error and internet researching methods. I simply want something not too costly ($200 max.) that will make good photos which I can share with other people (like you for example, my faithful readers).

That’s all for now. From the blog’s stats I see that there are more and more readers subscribing to the blog’s RSS feed, which is a good thing, as now I know that there are some folks out there who probably think that my site has some potential and is worthy of coming back to, which really is a high praise for me personally. As for the blog’s top content, my vinyl collecting guides take the top 4 places with almost no competition, so I guess that I’ll finally have to start thinking about a new guide series… Goodnight y’all .

This week I finally got a pair of loudspeakers for my receiver. I’ve also done some cable huntin’ in Warsaw. Thought it would be easy in such a big city. I never thought that I’d start to despise the city street planning afterwards…

Let’s start with the speakers. In my previous post, I mentioned that I bought them on an internet auction just after Christmas. Well, the seller told me last Tuesday that he’d send them on the next day with UPS. I thought that it was fairly possible that the package would be delivered before Sunday, but in order to know that for sure, I’d need the tracking number of the package (or to be precise: packages, cause the speakers are quite big and they wouldn’t fit in one single package). One quick e-mail to the seller and I have the number.

On Friday, I went to UPS’s homepage for operations in Poland, typed-in the number and the reaction here should be like: “Voila!”, but instead was more like “Umm …. m’kay … Who? What? Where?”. I never thought that such an esteemed courier and mail company such as UPS would have such a shitty tracking interface for their customers and I don’t mean the layout of the page. After typing in the tracking number I was presented with a small table which included these columns: date and time of given event, place, description of event. What about the content of this table ? I could only gather that my package was picked-up on Thursday, sent to some place vaguely coded “STA” (I know the seller lives near Szczecin, a city in the far north-western side of Poland and by looking at a map I couldn’t think of any place near there which could have a shortcut of “STA”). Then, after a few hours, my package was still in “STA”, but now the decription said that it was: “Loaded on LH “. Question is: what’s LH ? At this point I really didn’t know what was going on and started looking for help on the website. I mean, they should at least have some legend for their tracking system or something, right? Well, after looking through every FAQ and page marked with “help” or “support” or “customer”, it seems that they don’t. How the hell should an online tracking system be useful to a customer if you’d have to be at least a UPS employee to understand it? I really can’t comprehend the logic behind this feature. Anyway, on Saturday I checked again and there was a new event. This time, the loudspeakers arrived late at night in “WAW” (this time I guessed right that WAW stands for Warsaw, as the Polish name of the city is: Warszawa and people often tend to say “Wawa” as a popular shortcut from the full version) and were being “Loaded on HUB 05″. Again, I don’t know that exactly does “HUB 05″ mean, but at least I’m fairly confident that they arrived in my city. Then I started wondering when will the packages reach their final destination (i.e. my address). I decided to call the UPS hotline and after 4 tries (I only have a cellphone and it seems that the operator rejected the hotline number at first. Weird.), a woman with a nice voice answered. She told me that the delivery will be made on Tuesday. OK, no prob, seems only fare that the delivery guys have a day off on Monday, it being the 1st of January and all.

On Monday, it came to me that even if the speakers will arrive tomorrow, I don’t have any cables with which to connect them to the receiver! I’d also be needing some kind of music source and as my computer’s the only one here at Warsaw (for now), I’d also be needing an IC (InterConnect) cable to connect it too. I’m not from Warsaw, but I was aware that there are some audio-video stores around here, so I started googling for some which also provide a variety of cables. I’ve found one such store which was located on the same street as the subway exit, to which I commute daily in order to get to my college. I jotted down the address of the store and decided to go there on the next day, after classes.

