Craig Sawyers

The real cantilever tour de force was the V15-V stylus, which was a 0.5 mil thick beryllium tube 20 mil in diameter. They made that out of beryllium shim stock cut to tiny size, and rolled it around a rod in a miniscule jig. Put it in an annealing oven to stop it just springing open and take a set, and then adhesively bonded the overlap and took the rod out. It calculates out as over 4 times stiffer than a current generation boron cantilever in megabuck moving coil cartridges. US patent 4,473,897 from 1984 describes the beryllium cantilever manufacturing process. Then Shure lost faith in vinyl when CD came in, and lost all the beryllium tube know-how and junked the kit. So all they can do now is bog standard aluminium cantilevers.

Although my main rig is a Garrard 401/SME IV/Zu DL103, I have just set up a classic system, Thorens TD150, SME3009 improved, fixed headshell, and a (the horror, the horror) Shure V15-IV with a Jico replacement stylus. That ends up going through a Blue Hawaii and SR007. And you know the strange thing - 40-odd years since that deck/arm/cartridge were current products - and it sounds bloody superb. The V15-IV with Jico standard hyperelliptical stylus is a true bargain in moving magnet land, and tracks absolutely anything at a measly 1g force. Having said that, the 401 is late 60's as is the DL103. And the SME IV was introduced thirty years ago. So that is a pretty vintage system itself!

I have a permanently grumpy expression too. Wish someone would pay me that much to put my big old face on a product.

Oh wow - I have read so many of her books. RIP Ursula

Re-reading (for the first time in a loooong time) Asimov's Foundation trilogy. Three very slim books from the early 50's that left a lasting impact on sci fi.

Flythough of the Orion Nebula from JPL/NASA. Simulated of course, but pretty impressive.

I mooted the idea of traps in the room that houses my main system with my better half. Her response was definitive. There are some battles you know you aren't going to win

I didn't interrogate eBay, but I caught sight of $6k per tube for NOS as I was googling trying to find out how much they cost in the 50's. I failed miserably to find that out. But they were originally designed for telephone system amplifiers, so they must have been pretty cheap.

WE reissued these a few years ago; I guess they must have stopped at some point and have restarted. When they made them they were a stupidly eye popping amount of money each. And if you wanted a matched pair - second mortgage time. Oh yes - just looked at the link. $1299 for a matched pair.

Happy birthday!

Shit - we were in London today, to (a) The Cezanne Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (b) eat lunch and (c) go to a first rate play with Juliet Stevenson. But we only live an hour away. Seriously - if you are in the UK and have some spare time - come visit. Near Oxford.

RIP Peter W. Jason King was a must-watch back in the day. Interesting and strange guy with a largely fictitious past, the story of which he changed several times over his life. There is even uncertainty when he was born and where, what his parents did, or even what his birth name was - the truth of which he carries with him and may never be known with anything remotely certain. They don't make them like that anymore!

Hardly know how to start with the RIP's, they have been coming so thick and fast, but Dolores, oh dear.

Happy birthday G-man Have a great bacon day!

Happy birthday!

Have a great birthday!

Just recomissioned my BH original - the one Kevin designed in 2000-2004 with just about every transistor in it obsolete. It has been sitting for several years after I finished the KG SRM/T2 clone. Fired up just fine, and still sounds stunning.

RIP Ray. I used to run the University disco back in the mid/late 70's, and the final play was Nights in White Satin to send everyone off to bed (together). End of a legend.

Formulas for shielding effectiveness here http://mumetal.co.uk/ . They also do a standard range of mumetal deep drawn and hydrogen annealed transformer cans.

What is your application that you need mumetal shielding? The stray field from a big toroid is pretty low in the first place. Anyhow, provided the ribbon is thin you can gently bend it on a large radius without losing the properties. What it does not like is being bent sharply. Plenty on the websites of mumetal suppliers about all this.

Christmas lunch. Butchered a duck. Legs off (cooked confit style for 3 1/2 hours at 85C under goose fat). Wings off. Breasts off. Used remaining carcass, wings, neck chopped up to make a stock. Cooked breasts classic style - skin side down in cold pan, then heat to crisp the skin and render the fat. Into the oven for 7 minutes skin side up to finish, and rest for 5 minutes. With roast vegetables and Amarone. (In the Silence of the Lambs book, he eats his liver with some fava beans and an nice Amarone. When they moved to the film they reckoned not many people had heard of Amarone, so they changed it to Chianti.)

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday! Have a great one

I was as that tour in Birmingham UK. Absolutely superb from beginning to end. So glad I saw him perform on stage. If you don't have the DVD of that concert rush out and buy it.

I've got a permanent slight buzzing sound in my left ear. You think you've got problems?