Shadow's Vault

I don't use reel-to-reel, but I'm a big record fan. Have 2 (maybe 3?) players in my house, and I've always enjoyed the feeling of putting on a record... you feel an involvement with the music that CDs (and especially not music on the computer) don't give you. Nice setup.

Here's a page that has info and photos of the tuner/amp that goes with the turntable and reel-to-reel http://www.classicaudio.com/value/san/5000A.html I like it, but I'm actually a little afraid to use it regularly thus the decision to go with the newer Kenwood.

I don't use reel-to-reel, but I'm a big record fan. Have 2 (maybe 3?) players in my house, and I've always enjoyed the feeling of putting on a record... you feel an involvement with the music that CDs (and especially not music on the computer) don't give you. Nice setup.

I knew you were cool I had a record player years ago (bought it to play two Queen records I bought a few months prior) but I got rid of it after a few months. My mom wanted this stuff out of her living room (they haven't turned it on in 10 years) so I saved it from the attic. I just Googled the turntable and a forum post about it said they weren't distributed in the US so I got a nice family history lesson out of the deal too; my dad bought it all in Germany when he was stationed there in the late 60s/early 70s.

I'm not a big music person (I never even had a radio til 8th grade) so I'm not one that goes on about CDs vs records, but I completely agree with you. It's fun to look at the record and decide which side I want to play first, and the tone is definitely much warmer.

That's a big ass iPod you got there.

iPod Macro

My friend owns a cool record player, and I own cool records. We often get together and put on Eagles, Billy Joel, Richard Pryor, Willie Nelson, and scores of other records and chill.

Not a hipster, though

My friend owns a cool record player, and I own cool records. We often get together and put on Eagles, Billy Joel, Richard Pryor, Willie Nelson, and scores of other records and chill. Not a hipster, though

Who are you trying to fool? I can smell your ironic mustache and cloves from here.

Reel to reel sucks balls. I remember using it back when I worked in radio. It's great to record with, because you have total access to the tape, but a pain in the butt to actually play. Cassettes are way way better, because of that whole playback thing.

My turntable I got in the early '90s, back when many stupid people thought that vinyl was going to be completely useless. I bought it at a flea market; it had a busted needle.

I paid more for the replacement needle than I did for the turntable. Since then I've bought a couple needles and replaced the belt. Still I think I'm about 20% of the way towards paying out the full original retail price of the turntable. I love taking advantage of stupid people with hifi equipment.

I own about 150 records I think. Which is way less than the number of CDs that I own. About half of them are from the '80s, where I have a moderately odd collection of stuff I liked back when I was a teen, including Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Bob Dylan, Chris deBurgh, Laurie Anderson, The Jeff Healey Band, Pink Floyd, Cyndi Lauper, Styx (well they're seventies I guess), Twisted Sister, and ... well other stuff, some of which I've gotten on CD (like The Police) and others not. The other half are mostly stuff I've picked up in secondhand stores, usually for really cheap, or stuff I've inherited from people who ditched their turntables.

Fortunately I still like most of the stuff I liked when I was a teen.

I only have a few pieces of rare vinyl. I have two Wooden Nickel Styx releases (Styx I and Man of Miracles), I have the original gold-coloured disc version of If You Love Somebody Set Them Free, I have a pretty rare Kate Bush interview disc; probably a few other things, I forget now. (It's tough when you used to be a DJ, you own hundreds of albums, and really like thousands of albums - you get what you actually own sorta confused.)

I'm still looking for the EP of Experiment IV. Someday I will find it. It contains a unique version of that song, and it's really good. Also the Dominion EP by Sisters of Mercy, which has Emma on it, which is my favourite song of theirs.

I miss having a radio station's music library.

Oh yeah. This is my amp.

Onkyo. (Well mine looks a bit different, one of the knobs is kinda busted and there are band stickers on it, but the electronics inside are still working and it's the speaker control knob which I never turn anyway.)

Oh also. You do not possess a tuner. The Kenwood box you show there is a receiver, i.e. an amplifier with a built-in tuner. Also, bah Kenwood. Go hit flea markets and find something that sounds better. Also spend ten years scrounging through secondhand music stores and find incredibly awesome speakers for much much less than their list price that the store can't sell because people are stupid. (Well also they weigh seventy pounds per speaker. I think that was the main reason. People want bookshelf speakers nowadays.)

This is what my Clements RT7s look like: http://www.canuckaudiomart.com/view_images.php?cat=Speakers&catnick=speakers&cfid=218960&image_id=2157293

It's kinda hard to describe how awesome they sound. One of the benefits of being a Canadian is living in a country which has a number of the best speaker manufacturers in the world, but RT7s are really in a whole other class.

