ironbut

I opened my email this morning and received a blurb regarding RMAF from huddlerfi which is okay (there's some kind of drawing you can register for). But, just as I took a tasty bite of an english muffin dripping with butter, my eye scanned down to see a photo of Sherwood in all his glory! IMHO, there outta be a law,.. Well, hopefully, lunch will go a little more smoothly!

Thanks for the insight guys. Maybe the impact factor will improve with break in time? I know that plannar speakers bass takes freakin forever to open up when they're new. My WAG is that even though the tension is pretty precise across the membrane when they're stretched, it's less so when during the larger excursions. After a while, the tensions during these larger movements start to stretch the membrane a tiny bit and they even out. Like I said, just a wild ass guess but no matter what mechanism is involved, the bass on plannars improves significantly in both quantity and quality over several hundred hours. So, anybody gonna have a pair at RMAF?

I'll be there Saturday,.. maybe Sunday.

Hmm,.. hamburgers made from songbirds? Sounds yummy! Yeah, all these hotels are pretty much just across a few parking lots so even if it's raining (it actually snowed in 2007) , it ain't no thang.

Wow,.. 31 years? I'll be spinning "Life's Rich Pageant" today. That one really hits home for me.

Yes indeedy jp! I just noticed a few posts about Craig's prototype Electra over on that other site and while I haven't been following the evolution of this amp for very long, it seems like they have a few details wrong (I know,.. how the fuck could that happen?). Mainly, since Craig and I have discussed designs for an electrostatic amp, the only DHT's that we've ever considered were the large transmitter tubes like a 211 or 845. I suppose you could get enough swing with other DHT's on the output but I've only considered the 300b as a driver for such an amp (they seemed to think that it uses 4 300b's on the output ). " Basically two pairs of tube differential gain stages driving a differential 6L6GC with split inductor plate loads." And from another email; "It uses four Tung Sol 50's style 6L6 upgraded to GC with four 6SN7 drivers. The amp will swing close to 800V PP with an input sensitivity of less than a volt."

Yup, James Farm was fantastic! I'm a huge Redman fan so I wouldn't have missed that. Other stand outs were; Hiromi (amazing piano and a monster trio), Pizzarelli family with John and Bucky ending their show with a couple of duets, Joey DeFranchesco with Bobby Hutcherson And a very cool funk show with Ivan Neville playing an hour of Sly Stone.

The guys that know me are used to me raving about each year's Monterey Jazz Festival. I usually follow that up by trying to convince them to attend one. There's lots of reasons I love this festival and each year these reasons are different. I just got back from this years festival and one of the performances on Sunday night was easily my favorite in the 15 years that I've been going. An amazing jazz orchestra joined by one of my favorite living horn players, Terence Blanchard, did a tribute to the music of Gil Evans. The set ended with a performance of the original score of "Sketches of Spain". It was awesome! I don't believe that "Sketches..." has ever been performed live by a professional jazz group (only one college performance that I know of). For the trumpet player, performing it live is a real marathon and I doubt that Miles would have ever agreed to perform the entire piece in one whack (I'd seen him 6 times over a couple of decades). It was goosebumps from beginning to end and a number of times I found myself tearing up from the privilege being there to hear and see it. For a card carrying Mile Davis fan, Heaven had better step it's game up to come close to this one!

Very funny! Electra

Just heard that there's probably going to be a prototype of a new electrostatic amp in Denver. So, more fuel to the 009 fire! We should be sure to have all the usual electrostatic suspects in attendance to give it a work-out!

I went to Classics site and it does state that the 200 gm titles were made with lacquers cut with a mono stylus. Those titles should sound their best with a mono cartridge and a mono switch. I was just going by what was stated in the Hoffman thread in which Steve had said that Classic did not use a mono cutter stylus. I guess I should have tried experimenting with the "Y" connectors before I jumped into this anyway! Sorry,.. I'll do that when I get back from Monterey.

Just wondering if anyones tried Craig's teflon, pressure adjustable tube sockets? They're very $$$ ($70) but if I was building a 300B/2A3 amp using "the good stuff" parts, it wouldn't be totally out of line. http://www.eddiecurrent.com/Tube_Socket.html

I believe that the discussion of playing mono records with the use of a mono switch or a "Y" connector is only for records that were cut with a mono cutter head. If you have older records which were cut in mono (I have an original "Kind of Blue" which is mono) the groove and the location of the "cuts" is different from a stereo record. In which case, to really get the most out of these records, you need a mono stylus which is shaped differently. Using a mono switch or "Y" connector helps to get closer but once again, this is only with older records and not with the Classic Records releases which were cut with a stereo cutter head and fed with two mono signals.

Ouch! Hopefully you can get that corrected by the seller! It is a beauty though.

Glad to help Rick. I used to spend at least one Saturday a month hanging out there and I loved checking out all the latest gear and engaging in audio gossip. Brian is extremely knowledgeable and used to be the music editor for The Absolute Sound (when it was still the smaller sized magazine). I'm pretty sure that he's had just about every turntable (except for some of the ultra exotic Euro stuff) in his shop at one time or another so he knows what he's talking about. The Analog Room is kind of a throwback to the early days of high end audio. It took Brian forever to even put out a yellow pages ad and I seriously doubt that he'll ever put a sign on the store. But he has a great rep with the record producers. When a new album comes out he's sure to have most of the single digit serial numbered copies that left the pressing plant.