On Tuesday, the courier called my cell while I had a break between classes. He wanted to set a time for the delivery to take place. I told him that I’ll be at home after 3 pm and he replied that if he wouldn’t make it by then, he’d arrive at about 6 pm. After classes, I made my way to the street on which the audio store was located. It was at Warynska Street 10. I see around the corner that I’m standing next to bulding no. 3 and that the next along the road is no. 4, so I go that way. By arriving at no. 9, the next structure was already under a new street name. Figuring that no. 10 would be on the other side of the street, I crossed it, but found no. 42. Went back to where I came from on this side and went further, till I found no. 11. Passing that building, I find that the next building is also under a different street name. “What gives?”, I thought to myself. Too bad that I forgot to take my trusty city map. I started asking passers-by about it, but they didn’t know also. I started to search around in-between the small alleys near no. 11, but to no avail. Fortunately, I found a kiosk and there, a young guy behind the counter told me that it was further down the road after the big street-crossing. Thanks to these directions I’ve finally managed to find the store. Went in, asked about speaker cables, bought 2.5 meters of a cable called “Monitor Atmos Air 309 Cu”. I’ve read about it in a magazine some time ago and it’s presumably a good OFC (Oxygen Free Copper) cable made by a German company called in-akustik and it also happened to be one of the cheapest in that particular shop (it has a price of about 9 bucks per meter). I’ve also asked about a 3.5” jack (also called a “small jack”; the small cable plug that you find in computer soundcards and portable music devices) to 2x RCA (also called “cinch” cables; the cable plugs that you find on audio components) IC, but unfortunately they didn’t have anything with a 3.5” jack…

Later that day, the UPS guy came (just after 3pm). He brought in 2 big packages and I was feeling like it was Christmas again. The unpacking of both packages took me almost an hour, because the loudspeakers were packed very securely (they were wrapped in 3 layers of packing foil and 2 layers of cardboard and that all was surrounded by loads of thick cotton). Thanks to that, no harm occured to them during delivery.

After unpacking (5 pm), I decided to go to the local mall in search of an IC. They didn’t have one, so I just bought some food supplies, which turned out not to be such a good idea at this particular time, because the lines to the cash registers were so long that I spent an hour standing in them. Near the exit, I’ve spotted a small electical appliances shop. They had the IC that I was looking for, but it was only 5 meters long and I needed at least 8 meters of cable in order to lay it around my room (the computer and receiver stand next to opposite walls). When I got home, I googled around once again and I’ve found a cable store in Warsaw that had such interconnects in stock.

On Wednesday, I decided to go to the shop, which I found on the net the day before. Classes end at half past 3 pm at that day, so it was already getting dark. Went to the subway, comuted to a station nearest to the shop’s street and started searching for it, this time with the city map. It was a long trek, took me over an hour to get to the street. It was pretty far of the subway line and I didn’t want to take the risk of taking a bus (I don’t trust buses very much, especially ones that drive through bus lines that I don’t know). The shop’s address was Korotynska Street 23, room 41. I found myself near building no. 16, so I continued walking along the road. I finally came to no. 22, but the next one was no. 24. “What happened to 23?”, I thought. I looked on the other side of the street, but there was a big park there. Just when I wanted to go and search in-between the apartment buildings, a man passed me. I quickly asked him if he knew where no. 23 was. He replied that it was on the other side and the other end of Korotynska Street. I thanked him for the directions, but boy was I mad. Can’t they just tag the house numbers in a more logical order here in Warsaw? Why do they make the street address numbering scheme look like a jigsaw puzzle? Anyway, after a long walk I found building 23. It was a 2 story high barrack-like steel building (looked like it was built back in the socialistic days). I asked a guy who had a TV repair shop located in the building where could I find the cable store. He directed me to a staircase around the corner. Went there and upon entrance, the janitor asked me what was I looking for. She directed me to room 41. I was very happy while finally reaching my destination and just before 5 pm (the store closes at that time). The store consisted of 3 rooms, the one with the exit door being the main sales room with some packed cables hanging around the walls, a neat-dressed guy behind a desk and a computer and some filing cabinets behind him. The 2 other rooms were on the left and right of the main room and there were tons of cardboard boxes in them, presumably packed with audio-video cables. They had the cable I was looking for (10 meters long), but it cost $15 and I didn’t have such an amount of cash by me. Unfortunately, they didn’t take cards, so I asked where’s the nearest ATM. They pointed me to a gas station, near a street crossing halfway of Korotynska Street. Luckily, they also said that they’d be working over-time that day, so the store will be open for another hour. I went back to the crossing, found the gas station, but no ATM was there. I noticed there was a bank on the other side of the road. That was probably what the cable salesman ment. I found that there were 3 banks against each other, taking up the ground floor of a building and one of them was the bank in which I had my personal account. Turned out that the ATM there was broken, so I went to one of the other banks to use one of their ATMs. Took out $20, payed about $2 commision in the process for withdrawing money from a competitor’s machine and off I went back to the shop. Went in, payed the man and off I went. Mission completed! It was already 6 pm and I was really exhausted from all that walking around, so I decided to take a bus the the subway station. I arrived at my district at 7 pm, was extremely hungry, because last time I ate was over 10 hours before so instead of going home and making some dinner-supper combination, I went to a local pizza parlor. When I got home, I unpacked the newly acquired cable, layed it around the room and connected to the receiver. Next, I took my swiss army knife, cut the speaker cable in half and cut off the cable isolation on both ends. While hooking up the first speaker, 2 things occured. One was that the cable was a bit too short. The other was that it was too thick and I couldn’t fit it in the receiver’s speaker cable terminals. Tough luck. It became even tougher later, because I suffered from a terrible and sudden tooth-acke during the night.

