Back in the mid sixties we always had a Dansette Tempo in the house and loads of 7" vinyl singles to listen to so I guess a love of vinyl was inevitable. Around 1973 my Mom bought me an ITT stereo with a BSR autochanger and I had a few albums mainly by Roxy Music. In 1977 I had a huge motorcycle smash, spent five months in hospital and two year away from work. Just after that period I bought my first 'real' hi-fi system which was a Garrard GT35 turntable, Trio 40 Wpc amplifier and Goodmans RB20 loudspeakers. After a year, the amplifier was changed to a Naim 42/110 combination and then, a short while later I bought a Logic DM101. In 1983 my dreams came true and I bought my first ever CD player, a Yamaha CDX1. Around 1988 I bought a Cambridge Audio CD2. At this point I basically scrapped my vinyl LP collection only keeping around 100 of my more precious discs.

Moving on to 1997 I got the feeling that vinyl was probably not that bad after all and bought an Alphason Sonata with an Alphason HR100S MCS tonearm and an Ortofon Kontrapunkt a cartridge with an appropriate phono stage. Obviously I started to buy lots of vinyl to replace what I once had.

During 2005 - 2012 my financial position crashed and I was living in a very bad situation so everything was sold to keep the baying wolves from the door. Now though, thanks to my current partner Sue and her love of music and vinyl, I am back where I want to be; almost ! I still have a problem with vinyl. I am almost convinced now that I am suffering from the 'vinyl illusion'. It appears to me that the whole vinyl scene is one of mental expectation and the thought of vinyl playing actually being a lot better than the reality. The memory of playing vinyl records is an illusion created by our minds and the reality falls way short of this illusion. It is a glorious thing to play a vinyl record on a really nice turntable/arm/cart, flipping the sides over each time and just engulfing ones self in this beauty. The truth though is that it is nothing more that a pain in the arse full of old junk technology ?

Someone please let me know where I am going wrong.