Beneath it, a much newer tuner routes input from radio (signals that fly through the air)

Witchcraft that is, there is no such thing!.

Oh also. You do not possess a tuner. The Kenwood box you show there is a receiver, i.e. an amplifier with a built-in tuner. Also, bah Kenwood. Go hit flea markets and find something that sounds better. Also spend ten years scrounging through secondhand music stores and find incredibly awesome speakers for much much less than their list price that the store can't sell because people are stupid. (Well also they weigh seventy pounds per speaker. I think that was the main reason. People want bookshelf speakers nowadays.)This is what my Clements RT7s look like: http://www.canuckaudiomart.com/view_images.php?cat=Speakers&catnick=speakers&cfid=218960&image_id=2157293It's kinda hard to describe how awesome they sound. One of the benefits of being a Canadian is living in a country which has a number of the best speaker manufacturers in the world, but RT7s are really in a whole other class.

Yeah I have no idea what to call this stuff, so I just said tuner. I figured out about an hour after I wrote this that they're called amps. Like I said, I'm not a huge music person, so I'm not going to start dumping money on it. I'm happy with the Bose 201 Series II's I got with the Kenwood from the neighbor. I'm using the Kenwood because I'm afraid to use the Sansui 5000a. If anything happened to it--my fault or not--I'd get blamed for breaking my old man's 40-year-old stereo he brought back from Germany and spent 450 1970 dollars on (2,600 2011 dollars). You get the idea. The stuff was headed for the attic so I grabbed it. I can imagine that the reel-to-reel sucks, it looks like a monster to deal with.

I have a Phillip record player with both speeds, its output is routed through and old SHARP deck [for amplification and a rudimentary equilizer] and the speakers i use are ginourmous old wooden speakers of indeterminate brand that my dad used to have. Always on the lookout for LPs or Vinyl as the yanks would call them.

My LP collection is rather limited these days as a recent house moving had two cartons go missing, one of which had most of my records.

Zenya Mondata [The Police]

E=MC2 [Georgio Moroder]

The Golden Hits Of Engelbert Humperdinck & Tom Jones [EH and TJ]

The Magic of BoneyM

A couple of Queen Albums

A hodgepodge mixed up album with carribian, arabic and other music on it.

A sound-track LP from the hollywood movie "singing in the rain" from whn it first came out.

Several Bollywood soundtrack Albums

Several Indian Classical Music Albums including greats like Pt. RaviShankar, Ustaad Bismillah Khan etc.

The sound quality is to die for.

I also have a reel to reel, but it needs fixing, something i have been meaning to do for years.

I have a Phillip record player with both speeds, its output is routed through and old SHARP deck [for amplification and a rudimentary equilizer] and the speakers i use are ginourmous old wooden speakers of indeterminate brand that my dad used to have. Always on the lookout for LPs or Vinyl as the yanks would call them.My LP collection is rather limited these days as a recent house moving had two cartons go missing, one of which had most of my records.

Sorry to hear about that :/

If you ever happen across any Ahmad Zahir records, would you let me know?

You require a Dual, you life is nothing without one.

Use your tape deck to record the first play of the LP. Put the LP away for your children to copy to what ever media they end up with. Keep all this dust free, touch your left foot before breaking the shrink wrap. Analog Life is difficult.

Went on a buying spree to populate my collection today: http://s240.photobucket.com/albums/ff246/cndump/Records/ ~$25 altogether.

wow i havent see one of those record players in long ass time.

You require a Dual, you life is nothing without one.Use your tape deck to record the first play of the LP. Put the LP away for your children to copy to what ever media they end up with. Keep all this dust free, touch your left foot before breaking the shrink wrap. Analog Life is difficult.

wow i havent see one of those record players in long ass time.

Are you guys German? This turntable wasn't distributed in the US.

Nope, not German, Redneck mostly.

Ah, a German turntable, plays Krupp forged armoured Recordings?

My dad still uses a record player He's a got a reel-to-reel player as well.

But seriously, he's one of those audiophile types who spends thousands of dollars to get the right gold cable/needle/plug etc. to increase the fidelity by .00001%. Nevermind the fact that he can't even hear most of a conversation at normal volume.

Don't use record players or reel-to-reels at all, but I did just start work on restoring an old HF radio receiver from 1946.

Yeah I have no idea what to call this stuff, so I just said tuner. I figured out about an hour after I wrote this that they're called amps.