Thursday, “another day, another cable”, I said to myself. Thanks to the tooth-acke, I fell asleep at 6 am, only to wake up at 10 to get to classes. Went back to the audio store on Warynska St. after classes. Bought 4 meters of the slightly cheaper Monitor Atmos Air 195 Cu cable (it’s got a smaller diameter). Comuted back home, ate some dumplings for dinner (Polish “pierogi” are the best), went to the dentist, came back at 6 pm and fell quickly asleep.

Friday, woke up at 8 am, made my bed and immediatelly started to get it on with the speaker cable. Again, cut the cable in half and cut of the isolation on the ends. I’ve cut my fingers 3 times in the process, but this finally worked and I got my speakers hooked-up. YAY!

I didn’t have enough time to thoroughly listen to my new speaker-receiver combination, so I still can’t tell you my first impressions in detail… One thing for sure is that now the gates to buying a turntable and CD player are open, so I may start collecting CDs and vinyl records again here in Warsaw!

Phew, this turned out to be a big post. At least now you know how demanding and tiresome this hobby can be. I never thought that I’d have such a hard time with such a trivial thing as cables here in the capitol of Poland … or maybe it’s just that I’m new here. Wonder if anybody will even read this post to the end…

Christmas was nice, seeing my parents and most of the family and all. Everybody enjoyed their presents (including me of course) and we had a very good time together. I also met up with my friend Daniel (I’ve mentioned him in my previous post).

One could say that throughout my presence in Lebork, I’ve had my hands full. I won’t get into details, cause it was mostly family related. I haven’t even touched my turntable! I also promised myself before to take some photos that would be a good addition for my previous posts, but nope, didn’t have the time to do that either…

I can already say that the year 2007 will bring me some good sound, because one thing that turned up while I was back at my home is that I found a pair of good loudspeakers (JBL L-100T) on an internet auction and won them for a good price. I’ve bought a receiver in October, a Sansui 9090DB, and since that time I was mainly using it as an amplifier for my headphones (Sennheiser HD-280 Pro) while getting most of my music from my computer’s soundcard. I haven’t searched for a CD player or a turntable, because I decided that having some speakers was the first priority before anything else and now the time has finally come. They will most probably be delivered to me tomorrow. I’m pretty happy about the fact, because I’ve been hunting for some good and renowned speakers for quite some time now (over a year at least). I’ll let you know more about my first impressions when they get here and when I’ll have a chance to hook them up to the receiver (gotta go and buy some speaker cables too).

As for the blog, I’ve slightly updated the “Vinyl records: Collecting 101 – part 2″ post with some info about vinyl records having drillholes and cut-corners (I’d forgotten about it while I was writing it). More details about that in said post.

I’d also like to say a few things to those people who have posted links directing to my blog on some websites. I appreciate it very much, but I really don’t like it when somebody describes my site as a “vinyl blog”. OK, I know that I’ve written a big deal of information about vinyl records, but I really have no intention of writing ONLY or even OFTEN about vinyl. The blog’s title is “Young HiFi” and not “Young Vinyl”. I have posts about turntables, laserdiscs, the computer demoscene, quadrophonics and other stuff all written up already in my notepad, just waiting to be expanded and published here online. To put things in a nutshell, I really appreciate it that people put links to my blog in the world wide web, but please read the “About” page prior of doing so and if you really find it satisfactionary to just tell of my recent vinyl articles than just point the link at the first part of the Vinyl Records: Collecting 101 series. Why? Because if I won’t be writing anything about vinyl for the next couple of months, then how good is a description of my blog , saying that it’s all and only about vinyl, when it’s not true?