Hey Rick, It might be worth your time to take a drive down to The Analog Room in San Jose. Brian, the owner, is extremely opinionated and sometimes you have to put up with some cigar smoke, but I don't think there's another spot in Ca where you can audition as many vinyl rigs in one spot. I haven't been in there in ages but he always used to have at least a couple of entry level set ups. You could also give him a call to be sure that his recommendations for your price range will be ready to hear. http://theanalogroom.com/products.html

Wow! Chocolate, pork and some of Mikey's fine spirits! Couldn't ask for more than that. Looks like a killer time! Thanks for the pic's Peter.

Always liked Jensen. I just wonder if he's too nice a guy sometimes! I think this years rookies could be the big story of the season. I don't know what they're feeding those guys, but if it does represent an improvement in the training that they've gotten on their way up, it may be that we won't see veterans like Rubins (without a championship) still getting a ride year after year. Anyway, I'll have to see how my finances are after the beginning of the year before I can commit but I'd certainly love to be in Austin in 2012!

You can call it "Foot and Mouth Disease" if you want! Anything to make you happy Al. I think it's official name is The Reference Mastercuts Series. (maybe if Keith or Paul is at RMAF we can have them add an "n" between the "u" and the "t' on our copies!)

Here's what Paul had to say about the tweaks that he and Keith applied to his lathe; "As most people know, Keith captures a lot of dynamic range in his recordings . This requires extreme dynamic range performance from every part of the chain. Generally we were finding and eliminating residual noise contributions that were already below what anyone could hear in most recordings--or on most pressings. A cutting system is quite a bit more complicated than you might suspect. Besides the analog signal chain from the source through the processing to power amp outputs, there is a feedback signal generated from the cutter head, a turntable motor, groove spacing control circuitry, groove depth control circuitry, and suction for chip pickup and workholding. They are all connected together, so it took some effort to make sure all the grounding was optimized, then some more tricky stuff to make sure they weren't talking to each other in ways that weren't intended. The Pass electronics were already designed for half speed cutting, so we didn't have much to do in that department. Primarily it was about lowering the noise floor."

Sounds like the first round is on Jeff! I'm all booked too. I'll be getting in on Friday morning and leaving late on Sunday. I'm really looking forward to it.

OOps,.. forgot to post a link to the RR blog that has some pretty pictures of the lathe. Paul's had this for a loooong time and he's been cutting lacquers regularly since he pulled it out of storage about 3 or 4 years ago. I'll see if I can find out what tweaks Keith made to make it more compatible with his master tapes (or at least what the issues were). http://referencerecordings.blogspot.com/2010/07/lp-report-featuring-paul-stubblebine.html

If you guys haven't heard, RR is getting back into releasing lp's. Paul Stubblebine and Prof Johnson have been toiling away behind the scenes to put this together for a couple of years now and the first 2 releases will be next month (Sept 2011). Here's the press release; TWO NEW RELEASES September 2, 2011 SAN FRANCISCO – For many years, RR has been searching the world over for the best possible vinyl mastering, plating and pressing facilities so we could re-enter the LP market. We now have a production chain that will allow us to produce LPs to meet our high standards and satisfy our demanding customers, who have been waiting for these LPs for a long time! Assembling the Team Disc mastering is done at half-speed to insure maximum accuracy. The lathe system has custom electronics by Nelson Pass. The simple signal path contains no compression, equalization or unnecessary circuitry. RR Chief Engineer and Technical Director, “Prof.” Keith Johnson consulted on the design of the system and helped with the rebuilding of the lathe and electronics, which is owned and operated by long-time mastering expert Paul Stubblebine. “Prof.” Johnson has pronounced it equal to the challenge of our master tapes! Once we achieved successful results in disc mastering, we faced the difficult task of choosing the best plating and pressing facility to manufacture our discs. Fortunately, the new Quality Record Pressings plant in Salina, Kansas was coming on line, and we feel that waiting for this plant to open was well worth it. Chad Kassem assembled a crack team of experts to design and run his new plant, employing many unique techniques and features that clearly set QRP apart from all other pressing plants. We believe the 200-gram deluxe vinyl pressings from QRP are truly exceptional. Multiple Configurations for New Reference Mastercuts Depending on program lengths, some new releases will be cut at 45 rpm, some at 33-1/3 rpm. Some will be single discs, some double. All will feature deluxe gate-fold jackets crafted by Stoughton Printing . An unusual feature of new RR masterings is what we call the “FDS finish”: the end of each side will have a 30-second band of silent grooves before the “pull-away.” No one today uses a record changer, and the silent grooves allow time to lift the arm before the always-somewhat-noisy tie-off. (Some 1950s vintage Capitol Full Dimensional Sound pressings sported this feature.) RR founder, J. Tamblyn (Tam) Henderson deserves special recognition for identifying the value of this unique production feature and reintroducing it with the new Mastercuts.

Very cool! I've always loved this stuff! Thanks for the link!

Thanks Vicki and Raffy. Been meaning to get an electric toothbrush anyway! I've never seen one of those thingies for keeping the brush clean. That would be killer for traveling!