needled

[calimac]

You wouldn't think that phonograph turntables, the kind you play vinyl on, would be much more obsolete today than in 1999, would you? Well, apparently they are.

I still have lots of LPs because I have lots of music that's never been on CD and because I am not made of money and because my amp pre-dates digital conversion anyway and because I wouldn't want to spend years converting a closetful of LPs to CD and hyper-worrying about every possible skip and scratch.

I don't listen to the LPs that much, but I have a little project going that involves fetching out a few for re-listening - you'll find out why in a day or two - and I thought, I've had this turntable for 8 years now, it's probably about time to change the needle.

Next day began my grim struggle with the ... well, I went back to the stereo store where I'd bought the turntable, its predecessor having died gruesomely, and lo, not only don't they sell turntables any more, they have no idea where to find needles, and they're rather condescending about my coming into the store instead of buying one on the web anyway. Jeepers, I'm old enough that when I need to buy replacement supplies for something, the first place I look is the store where I got the original item in the first place. But after their attitude, I'm not going back there again for anything.

There's one store in the yellow pages with an ad saying they specialize in turntables. It's in a lurid industrial zone miles away. I drive there. They're closed till 1 PM. I come back. It's not a store by the normal definition, it's a big garage full of old equipment. Remember the computer store Weird Stuff? Like that, only with stereos. The crusty owner looks at the needle. He can't replace it. To borrow a line from Walt Willis, the manufacturers had made this one cartridge and then broken the dies, burned the blueprints, and shot all the technicians responsible.

He can replace the cartridge, but needs to have the whole turntable so he can rebalance it. I go home. I remember how to unplug the turntable. I bring it in. He fits it with a new cartridge that he promises won't be unknown eight years from now. I go home and resume playing records.

Which is where I am now. See you later.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I wonder if you could get enough people in your position to get together the $15,000 for the ELP Laser Turntable which doesn't use a needle. They keep sending me literature, but have been unresponsive about sending a demo model.

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

There's such a DJ-oriented culture in the Bay Area that I thought it would be easier to find turntables and parts.

What I've noticed is that the remaining turntables on the market all seem to be in the high end.

[amy-thomson.livejournal.com]

You can now get a turntable with a USB connection so that you can burn your LPs to CD, or save them as audio files.

A decade or so back, I saw a little toy truck that drove around and around your record, and played it though a tinny speaker in the back of the speaker. I'm still kicking myself that I never bought the thing. It was dead cute.

There isn't a place on the internet that sells phonograph needles?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Well, I certainly couldn't get the USB turntable from my local stereo store. And I don't want to burn my LPs. I've about 13 linear feet of them, and that's after having gotten rid of the ones I have replaced with CDs.

I could probably get a needle on the Internet, but my first instinct is to go to a store. Since the needle I needed is apparently not available, a lot of frustration would have followed. And I don't have the experience to re-balance the stylus after replacing the cartridge.

No, I think this is an object lesson in the limits of Internet shopping. I was much better off going to an expert in real-space, and I got the job done in two days.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

It takes about five minutes longer to burn an LP than it does to just listen to it. If you get the urge to hear one, you might as well burn it while you're at it, and after that it's part of the collection you can access with a press of a button. Or two. Anyway, you know what I mean.

They sell turntables at the music store by Panera's here. They're for DJs, I guess. And they sell them online. They sell a cartridge and needle that replace whatever's already in a turntable.

I need to take my turntable in to be worked on -- new cartridge and needle, I guess, clean & lube the motor, and put in a new rubber band. There's a place down the street that'll do it (right here in West Springfield, on Westfield Road), but they want $50 for an estimate, which counts toward the work. Well, maybe early next year.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Five minutes? It takes me at least ten minutes to burn a CD, confirm that it's playable, type up an insert card, print it and cut it to size, and add a spine label, and that's working from sound files already made. Nor is this my favorite way to spend ten minutes: I do it because I want the result.

So, in making a CD from an LP, add to that:
playing the whole LP even if I only wanted to hear part of it;
cutting the created sound file into tracks (which would require new software, as my current CD software can't do that);
running the sound quality booster program that asimovberlioz once mentioned (and which I'd also have to get);
re-recording any part of the record that skipped or repeated, cause I sure don't want that on a CD;
finding some way to copy the liner notes and form them into a little booklet to insert into the case;
and you've got a fair chunk of time and effort here.

And when I'm done, what have I got? I've got a CD I probably won't play very often; I've still got a perfectly good LP I have to get rid of; and I've got a turntable I can't get rid of either, because someday I might want to play another LP.

Which is the long explanation of why my reaction to your suggestion that I burn my LPs as I happen to play them is, Why on earth should I bother??

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I said "burn" when I should have said "rip." It's the same reason I was drummed out of the Visigoths. For me, it's a matter of letting the record play, dividing it into tracks, and saving it to the computer. I don't make CDs out of everything I rip; I keep the files on the computer and back them onto DVDs when I have enough to trigger my backing-up reflex. The five minutes is, of course, if I don't do a lot of work on a file, like taking out pops by hand. If (as it often is) I can auto-correct, the whole thing takes a little over five minutes.

Then the next time I want to listen to it, I don't have to cause further damage and trauma to my records, which are refiled in the attic for the next time I have to pull a recording from them. I don't do like some friends of mine seem to and use the LPs for target practice after I record them. Didn't do it with tapes, either. The next new medium might be an even better way to save the information on my dearly bought LP collection.

The mp3s I think I'll listen to again go on my iPod. The hard part is guessing what I'll listen to again and what I won't. I haven't mastered that yet. I suppose if I know for a fact I'll never listen to something more than once, I could save myself the minutes, but I like having a collection of mp3s, and copying instead of just listening is like the difference between renting and owning. To me.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yeah, "rip". For "burn" read etc etc in my own comments.

There are definitely different perspectives one can take on this. If it's convenient enough to do so, sure, why not burn a quickie CD to have something to listen to, the same way as we used to make tapes? I can see that.

But in my case, few of my remaining LPs are music I'd listen to often enough to want to bother to get a new turntable just for that purpose. I don't even do it often with CDs, though I am considering taking a few obscure folk CDs I only ever listen to one or two tracks of, making an anthology, and disposing of the originals.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking I'm done with this comment! I'm not talking about making a CD at all. That's more of a commitment than I want to make, and I don't want to have to store a lot more CDs. I just put the things on my hard drive where I can listen to them easily if I should take another mania to do so.

Different streaks for different freaks, and all that.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

As my computer is right next to my stereo, and the computer is balky enough as it is, I have to reason to store music on its hard drive to listen to it.

But, for "burn a CD," you may read "transfer to an ipod" if you so desire. I have my own reasons for not being very interested in an ipod, but they're unrelated to the LP-vs-digital-storage question.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

No, not transfer to an iPod, either. That's only for the stuff I'm pretty sure I will listen to (I have to keep deleting stuff to fit more things on). I just mean keep files on the computer and double-click on them to play. Your reasons for not doing so are fine; I'm just trying to clear up what I tried to say.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

In fact I have been seriously considering picking up one of the USB turntables, as I also have a fair amount of vinyl I should like to convert.

The trick is that they don't sell them in stereo stores. They sell them in music stores -- you can get a decent one for about two hundred clams at Guitar Warehouse, for example -- because a turntable is no longer primarily a music reproduction device, but a performance device for rap'n'scratch.

(Can rap'n'sniff be far behind?)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Ah. That answers whumpdotcom's question.

But I'm not sure I'd want turntable equipment optimized to such use. I'd rather go the audiophile route.