All Things Vinyl

[Charger]

Replacement Life And Times Of Scrooge McDuck arrived today...and now it's mint!

Gotta give out to the record store for handling it this quickly and without any issues.

[Jack the Stripper]

The next artist turntable from Pro-Ject

Actually looks pretty cool

[Vyn]

I like that one better than the Metallica deck they had.

[Jack the Stripper]

Yeah just not sure about that on/off lever though

No kids, dogs or inebriated adults allowed around that

[Charger]

My copy of the limited edition Splatter vinyl of METAL CHURCH's new album Congregation Of Annihilation arrived today!

[Vyn]

Very nice! Speaking of vinyl:

This just hit the interwebz today, rather brief and somewhat shallow, but pretty neat to see the front page of the Wall Street Journal talking about records...

https://www.wsj.com/video/series/in-depth-features/why-the-12-billion-vinyl-industry-is-back-from-the-dead/74BC1171-E54B-4841-A6E2-371B982C45DE?mod=hp_lead_pos7

[Vyn]

An old comp from Venom -new deck setup, didn't cost me 4 million dollars, but it sounds like it did. Damn, my steady vinyl companion for the past 14 years was awesome, but I didn't know what I was missing.



And since this is venom we're talking about, and Photoshop just added a bunch of pre-set adjustments...X-RAY!!

[Charger]

That turn table looks great! May I ask what it is?

[Jack the Stripper]

Beautiful turntable Vyn, Congratulations!

That X-Ray shot is wicked!

[Vyn]

Thanks gentlemen!

That turntable is a VPI Prime Scout. They had a pretty good sale on this model and that pushed me over the edge to buy it.

Edited to add: You can't actually buy a Prime Scout - you have to order it (it is a Scout 21 with certain features from their Prime model). This one had been setup to sell from their showroom (it was in a box, not out on display) and I guess they were tired of looking at it sitting in that box so cut 25% off the price. I just happened to be looking around at the time.

It was made January 10th of this year, so it isn't like it had been there for three years, but whatever lol

[Vyn]

A couple of additional things:

The Pro-ject sounds great, and if I didn't have 14 years of listening to it I don't know that I would notice a difference between it and the VPI. But, I have, and the uni-pivot tonearm bearing on the VPI is the difference, to me. It allows the needle to follow the grooves of the record in a way that keeps the tip of the needle centered in the groove regardless of what else might be effecting it.

I have to be much more thoughtful when handling the tonearm than I did with the Pro-ject's gimbal bearing (which is what 90% of all turntables have). Let's just say this VPI is not something I'd roll out for a drunken party lol. There is literally nothing keeping the tonearm attached to the deck other than gravity as it floats on that bearing.

The other thing is the term "sounds great". Obviously a turntable doesn't sound like anything - it's just a platform for extracting the sound carved into a record. In my mind, what makes it "sound great" or not is how little or how much transient sound is added to the signal by the turntable itself. Ideally it will add zero transients. Reality dictates that there is always a stray buzz or hum somewhere - usually below the noise floor so it doesn't matter, but there it is.

[Vyn]

A couple of pseudo-industrial (pre-industrial?) tunes tonight:



Followed with:



ACK! How'd THAT get in there?!! HaxX0rz!!

[Zzzptm]

^ Looks like you really wanted to hurt yourself.

That, or you needed to cure your nostalgia for 80s pop.

[Vyn]

My dad bought that Culture Club record for my birthday one year as a joke - he knew/knows that pop music isn't my thing. Especially back in the day when my musical palette was considerably less sophisticated

Turns out, whether one enjoys the music on that disk or not, it is supremely produced. Very dynamic with a broad range of instruments. In short: it is one of the records that get played first whenever I'm switching out gear, whether that gear is a cable or an entirely new turntable.

Relatedly, the other record I play pretty early on into a gear switch is side 2 of The Rolling Stones' "Tattoo You".

[Zzzptm]

Totally makes sense. Gotta have benchmarks.