Craig Sawyers

Ah - the good old battleship grey Cambridge Audio livery. It was panned by the reviewers, as were the buttons on the CD player (they described them as reminiscent of poking dead flesh). Very unfair, because the product performance and sonics were good. However the reviews killed that iteration of Cambridge Audio (~1990). We acquired the wreckage when I worked at Wharfedale, including a massive inventory of product, for almost pocket change (at least in a corporate sense). We sold the inventory at knock down prices, and then did nothing more than change the appearance to a dark gold colour, and the dimple in the knobs became a light gold colour pin instead. After that they sold very well. I turned the Cambridge Audio technical team to the re-launch of the Leak brand, that Wharfedale owned. Among those was a very young Steve Sells, fresh from University, who I let off the leash and told him to design the best power amp he could - a Krell-beater. I got a design consultancy to do the appearance design, and Steve designed FET output monoblocks of truly heroic performance. When we set up to show that at Heathrow, I wired up the speakers and only got a very quiet sound like a tinny transistor radio. I'd left the shorting links across the back of the speakers, and Steve's design was playing the speaker cables into a short circuit without breaking sweat. Fast forward several decades, and Steve is now director of engineering at Naim. They likewise let him off the leash, and the astonishing and ridiculously expensive Statement was the result (google it). Cambridge Audio, from its foundations in 1966, has been bust umpteen times over the decades. But astonishingly it is still very much alive and still British, and owned by Richer Sounds. It was orignally founded by my good friend and mentor Gordon Edge (RIP). To celebrate 50 years from the foundation of the company, Cambridge Audio introduced the high end Edge series of products in 2016. They even incorporated Gordon's always barely legible signature on the circuit board silk screen.

Oh yes. Betamax, I bought a Betamax back in the day because it was technically superior to VHS, and the tapes were physically smaller. But VHS won the day - so I had a lemon on my shelf. Betamax, VHS - long dead formats both of them now. Like cartridge tapes, cassette tapes, floppy discs, Zip drives and quadraphonic. But who would have thought that vinyl records would make a come back?

I discovered the problem with chopping chilies in my early 20's. Then going for a wizz. It is a lesson once learnt never forgotten . That picture in the Wikipedia link is a horror story. Look at the front of the stainless steel units that the chef is standing at. And the filthy wiping rag. Sure he has some stuff organised in the foreground, but the rest of the kitchen is salmonella waiting to happen. Ugh. Can you imagine how Gordon Ramsey would take that place apart? It looks like a classic Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares episode.

Ouch. At least it wasn't California Reapers . Small knives are a real danger - I tend to use large ones, kept really sharp. A mate of mine is a pro chef. At least he was - he stopped when they had kids. The hours are stupidly long and he wanted to see the kids grow up. Pre-virus we used to have a cook-in from time to time; beer and cooking for us and wives. And watching him prepare vegetables in particular is a thing to behold. After catering college, he said that the first restaurant he joined would not let him actually cook anything until he had proved his knife skills to their satisfaction - which took 6 months of veg prep and butchery. And when he cooks our kitchen looks like an operating theatre rather the the mess I generate when I cook. He tells me that in a restaurant kitchen you have to have an almost OCD level of tidiness, otherwise you just can't get dishes out on time. I buy our cookware and knives from this place https://www.procook.co.uk/

Have a truly marvelous day, Brent - Happy Birthday!

FWIW Springbank 10 in the UK is £40, or the equivalent of $49 at today's exchange rate. Macallan Gold Double-Cask is £45 ($55), which is the cheapest 10 year, but for rare bottlings you can stump up many hundreds (not for me, though!).

Happy birthday!

Just found out (from my monthly whisky magazine) that DT introduced a trade tariff of 25% on single malt scotch whisky, in October 2019. Exports of single malt to the US from Scotland are down by 25% as a result. It is expected that it will fall further, because in anticipation of this move, US importers have stockpiled so the full 25% price hike has not been felt in full yet. Here, we have frozen the duty we pay on scotch in an attempt to support the industry, and the Chancellor Rishy Sunak is going to lobby the Trump administration to get the 25% tariff scrapped.

Isn't that Stretch's bedroom minibar?

Two boxes of Scapa in the tower. Bloody awkward bottle height - it is quite a bit taller than a regular bottle and so doesn't fit on a regular shelf. Not half bad whisky though...

We're now using bacon from these guys https://www.finnebrogue.com/naked/our-range/naked-bacon/ that has no artificial curing agents. It is on supermarket shelves and is delicious. And hardly more expensive than regular bacon.

nrop? ? I had a pair of maggies of the same vintage, but the larger size. The weakness is that the tweeter burns out - it is not a ribbon in the lower cost models - it is electromagnetic, the same as the woofer panel but with much thinner aluminium wire. Determined to limp them along, I stripped the tweeter wire off the diaphragm, bought a reel of the same gauge, and adhesively bonded it to the diaphragm. Main problem was actually soldering aluminium wire - not straightforward. Worked fine until eventually the film diaphragm split and that was the end of the road for them. The only bits I have left are the connector panel and oak strips. Anyway, beware of buying older generation maggies.

Ooh - a Transcriptors Hydraulic Reference complete with sweep arm and stylus brush. The only thing that is not original is the SME arm - it should be the iconic Fluid Arm. I lusted after these in the early 70's in a way that was almost painful. https://www.transcriptorsengineering.com/

Grief - what a mess. Why a massive, electronics shredding surge when they reconnect the supply after clearing the fault is anybody's guess. Sounds like bungling incompetence by the electricity company to me.

Happy birthday - have a great one!

I'm still laughing. That made my day!

That comes from Zoidberg in Futurama

It is like zounds, that used to be used as an exclamation in Marvel and other comics. Actually is a contraction of God's Wounds, a reference to the Crucifixion.

Short for God's Truth. Sounds like a promotion to me, Dusty

Awww - you used "valves" just for little old me? Oh and Grahame I suppose.

There used to be the opposite thing in Japan (certainly back in the 80s), where businessmen would go to the pub in the city after work. Except that sounded like a lame excuse to their spouse. So there was a service that would play the sound of a train station in the background, so you could phone your spouse from the pub, while telling her there were train cancellations and you were having difficulty in getting home.

FFS. First SME stopped supplying tonearms - now Jelco. Pretty soon it is going to be tricky to buy a reasonably priced tonearm.

Pretty good room heater too At points in the past I have had fan cooled Krell and Audio Research power amps. In the UK where no one has or really needs air conditioning. So in the Summer, running either of those hernia-inducing monsters needed real dedication to the audio cause.

I've seen those monster speakers before. Monster room, that I think he had specially made for the purpose. But why the clocks? He obviously hasn't done the swept sine at decent power in the room to find out what is resonating. At least the room is symmetrical. Swept sine is a damned good way of finding out what is rattling and resonating in a room. From Nelson Pass (he of Pass Labs) in http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_elpipeo.pdf "Funny things happen when your speakers are flat to 13Hz. You have to be careful about your tone arm, your windows, your neighbors, and your bowels."