That’s all for today (or rather “for tonight”). Time to get some well earned sleep…

The last thing I’d like to talk about is the “hardcore” aspect of vinyl collecting, namely finding vinyl oddities/very rare albums and releases which never made it to the digital-era music market…

What kind of rarities are we talking about ? Here are some examples that I’m aware of:

a) Album releases with different covers

Example: the original LP of the “In Through The Out Door” album by Led Zeppelin is said to have been released with 9 different cover designs. One of them is a photo of a guy in a dressed in white sitting in a bar (that’s the design that appears on most today’s CD releases of this album). There’s also a cover design showing also the guy in the bar, but it’s shown from a different perspective, having the guy in the white suit in front of you. I’ve also seen a design that looks like the album’s wrapped up in cheap and plain packing paper with the album title printed on it like it’s been stamped (I’ve also seen this cover design on the recent “mini vinyl” CD releases).

There’s also a story about a Jimi Hendrix Experience album, namely “Electric Ladyland”. It’s said that it had 2 cover designs and that the first edition of the LP cover featured Jimi with a lot of naked women. Shortly after, this design has been misteriously replaced by a “less intimidating” one (it’s totally different than the original, it shows Jimi’s head during a live performance). Also, not every country accepted the first design, so their first edition had the second design.

b) Album releases with errors made by the printing company/record manufacturer

Some collectors have managed to find some LP’s with “glitches”. For example: side B being the same as side A, less tracks on the record than stated on the album cover/label and vice versa, etc.

There’s also the story of the Rolling Stones album “Aftermath”. When it was released under the Decca music label, there was a printing glitch. One of the most famous songs which came from that album, “Paint It Black” was written “Paint It, Black” on the cover (not in the track listing on the back, but on the front side, under the album title there’s written in a smaller font: “Including Paint It, Black”) and on the record’s label. Later in an interview when asked about this small colon issue, band-member Keith Richards said “That’s not ours. Ask Decca about it. It’s their fault.”

c) Promodiscs and bootlegs

Promodiscs are vinyl records issued especially for record shops and music reporters in order to showcase the album. They are always marked that they’re for promotional causes only and that they’re not for sale, but sometimes you can find such records on sale today.

Bootlegs are illegal pressings. These are either pirated copies of original albums or material unreleased by the music artist’s label. One of the most common practice with bootleg releases was to smuggle a tape recorder to a band’s concert, record the music from the audience and then release it to the market, mostly in small quantities.

There’s also a lot of music that has never been (and maybe never will be) released on a digital medium, especially in jazz and classical music.

These aren’t the only examples of vinyl rarities. I’ve got 2 albums in my personal collection which are pretty rare. Let me tell you about them and why are they so significant:

1. Black Sabbath – “Black Sabbath” (NEMS edition)

This is a 1976 re-edition of the first Black Sabbath album by the NEMS music label. The original one was released in 1970 by Warner Brothers. Here’s the review of this particular edition taken from allmusic.com:

“British record label NEMS, which contributed both the Live at Last and Greatest Hits albums to Black Sabbath’s catalog, also issued their own versions of some of the band’s classic Warner Bros. releases in the late ’70s. Aside from the recurring misspelling of Ozzy Osbourne’s name (”Ossie”) in the liner notes of the NEMS releases, there are some interesting differences between the Warner Bros. versions and the re-releases. Most significantly different is the first album, Black Sabbath, which, in NEMS’ pressing, bears a completely different track listing than the better-known version, and the song “Wicked World” is replaced by a Crow cover called “Evil Woman.” Diehards should watch the used vinyl bins for this oddity.”

I managed to snatch this album from an internet auction for less than $5 ! I was so surprised that I even wrote to the seller about it and he replied that he’s happy that the record goes to good hands. The vinyl hunters probably didn’t know of the significance of this record or thought that it was another re-re-release of insignificant value.

2. Deep Purple – “Shades of Deep Purple” (Tetragrammaton edition)

Many people think that DP started off with EMI. Problem is that they didn’t. Their first album, titled “Shades of Deep Purple”, has been recorded and released by a small American record label Tetragrammaton. The debut was a success and pretty soon EMI came a’ knockin’ to Deep Purple with a contract offer. The band took the deal and EMI bought the rights to the first album. Funny thing is though, that until the 2000 CD remaster release, every release of “Shades of Deep Purple” under EMI was made not from the original master tapes, but from a dubbed vinyl disc ! Apparently, Tetragrammaton has kept the original studio tapes until just recently. Thanks to that, one can say that the original first edition LP is the best sounding one.

