What are you listening to right now?

[S Clark]

Tmazz, any idea how that Rhino 180 Court and Spark compares to the original pressing (which is pretty darn good)?  Also, I'm jealous of all those MFSL vinyls of yours.  Most of the ones I want are too expensive for my wallet.  I don't mind paying double for a step up in quality, but some of those things are running in the $2-300 range. 

[tmazz]

Unfortunately I do not have an original pressing to compare it to, but the Rhino sounds very nice. The original went out in the great record purge. When I moved 6 years ago I ended up having a big record sale divesting myself of most of the things I had duplicate pressings of and in the process making a lot of friends very happy.

As for the MoFi LPs, if you are jealous of me having then you are going to hate me when I tell you how I got most of them. I was just getting into High End Audio when CDs first came out and in the mid to late 80s records stores were practically giving away records to clear shelf space for those new shiny silver things. And I was all to happy to help them out. I picked up literally hundreds of audiophile LPs (MoFi, Nautilus and other Half speed mastered LP as well as all sorts of direct to disc albums, Japanese pressings and  and other audiophile goodies) for $5 and less. I was talking to the guy at the Elusive Disc table at CAF and told him that the first purchase I made from them was in 1985 and I bought every one of the MoFi UHQR LPs the the exception of Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt Pepper, at the clearance price of only $12 a piece. When I got to the price they guy almost spit out his coffee. 

Of course a few years later when all of these pressings were out of print and out of stock everywhere people started to realize what they were and the prices started to shoot up. I certainly would not own them if I had to pay the current prices for them. 

As a matter of fact the only MoFi I ever paid more than the original list price for was the Sgt Pepper UHQR.  MoFi sold out the entire press run of 500 copies of the Pepper UHQR on the first day it ws available for wholesale ordering and the original $50 price jumped pretty quickly on the retail market. About two years after it sold out I was on a business trip and as I am apt to do whenever I go out of town I checked out the local record shops. What I found was not one, but two copies of the Pepper UHQR priced a $100 each. I couldn't get my wallet out fast enough.  The guy at the register looked at me like I was crazy to happy to pay that much for a record, but withing a week I had the second copy sold for pretty close to what I had paid for both copies.

Great finds on the secondary record market are just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. 

[tmazz]

The Blues Brothers: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack



Atlantic LP

[tmazz]

The Blues Brothers - S/T



Atlantic LP

I'm finding this Benz Micro cart to very sensitive to dirt. Both of these Blues Brothers LPs have not been out for a while and were a bit on the dusty side. They both have problems with mistracking and skipping that were solved by giving each record a quick wash on the VPI.

Of course clean records are not a bad thing, but I just got a bit lazy and it bit me in the @ss.

I wonder if this will be less of a problem after the cart breaks in and I dial in the alignment? 

[tmazz]

The Beach Boys: Surfer Girl



Analogue Productions 200g LP

I know, I know, it is kind of strange to be listening to The Beach Boys when it is 30 degrees outside, but I wanted to see how the Benz Micro handled the vocal harmonies.

One word.... WOW. 

Very nice job, and it is not even fully broken in yet. 

[tmazz]

Fleetwood Mac: Rumors



Warner Bros 180g, 45 RPM, 2 LP Set

[tmazz]

Eric Clapton: I Still Do



Surfdog 180g, 45 RPM, 2 LP Set

[tmazz]

Dvorak: New World Symphony - Kertesz/Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra



Speakers Corner 180g LP

[tmazz]

Fennell/Eastman Wind Ensemble: Winds in Hi-Fi



Speakers Corner 180g LP

TAS Superdisc List

[tmazz]

The Polish Chamber Orchestra: Mozart / Vivaldi / J. S. Bach / Bartok/ Elgar



Linn Records 2 LP Set (Dutch Pressing)

[Guy 13]

The Polish Chamber Orchestra: Mozart / Vivaldi / J. S. Bach / Bartok/ Elgar



Linn Records 2 LP Set (Dutch Pressing)

Hi tmazz.
How many albums do you have ?
Maybe a warhouse full ? ? ?

Guy 13

[tmazz]

Hi tmazz.
How many albums do you have ?
Maybe a warhouse full ? ? ?

Guy 13

Damn Guy, you sound like my wife! 

If you ask her the answer is simple, too many.

I am not yet up to a warehouse full, just a good part of my basement. If I were to estimate the current could I would have to say it is in the area of 2,500 LPs and 5,000 CDs. And that is after what has become known as the "great record purge." Before we moved about 6 years ago I sold and gave away over 3000 LPs. There just wasn't enough space in the new house to take then all and there were a lot of things that I either had in multiple formats or were just albums that I listened to once and was unlikely to spin again.

I am very close to maxing out on rack space right now and find myself in a constant battle of having to offload stuff to make room for new arrivals. I find a lot of things in the quarter bin at Mr Cheapo's that I try out just for the heck of it and one of the biggest factors of whether I keep it or listen once and send it right into the donation bin is whether the album is worthy of shelf space (They love me at the local thrift shop.  )

Meredith once asked me "When are you going to stop buying records?". My reply, "When the throw the dirt on me."   

I have been told this is not a hobby, it's a sickness. 

[tmazz]

Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker - Ansermet/Suisse Romande



Speakers Corner 180g, 2 LP Set

[tmazz]

The Turtles: Greatest Hits



Flash LP (Dutch Import)

[James Edward]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81XqwA71HoL._SS500_.jpg

Saved from the abyss with some Dawn detergent. Started skipping at an exact point and going to another exact spot on the disc. The darndest thing. Now I can hear Capriccio Italien all the way through...