I've long wanted to get into vinyl. But it's pretty expensive now. Even CDs are getting up in price. My local used music shops are selling CDs for $8-10 each. More for multiple disc sets. Sure you can still get decent deals on places like FB Marketplace from people selling their CD collection in bulk. But if you have to buy the lot you end up with CDs you don't really want. But vinyl has always intrigued me as music medium.
I've long wanted to get into vinyl. But it's pretty expensive now. Even CDs are getting up in price. My local used music shops are selling CDs for $8-10 each. More for multiple disc sets. Sure you can still get decent deals on places like FB Marketplace from people selling their CD collection in bulk. But if you have to buy the lot you end up with CDs you don't really want. But vinyl has always intrigued me as music medium.
I was a confirmed analog guy from 1970-2015. At one point with over 12k vinyls and a very top end playback.
I hated Telarc and DMM vinyl, early CD's and players. Got a whiff of interest in SACD. For the family and ease of use did the foobar, and roon thing.
Later high end players from ARC and Krell caught my attention, but not my $. By then the recording side started turning out gems like Doug Sax mastered Krall. Then in 2015 started looking at digital as downsizing loomed. Finally found a sanely priced DAC with a musical sound. Did a 1000 cut comparison against the Koetsu Rosewood Sig et. al. 998-2 for the Gumby 1 (don't ask what the cuts were, forgot). So long vinyl.
I won't listen to vinyl when I visit anymore. Pivot arms not adjusted for tracking and VTA, no VPI record cleaner? No zerostat and carbon fiber brush? Meh step ups? Inner groove distortion and destruction? No thanks.
Brutal to sit there with a great recording like Arturo Delmoni and say - I can't play it because it'll lose value from $275. And snapping a cantilever on a $5.5k cartridge shortens one's life. Don't miss any of it, and even in the bad old days digital bass always torched vinyl. Yes even a SME 5 with a Denon 103-D.
I look at vinyl collecting as a movie experience; at least in drama and adventure. Where in the old days there was cassette and vinyl, so that’s what you used. Then more and more vinyl as my budgeting increased and old records were fetishized. That time was mid-1990. There just was a window in my life when vinyl was inescapable. The off-beat music I was studying at the time didn’t come on cassette or CD. CD didn’t hardly exist in my eyes or at least it wasn’t a complete format. I could be found carousing a jazz record shop in 1997. The owner purported that CDs didn’t hold bass notes? Yet I didn’t care as the boxes of used demo vinyl and early 1980s disco.....he almost gave to me, were totally fun! At that time a record collector could score boxes and more moving boxes of vinyl on the cheap. Yet I still couldn’t afford the stuffy jazz records he was selling to pay his rent. Even then to spend more than $20 was un-thinkable! So I had my fun. More than I could ever hope to listen to more than once. It is a journey that would lead to digital. I’m happy to report I’m lazy too, I simply don’t care about the elitist sound if in fact it is slightly better? Plus the music I listen to doesn’t come on vinyl.....so you could say I went full-circle!
I look at vinyl collecting as a movie experience; at least in drama and adventure. Where in the old days there was cassette and vinyl, so that’s what you used. Then more and more vinyl as my budgeting increased and old records were fetishized. That time was mid-1990. There just was a window in my life when vinyl was inescapable. The off-beat music I was studying at the time didn’t come on cassette or CD. CD didn’t hardly exist in my eyes or at least it wasn’t a complete format. I could be found carousing a jazz record shop in 1997. The owner purported that CDs didn’t hold bass notes? Yet I didn’t care as the boxes of used demo vinyl and early 1980s disco.....he almost gave to me, were totally fun! At that time a record collector could score boxes and more moving boxes of vinyl on the cheap. Yet I still couldn’t afford the stuffy jazz records he was selling to pay his rent. Even then to spend more than $20 was un-thinkable! So I had my fun. More than I could ever hope to listen to more than once. It is a journey that would lead to digital. I’m happy to report I’m lazy too, I simply don’t care about the elitist sound if in fact it is slightly better? Plus the music I listen to doesn’t come on vinyl.....so you could say I went full-circle!
Yes. I was buying up all the Factory and 4AD catalog and all the Miles Davis and shaded dogs I could get my hands on, and MoFi and Chesky and Euro vinyl.. all over Northampton and Somerville and yard sales, even after I got married but then baby #1 in '92...
After that bought big collections, no time to hang out anymore... Heck I used to go to 5-6 movies a month back then.but
But these days my boys both play guitar and the wife on piano and I'm giving up six strings for 4, see if I can learn a few songs for the holidays. Thanks for reminding me about the searches for music back in the day, poignant, but not in play anymore..
Haha, you got delegated to 4 string for support! That’s love, baby! The fact that my stepmom was a piano teacher meant that no-way I was ever going to obtain lessons. Instead I taught myself, yet all of my ideas were like bringing too much art-rock into the band, being met with slanted eyes of non-acceptance. No timing and no chord possibilities for anyone to relate to?
Yes. I was buying up all the Factory and 4AD catalog and all the Miles Davis and shaded dogs I could get my hands on, and MoFi and Chesky and Euro vinyl.. all over Northampton and Somerville and yard sales, even after I got married but then baby #1 in '92...
After that bought big collections, no time to hang out anymore... Heck I used to go to 5-6 movies a month back then.but
But these days my boys both play guitar and the wife on piano and I'm giving up six strings for 4, see if I can learn a few songs for the holidays. Thanks for reminding me about the searches for music back in the day, poignant, but not in play anymore..
If I was to go on a vinyl collecting, mission again, like in another lifetime, I would center on whole collections. Yet at the time of buying, I was way too myopic for such skill. Plus there was 0 internet or ways to communicate. I mean there was the internet, but not that many had whole collections for sale, that I knew of. Though I’m in awe of anyone who did get a nice collection. That may be perfect as you find the opportunity to learn from someone else who expanded on music genres further from yourself!
I was actually very mid 1990s in music taste, which meant back then we were discovering the lost outsider music from the early 1960s. Stuff that wasn’t on CD and would hardly ever make it to digital, as there were few fans. Still mainstream in a way also, groups like Martin Denny and Les Baxter. Yet most of it (the vinyls) were often tossed due to the Beatles coming and making the prior “Pop” music’s appearance square. Then there were the instrumental renditions of all the Beatle’s songs. I had maybe 75 vinyl copies of stuff that was a merger of the two styles. The Beatles for their music’s melodic/obsessive interest, the orchestra’s music for the easy chewing and digestibility!
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