Anyway, apart from the story above, it is the very first edition of the LP, so it’s pretty rare nowadays.

That’s all on this subject for now, I guess. Final advice: always try and look for some information on a particular release before discarding it, even when it doesn’t look too promising. Many collectors found real vinyl treasures by sticking to this method.

As this is the end of the post series, I’d like to apologize to you that I haven’t showed you many images or any images of my personal stuff in fact. That’s because I have very limited photo capabilities here, because right now I’m here in Warsaw and my whole record collection is at my home in Lebork and I don’t own a photo camera.

I plan to update my posts with photos when I get ahold of a camera and when I’ll be at home and have enough spare time.

Also, I know that I don’t have many links in my posts to topic-related sites. That’s because I know that not every reader comes from the United States or from the UK or some other country and as for that I advise you to google around yourselves for some local record collecting communities or forums.

Today we’ll concentrate on taking care of our record collection…

1. Storing vinyl records

ALWAYS keep your vinyl records in a vertical standing position.
NEVER stack them on top of each other!

Horizontal stacking can do serious damage to the vinyl discs, mainly because of the weight pressure that the records on top impose on the rest of the stack. It could also damage the album covers.

The proper way is to keep them on a shelf, a rack or something like that. LPs have a fixed size, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Some people put their collection on whole shelves (like 100+ records per shelf) and some divide their shelves into small “boxes” in order to further reduce the pressure that the records induce on themselves.

Another issue is keeping your records in a proper environment. The basement is a big no-no in most cases, because of the level of moisture found there (if you’re one of those people who adapt their basements as living rooms then it should be OK). It’s best to keep the records in a place where you have approx. normal room temperature and humidity levels and if you need to store them not in your living space, try the attic. It’s always better than a typical basement where the conditions are simply too damp, but if your attic accumulates a lot of heat, i.e. during summer then it also won’t be a good storage place. As for temperature issues in general, avoid having your collection exposed to direct sunlight, because you can easily warp your record thanks to that. You should also try to make sure that your records aren’t exposed to cigarette smoke, as the nicotine in it can also partly damage vinyl surfaces. So, to sum up vinyl records storage: heat and dampness are vinyl’s greatest environmental enemies. Keep that in mind.

2. Record preservation

I’ll need to divide this part into 2 subparts, as it’s crucial to keep things proper on both ends of this topic.

The general rule of thumb for records is: ALWAYS handle your records by using the edge and label (center) areas. Avoid touching the grooves with your fingers.

a) Record cleaning

In order to keep your records collection in tip-top shape, you need to keep them clean. Dust, soil, so called “finger oils”, etc. are the worst enemies of your records.

There are 2 ways of cleaning a record: the dry and wet method.

The dry method’s all about brushing off the dust and small particles off your records. In order to do that, I advise you to get a special record brush made of carbon-fiber, velvet pad (some turntable companies like Reloop also manufacture those) or a record cleaning cloth which in most cases is simply a microfiber cloth (you can find those even under kitchen cleaning appliances).

As for the brushes, I personally prefer the velvet pad type, because after a year or so of use, the carbon-fibers tend to fall off the brush (sometimes even onto your records and then they’re hard to get out as they’re “micro thin”) and tend to get all mangled up. Velvet pads are easier to clean too.

How to use your record cleaning brush or cloth ?

Most people do it like this:

1. Put the record on the turntable and let it spin (play it without putting the needle on the record). You can also manually rotate the turntable’s platter in most cases (some turntables prevent you from doing that or get their auto-return/auto-start mechanisms locked-up for example).

2. Gently press the brush or cloth into the record’s groove.

3. After a few rotations, sweep the brush away and scrape the collected dust from the brush (use a credit-card, a brush-holder or something similar).

4. Repeat the process until you can’t see any remaining dust on the record’s side, then flip the record and do the same with the second side.

And that’s it. Bear in mind though to always do this in a well lit place, because it’s pretty hard to spot dust in the dark.

Some people also dry-clean their records not on their turntables, but on some solid and soft surfaces, like a clean, lint-free cloth or a sheet of plastic, but I personally recommend the turntable method for most cases.