Yeah, that's alright. Thus my correction. Amp is short for amplifier. Incidentally the reason they are called amplifiers is because they make the current on the wires bigger, i.e. they amplify current. Your turntable sends electric signals down to your amp; said signals can in fact be theoretically connected to a speaker and will cause it to emit some sound, albeit not at a very significant volume.

This is why modern amplifiers, which normally possess digital inputs of some kind (HDMI or optical or coaxial usually) are only sort of amplifiers. (Their analog parts are real amps though.) They should more properly be called decoders, but eh, they perform the same function as a real amp in a stereo (well an integrated amp anyway, but I'm not going to go into the difference between preamps and power amps here; I don't use them anyway myself, well I sorta use my TV as a preamp but that's another story) so we call them amps or receivers (receiver being a term that has no basis in electrical terminology, so kinda fits better).

Like I said, I'm not a huge music person, so I'm not going to start dumping money on it. I'm happy with the Bose 201 Series II's I got with the Kenwood from the neighbor.

You should be, those are old Bose speakers from the time when Bose actually made decent speakers. Modern Bose stuff is mostly crap but back in the day they were a good speaker company.

They're not as good as my RT7s but they also do not weigh 70 pounds each, heh. For their size they are very good speakers.

I'm using the Kenwood because I'm afraid to use the Sansui 5000a.

This is understandable. The Sansui 5000a, assuming it's in full working order, is actually a collector's item. Personally speaking those kinds of amps are just too ancient for me, I'd rather have something that had a few more inputs than just phono, tape and aux.

However Kenwood is absolute crap. You would almost certainly be better off with a random amplifier picked up at a flea market or rummage sale for five dollars. (Which is actually where I got my current tape deck, for five dollars to boot, after my semi-flashy one from the '90s finally died.)

If anything happened to it--my fault or not--I'd get blamed for breaking my old man's 40-year-old stereo he brought back from Germany and spent 450 1970 dollars on (2,600 2011 dollars). You get the idea. The stuff was headed for the attic so I grabbed it. I can imagine that the reel-to-reel sucks, it looks like a monster to deal with.

You could always eBay the Sansui. (Even if it's busted, it's still worth money as parts.) There is one on eBay right now: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250868309555

Zenya Mondata [The Police]

Zenyatta Mondatta

When I was a kid, I only had Mondatta on cassette. I played it so much... so so much.

Tape stretches. Eventually I joined the '90s and got a CD player, and that was one of the CDs I bought early on.

I was amazed how much ... shorter it was.

Also, in case you're puzzled by the reel to reel deck's back panel.

The things to hook up are Output, Line Input, and of course AC. Ignore Monitor, you do not have the right equipment for connecting that (i.e. you are not a radio station, and do not possess a mixing board).

Connect AC to a power outlet (duh). Connect Line Input to Tape Rec(ord) on your amp. Connect Output to Tape Play on your amp.

Amp is short for amplifier. Incidentally the reason they are called amplifiers is because they make the current on the wires bigger, i.e. they amplify current. Your turntable sends electric signals down to your amp; said signals can in fact be theoretically connected to a speaker and will cause it to emit some sound, albeit not at a very significant volume.This is why modern amplifiers, which normally possess digital inputs of some kind (HDMI or optical or coaxial usually) are only sort of amplifiers. (Their analog parts are real amps though.) They should more properly be called decoders, but eh, they perform the same function as a real amp in a stereo (well an integrated amp anyway, but I'm not going to go into the difference between preamps and power amps here; I don't use them anyway myself, well I sorta use my TV as a preamp but that's another story) so we call them amps or receivers (receiver being a term that has no basis in electrical terminology, so kinda fits better).

I know what amplify means

I probably will hit the thrift stores for a different amp; there's something wrong with the phono input (the only one I'm really using) that keeps causing the left speaker to go mute. Spent 2 hours switching between the Sansui and Kenwood trying to figure out if it was the turntable or amp causing the problem. The phono input is the only one that actually amplifies the turntable, so I can't get around the issue by just switching which port I use. Or I may just stop being a girl and use the Sansui.

Fortunately, I still have all the Sansui documentation so the reel-to-reel setup is no problem.

Unfortunately, in the meantime my record purchases have reminded me why I never bought CDs, I don't really like anything on them except for the one or two familiar releases from each one. Let's Dance is solid, so is the Police compilation, but other than that zzzzzzzz. I was really disappointed in the Eurythmics album, it was like bad Lite Adult Contemporary. I've got my eye on News of the World next paycheck.

I came into being sometime in the early '70's so I'm familiar with some of that hardware and I got be honest, I love my iPod.