HW: value of some items

[Eric Siegerman]

On Wed, Jun 07, 2000 at 01:15:11PM -0500, Todd Hong wrote:
> I don't know about the more modern hi-fi pressings, but in my collection of
> LPs (about 1000) the 1-4, 2-3 pressing is 95% of all my double sets.

Yes, this was the standard way of doing things in those days.
Even with many-record box sets, you'd see 1-12, ... 5-8, 6-7.  I
can't imagine playing even half of Beethoven's symphonies in one
go, but that's how they pressed 'em.

It was common knowledge that using a record changer was hard on
the records (when a record dropped, there would be this
"plop-whoosh" as it landed, then slid for a second or so against
the one beneath it until it came up to speed).  Even so, it was
really tempting to pile 'em on anyway, so as not have to get up
every 20 minutes to change records -- especially during a party,
heavy make-out session, or whatever.

You could rank people in increasing order of audiophile-ness:
  - the ones who never gave it a thought
  - the ones who reluctantly gave into temptation and used the
    changer
  - the ones who didn't
  - the ones who had single-play turntables in the first place
  - the ones who considered it gauche to have a turntable even so
    automatic as to return the tone-arm to resting position after
    the record was done.  The machinery to do this was considered
    to interfere with the tone-arm's free movement (lifting
    vertically off the spin-out groove was acceptable, since the
    lifter didn't have to be engaged while the record was
    playing.

When I started seeing records pressed 1-2, 3-4, I knew audiophile
had gone mainstream.


My prize tech-toy purchase of 1979 was a turntable that:
  - Avoided (most of?) the damage by going up to get the next
    record instead of just letting it drop.  The center of the
    platter (a circle about the size of the hole in a 45), was
    a movable column.  When it was time to play the next side,
    the column would raise up, lifting any records that were
    already down.  The spindle would let go of the next disc, and
    the whole thing would come back down to set the records
    gently on the platter.  (The lifter column must have been
    rotating at platter speed, I presume, or there would still
    have been friction damage).

  - Could optically detect track boundaries; it used a laser to
    look for the shiny bit between tracks.  This never worked too
    well.  Sometimes it'd count two tracks (or none) instead of
    one, if it happened to cross the track boundary at just the
    wrong spot, and there were some songs with quiet sections
    that the thing would only play the first part of.  I seem to
    recall one song on "A Farewell to Kings" in particular --
    probably "Cygnus X-1" -- that it *always* screwed up on.

  - Could be programmed to play tracks in an arbitrary order --
    truly arbitrary, since it could actually push records *back*
    up onto the pending stack.  The little fingers at the top of
    the spindle could grab hold of an already played record as
    easily as let go of an unplayed one.  The only thing it
    couldn't do was flip the records over :-)

  - Had a remote control (a rarity in those days -- but then,
    most turntables didn't have anything worth controlling
    remotely).  This was actually kind of cool -- the I/R
    receiver wasn't on the turntable itself, it was on this
    nifty brushed-aluminum mushroom thing that was attached to
    the turntable by a cable.  A *long* cable -- with a bit of
    preparation, you could control the music from another room.

All stuff we take for granted now, with CDs and more cheap
computing power than we can use, but in the late seventies this
thing was really pushing the envelope (and in some respects at
least, the envelope did a good job of pushing back :-)  For New
Years Eve 79/80, my brother set his up with the mushroom taped to
the doorframe between the living room and his bedroom.  This
thing was was the hit of the party!  Remote-control music was as
cool then as the Rio was when it first came out.

I still have the thing.  It's been in a box in my parents'
basement for going on 20 years.  Some time I should dig it out
and see if it still works.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics at telepres.com
|  |  /
to me, Charlie Brown represented the courage to be sincere in the face of
ridicule. he was NOT a loser.
thank you, Mr. Schulz.
        - Robert C. Mayo