Now let’s talk about the wet method. It’s called “wet”, because it means to employ some kind of fluid in order to wash your records (Yes, you CAN wash records).

There are a lot of ways for wet-cleaning your records. There are companies who market “special record cleaning fluids” and there are also known ways to make your own “special fluid” at home.

It’s your call if you’ll buy fluids or make them, but if you intend to buy, I need to advise you that those flasks in most cases aren’t cheap (I for example would never pay $10 for a small 4 oz. flask, but there are also better deals out there so keep a look-out for those too).

As for making your own record cleaning fluid, distilled water is your best bet. Some collectors say that a 70% isoprophyl alcohol solution also gives good results, but there’s also a camp of enthusiasts that say never to use an alcohol based fluid on your records. Some also mix those fluids in order to have a better, “special mixture”, for example mixing some dish washing fluid with distilled water is said to do wonders for vinyl records.

I can’t personally recommend any method, because I haven’t done any extensive wet-cleaning myself yet (only tried some of the mentioned methods on a few records), so I still don’t have any “personal best” solution for the wet method.

OK, now that you have a fluid, how to wash your records ?

Some people dip their velvet pad record brushes in the record cleaning fluid and then use the spinning-on-turntable method.

Some people take a cloth (can be microfiber or simply 100% cotton, like a white cotton T-shirt), put a some fluid on the cloth and wash the record’s grooves in a spiral form from the center to the rim.

Do not soak the record with your fluid. Just get it “wet enough” to get the dirt off.

It’s also essential to take your time with wet-cleaning and taking EXTREME caution for not getting any fluid on the record’s label, because the paper might peel off or get stained.

After the wet cleaning is done, leave the record in a plate rack or something in order for it to dry off (NEVER play a wet record! It could get disastrous for both your record AND turntable).

b) Stylus cleaning

You also need to take care of your turntable’s record stylus (it’s the small needle that extends under the cartridge that’s mounted to the turntable’s arm).

If you have access to it, you should follow the directions in your phono cartridge’s manual. If not then here’s some general steps:

Dry-clean it with a special stylus brush or any other clean, stiff, short-pile brush (be very cautious while doing this) in a rear-to-front type of manner (brush the stylus towards you).

In order to wet-clean your stylus, use a special stylus cleaning fluid with a stylus brush or use a cotton swab dipped in a 70% isoprophyl alcohol solution.

Don’t try and make your own stylus cleaning solution, because in most cases you’ll end up leaving some solution residue on the stylus.

I recommend that you wet-clean your stylus and records occasionally, but dry-clean them EVERY TIME you play a record in order to ensure long-lasting life for both your records and your stylus. Depending on the amount of time you spend on listening to records, you should also replace your stylus with a new one from time to time, as when it’s in a “worn out” state, besides putting more wear on your records, the playback sound quality also suffers.

Companies who market the special fluids and brushes also sell them as so called kits or packages, which in most cases can be lighter on the wallet then buying all the “special” components separately.

There are also special record cleaning machines which wet-clean the records for you and dry them off by using a small vacuum. They’re very expensive so I only can recommend them to people who have the cash for it. I prefer sticking to the manual methods.

3. Record covers and sleeves

In order to preserve album covers, it’s best to put them in a plastic sleeve (it’s the same idea as book collectors put sleeves on the books in order to keep the book’s cover in shape). As for the inner sleeves in which the record resides, it’s best to keep the original sleeve, but put the record in a separate plastic cover and put that in an acid-free paper record sleeve.

You can either buy such plastic and paper sleeves or make them on your own by buying whole sheets of those materials (you can buy the thick plastic in a garden shop for example).

4. Turntable related stuff

The biggest downside of vinyl is that it’s all about physical contact as the stylus rides on the grooves. Thanks to that, wear and tear from simply playing is inevitable, so in order to extend the life of your records, you need to minimize the factors that cause this. The first one is to keep your records clean. The second is to keep your turntable in proper shape.

It all goes down to proper alignment of your turntable, which amounts to: proper speed accuracy, tonearm/cartridge balance and alignment, the state of your stylus, etc.

I won’t cover these topics right now. Instead, I’ll do it in a future post series regarding turntables, so please stay tuned for that.

That’s all for today. I think that the next part will be the last one of this post series. I still haven’t decided what will be after the record collecting post series, because I’m not so sure if I’ll be able to start the turntable series right now (it’s a much more extensive topic).

PS: I’d really love to hear some comments from you guys. It boggles my mind that an average of 30 people visit my blog daily and I’ve yet to see a comment on my posts. Such reader-author interaction would be very encouraging for me and perhaps also for other readers…

UPDATE:
The 4th and last part of the series is complete. Click here to go to it.

It’s an article from the Austin American-Statesman newspaper, titled “Everything Louder Than Everything Else”. Here’s a short review:

It’s author, Joe Gross, makes a very elaborate study on modern record loudness levels and tries to answer the question as to how and why does today’s popular music can be exhausting to us, the listeners.

Joe touches the subject on both sides: from the music enthusiast’s and from the sound engineer’s (a.k.a. “the expert’s”) point of view.

Read on for some interesting excerpts from the mentioned article…

“(…) there are millions of copies of CDs being released that are physically exhausting listeners, most of whom probably don’t know why their ears and brains are feeling worn out.”

“For the past 10 or so years, artists and record companies have been increasing the overall loudness of pop and rock albums, using ever increasing degrees of compression during mastering, altering the properties of the music being recorded. Quiet sounds and loud sounds are now squashed together, decreasing the recording’s dynamic range, raising the average loudness as much as possible.”

“The idea is that louder recordings automatically sound better on low-quality reproduction systems, but this isn’t really true in practice. MP3 players such as iPods have their own compressors and limiters, further reducing the dynamic range of recordings, as do computers. A CD doesn’t have to be mastered loud; the iPod can make it as loud as everything else it plays.”

“(…) It is entirely possible that anyone younger than 18 reading this has no idea what we’re talking about. They may not bother to buy CDs anymore, such is the availability of MP3s single downloads. To them, popular music has always been hyper-compressed, square-wave stuff, able to punch through background noise with a single snare drum hit, clipping all over the place.

The article’s very long, but very well written and although it mentions things like: dynamics compression, sound clipping and RMS, you don’t need to be very familiar to all the technical knowledge beforehand, because the author explains it all rather nicely so that every reader can understand.

So, after saying that, click here to go and read the whole article.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

The people who tried to experiment a little with the console say that the CD transports may not be worth much, but it turns out that Sony put a pretty high-class DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) in the launch-edition (the very first model) of the old Playstation…

Some people also say that if you properly modify the console, it can beat some of the very high-end cd players. I know it’s pretty hard to believe for most audio maniacs, but check out Mick Feuerbacher’s website for articles, in which he describes the most imporant repairs and modifications in order to take the old Playstation to the next level and use all of it’s hidden HiFi potential.

Also, check out Michael Methel’s website (the text’s in German, but he put up a lot of pictures). Michael, a DIY audiophile from Germany, did probably one of the most extreme modifications of the old Playstation console. To name a few:
he made a very professional looking body, took out all the unnecessary parts (he only left those which are needed for audio playback capability), turned the console’s power supply unit into an external one and he even replaced the Sony’s output stage with tubes !

After reading through those websites and the original forum thread that hooked me up with the topic over at Steve Hoffman’s Music Forums, I’m starting to believe that it’s not a joke and right now I’m also really tempted to fetch an old Playstation and see if it really is true. It can’t hurt, because they’re pretty cheap nowadays and you only need the unit and one controller in order to use the console’s CD player functions. It’s an even more tempting proposition for all those who are into DIY.

On a sidenote: I’m also considering learning something about electronics. DIY skills really are useful, especially in the audio hobbyist’s world.

What does it mean ? It’s very simple actually. Just think logically: how can a small iPod surpass or even be equal in sound reproduction quality to, let’s say a home theater system ? The stratling thing is, most youngsters think that portable equipment really sounds THE SAME or if not then it can’t be such a big diff…

In my opinion, such a way of thinking about audio doesn’t even need a commentary, so let’s leave it at that (I wouldn’t want to make new enemies ;)).

Anyway, check the scoop out for yourself by reading this news article:
“Thousands of songs in your pocket: An audiophile’s nightmare?”

Also, the CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) just recently started a campaign called “The Great Audio Experience“. It’s main goal is to popularize great sounding audio devices and it’s especially dedicated to the younger generation. It even got support from the band 3 Doors Down. You can check it out at the GAE’s official website.